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Tales of the Trev

Big Old Trev turns 40

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There are lots of cool ages.  When you turn 18 you are legally an adult – able to get pissed and drive at will (even if not at the same time).  When you turn 21 it usually signals finishing your higher education and departing off into the big world.  When you turn 30, it’s a celebration of surviving all the stupid shit you did in your teens and twenties.

When you turn 40 however – it just means you are f*cking old

‘C’mon Reaper you bastard!’

Well loyal readers, today I turn 40.  And I can confirm it is not a cool age to turn.  No teenager thinks turning the big Four Oh will be fun and they are right.  I don’t feel cool, I don’t feel special, I don’t feel like I am on the cusp on a great adventure.  What I do feel is a tiredness in my limbs, a soreness in my back and a general irritation with the world.

(Writers note: I wrote the above a few days beforehand so I would have this piece ready.  Now it’s the actual day I’ve been spoiled rotten by my family and received a slew of well wishes from people so it is actually making my day pretty damn cool.   However it would ruin the theme of the piece so lets just pretend I’m still not feeling special eh?) 

So what the hell happened?  How did this happen to me?  I mean, I remember being young and looking at people like me, thinking why and how could they give up?!  And young Trev is still inside, looking out through these tired old eyes, feeling like a young man trapped in an old farts body.  I used to party all night and play video games all day.  I used to sleep with stranger’s, drink and smoke near anything passed my way, get into fights with buddies and then wake up the next day feeling a million bucks to do it all over again.  Now I go to bed sober at a decent hour and I still wake up tired.  What. Happened. To.  Me?

 

In fact, let’s have a look at the progression of my life in some key categories.

 

Drinking

Teens: Any alcohol our fake ID’s could get us

Twenties: Scotch & Cokes at the pub

Thirties: Beers with mates

…and now: Cup’o’Soup before bed

 

Music

Dancin’ machine!

Teens: Whatever was on MTV

Twenties: Whatever was on Rage

Thirties: Whatever was on Triple J

…and now: ‘Hey Diddle Diddle, the cat and the fiddle’

 

Parties

Most innocent party pic I could find

Teens: Getting pissed at 18th’s

Twenties: Getting munted at 21st’s

Thirties: Dinner parties with friends

…and now: Driving my kids to other children’s birthdays

 

Work

My brief stint as a night porter in Scotland

Teens: Below minimum wage at a fruit shop

Twenties: Minimum wage Security Guard

Thirties: Decently paid Departmental Employee

…and now: I clean my wife’s house

 

Travel

I miss you Rome!

Teens: Interstate trips to theme parks

Twenties: Backpacked around Europe

Thirties: Honeymoon to Vanuatu

…and now: To the shops and back

 

Video Games

How the times have changed

Teens: Street Fighter II on the Super Nintendo

Twenties: Halo on the Xbox

Thirties: Fall of Cybertron on the PS3

…and now: Hoping for a nap while my son plays the PS4

 

Women

Fictitious women love me!

Teens: I made my girlfriends laugh

Twenties: I made the ladies swoon

Thirties: I made my wife smile

…and now: I make my daughters bed

 

It first really sunk in I was getting older about 3 years ago.  Back in my twenties, when I had a gleam in my eye, an ever-present bulge in my trousers and a six-pack under my shirt, I used to get my hair elaborately done at the hairdressers at least every six weeks.  I used to really enjoy it too; I always had two or three of the young women on staff hanging about while I made them laugh and unashamedly flirted.  Used to walk out looking great, feeling great and more often than not having charmed my way into getting a nice big discount.

Three years ago I was getting my tips done blond when the hairdresser said ‘Oh it’s so great when men your age get this done – my step-father gets his done and it really helps hide the grey’.

‘No really, its my natural hair colour’

The look of horror on my face said it all as I had been unaware that I had any grey hairs!  Also, this girl was comparing me to her father figure?!  Yep – if I had dusted off my old flirt-circuits she would have no doubt classified me as an old creep and locked the door as I left – no discounts for old fart Trev.

 

So are there any upsides to getting this old?  The main three I can think of are that you are less of a dickhead, less inclined to tolerate bullshit and are more self-reliant.  These days I actually think before I open my mouth to say whatever random thought passes through this oddly-wired brain of mine, and getting naked in public is truly a thing of the past.  I won’t cop shit or tolerate bullshit – I quit a job because of something that happened to me and I knew that if I continued to work there my self-respect wouldn’t allow me to look in the mirror anymore – that was a very depressing time for me.  As for self-reliance, it may have taken me decades longer than some males but now I only call a tradie as a last resort.  I always try to build it or fix it myself and if I can’t then I watch how the tradie does it so I can do it myself from that point on.

 

So today for the first time I look in the mirror and a forty year old man looks back at me.  It’s been a helluva ride.  I’ve traveled the world and learned how to order a beer in a dozen languages.  I’ve had a Uni Radio Show, appeared on Television, Sworn on the Big Screen and done Stand-Up Comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.  I’ve been painfully thin then fat then buff then… kinda flowing.  I’ve lived in Melbourne and London and even returned to the Mallee for a while. I’ve lost my parents but had children of my own.   I’ve become the sum of my experiences…. which somehow has turned me into a Blog Writing, Hobby Farming, Househusband and Father who spends his days looking after his kids and propagating plants.  Doesn’t sound much but really when you think about it, having a loving wife, beautiful son & daughter, a big house in the hills (even if it’s not mine) and only working for others when I feel like it – I may have not become the megastar I thought I would but I could have done a lot worse that’s for sure.

 

So what pearls of wisdom have I learned that can prepare others for turning the big Four Oh?  Well… none.  Nada, Zip, Zippo.  It’s going to affect each one of you differently.  I can’t say it feels any different to being 39 and to be honest in my head I’m still 25.  All I can say is that yes, the concept of turning forty sucks…

…but it’s better than the alternative 😉

 

Are you about to turn forty or already have?  Would love to commiserate with you in the comments section below!

 

Retraction: I have been contacted and instructed to remove certain opinions from this blog.  Due to my leaving the comments in question so vague (no names, places, dates, any specifics at all) it has lead to someone mistakenly believing the comments referred to them.  Therefore to avoid continued accidental offense the instructions received have been followed; the opinions are officially and publicly retracted and have been permanently removed from this site.  bigangrytrev.com apologizes for any misunderstanding regarding this matter. 

Tales of the Trev, Transformatorium

Meet & Greet at the Collectormania Fair

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You know, it’s not all gravy being Big Angry Trev.  I know what perceptions that a lot of the public hold of me; that I eat imported lobsters off plates of gold, served up by nubile & busty fangirls who pay for the privilege of catering to the every whim of their idol.

But no, sometimes it’s damn hard work.  Especially when your online fandom want a real life public appearance.  On this site, of course I am known to you all as Big Angry Trev, purveyor of whimsy and wisdom.  Then to the Transformers community I am known as Big Transformer Trev, collector extraordinaire and Ozformer of the Year.  It’s an honor to be venerated by ones peers on the world wide web but sometimes you have to give a little something back.  You need to show up, shake a few babies, kiss a few hands and generally let people feel the warm glow of bathing in the light of your reflected glory.

 

To this end, I made a public appearance at the Collectormania Toy & Hobby Fair in Penrith.

 

It’s a bugger of a drive, I can tell ya that!  Espeically on a rainy Sunday morning.  The Blue Mountains seem to consist of constantly changing speed limits enforced by a plethora of speed cameras and cop cars just waiting for you to miss a single sign.  Combine that with half the time you are driving on the edge of a precipice and it does not make for a relaxing country jaunt.

When I finally reached my destination I was greeted at the door by Shannon, one of the main pillars of my Ozformer of the Year campaign and a stalwart supporter.  Like many celebrities I have let many of my basic social and survival skills whither so Shannon was to be my guide to the toy fair as well as a buffer between me and the general public.

Big enough to hold back the adoring hordes

Not long after entering I was quickly accosted by one of my long time fans Adam.  Adam has been a bit of a Fanboy of mine for 20 years, even back at the start when I was doing movies and television for a living.  Adam had his usual reaction to seeing me – a girlish squeal of delight and the development of a mild erection. Given the regularity I illicit these reactions from my fans I was able to still smile and give him a hug, albeit from the side rather than the front.

“Yes yes, I am your sexy god. I get that a lot”

Shannon then gave me the tour of the Fair.  This was my first toyfair and I found that they are significantly different to pop culture expos.  No cosplay for a start.  No huge displays either.  And there were very few women to be seen.  I think I saw less than a dozen the whole morning and those that I did see might as well have had ‘wife’ or ‘daughter’ stamped on their foreheads.

It was very hot in there too.  I had to lose my trademark black jacket after 20 minutes, lest I start to perspire and smell like a lot of my fellow fair attendees.  There was a definite essence in the air that suggested many of these guys were leaving their parents basements for the first time in a long while and bathing beforehand had no occurred to them.

It seemed like most of the stalls at the Fair stocked one of two things – either Pop! figures or Matchbox cars.  Neither are really my cup of tea but I was able to find at least one I liked.

And of course, courtesy of my trusty guide Shannon, I was able to locate Transformers.  I’ve never been a 3rd Party collector, considering how many official toys there are to collect, but I will say that a 3P Bruticus I came across was a thing of beauty to behold and it took a force of will to walk away.

However I was rewarded with some G2 goodness!  G2 Optimus AND G2 Megatron!  Shannon was even able to haggle me a better deal on the Optimus.  Given how much one pays online for toys like these, I was starting to see the Toy Fair’s appeal.

As Shannon showed me around I got to meet many of my fans from both the blogging world and the Transformers community.  I got to meet Cranky – who was surprisingly cheerful – and Carlo and Dallas who couldn’t wipe the smiles from their dials.  Also Hursty who has a Soundwave collection that surpasses even my own! Then came Brendan, the self-styled ‘Angel of Death’ who used his dark powers to lure me out to the carpark where… ehem… some shady deals were made (yes I lost LG43 Trypticon but I came home with some G1 goodies to replace him).

The Carlo Kid
Trev: “So whats your favorite thing about meeting me so far?”
Dallas: “Well, we met 2 seconds ago so I’d say ‘this moment right now'”
‘Shannon 2’ as my tour guide most unfairly referred to him.
Fan sandwich

Soon it was time for refreshment.  Meat and beer were highly sought after so I took a cadre of my more presentable fans and we ‘did lunch’.  When Dallas turned up with some dark beer it earned him a place of honor next to yours truly, much to the admiration and jealousy of his peers.

Liquid social lubricant

 

And that was it.  Quite the experience.  Again, this kind of thing is expected of one from time to time, but I will say that the lads I got to spend time with and the rare toys I walked away with made the trip well worth while.  I hope next time I have to do Big Angry Trev – Blogger, or Big Transformer Trev – Ozformer of the Year appearances I get to meet such great guys again.

 

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Ozformer Member of the Year Acceptance Speech

The Big Push for the Decagon

Random Rants, Tales of the Trev, Transformatorium

Househusband Tales #4 – Judgement Day

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Dear Checkout-Lady from Woolworths,

I just wanted to write you a quick note, apologizing for the fact that the way I live my life doesn’t seem to meet with your approval.  Maybe I should have explained myself properly at the time, but let me make it up to you by doing so now.

When I came through your checkout, it was during the last part of a very long day.  My family lives on a farm a good 40 minutes from the nearest town we can do a decent shop in – your town.  So when I take my kids there, it usually means we do a BIG shop so as to not have to return soon.  We had already spent the day suckling at the big-business teat and engaging in crass commercialism – having visited Bunnings for plants, Harvey Norman for electronics, Aldi for the first lot of groceries, Big W for toys and Subway for lunch with their mother who works in your town.  Our energy was low and our finances were lower by the time we got to the checkout of your store for the second lot of consumables.

So no, I didn’t have the energy to give a detailed answer when you said to me “So, you are the babysitter today huh?”  I must admit, it never occurred to me looking after my own children was babysitting, I just thought it was being their dad.  But anyway, my answer of “No, I’m the househusband” seemed to upset you.  I guess you expected that a decently dressed male looking after two kids mid-afternoon was just experiencing an aberration to his usual routine. You must have thought that it was a one off and that the next day I would be back pouring cement or desexing camels or some other manly career.  The idea that I look after my kids (no – it’s not babysitting) every day didn’t resonate with your idea of the world.

And then a few minutes later the second unpleasant surprise for you occurred.  You put through a little Transformer toy – a $5 Autobot from the latest movie to come out – and went to hand it to my 4 year old son with a smile and a “Here you go”.  He took it, looked at it, then handed it back to you and said “No that’s for my dad”.  The look you gave me said it all as you took the toy back and bagged it with our groceries.  Not only did this guy you were dealing with not have a job, but he was buying children’s toys for himself?!  Freak alert, freak alert!  No wonder you didn’t make eye contact with me or speak again for the remainder of our transaction.

So yeah, I had better explain myself.

“Please yer Honor, I’m not a bad guy! Just a victim of circumstance!”

 

I worked for a department for SIXTEEN YEARS lady!  Sixteen years of damn hard slog!   And for nearly the past 5 years my wife had looked after both our home and our two children she gave birth to during that time.  She wanted to resume her career and I needed a break from mine so we moved states and swapped roles.  Now I’m the one looking after our home and children while she goes to work – is that OK with you?  I also look after our 120 acre farm and animals if that makes it more socially acceptable. Oh, and I’m self-teaching propagation so hopefully one day both my wife and I can make a living out of it and set up our own plant nursery.   Perhaps in your eyes I should be content with saying into a microphone “Clean up in isle 3”. 

Not an appropriate vocation for men it seems

Why is it that, even in the 21st century,  a woman is applauded for taking on a career yet a man is still treated like a leech if he takes on the role of homemaker? Could you explain that to me Ms Checkout Lady?  Since I’m such an unemployed bum I obviously have the time to listen.

 

As for buying that little $5 Transformer, well yeah, you’ve got me there.  It was for me.  However before we came to your store we had been to a different one where my son had gotten a $20 Transformer and my daughter a $20 My Little Pony.  I’d also bought a relatively expensive thermos for my wife ($45 but it was in her favorite colour which makes it OK) so that I can make her soups to take to work for her lunch. So no, I wasn’t splashing out on myself while the rest of my family did without.  And guess what?  I’ve got THOUSANDS of Transformers at home!  That’s right – literally thousands!  Been collecting them since I was seven years old and I intend to open a museum one day!  So if I restrained myself to buying a little $5 one then for me that is pretty damn good.  And the toy says 6+.  Well I don’t know how good your maths is since you just scan everything, but 39 is definitely on the plus side of 6!

‘Oh Drift, you’ve caused more trouble for me than you ever did the Decepticons’

Why the severe judgment for what I spent that piddly amount of money on anyway?  I wasn’t buying myself booze or smokes. I wasn’t buying myself chocolate or sweets or junk food. I wasn’t betting it on a horse or sticking it in a pokies slot.  I wasn’t earmarking the money to buy weed or pills or get a blowjob in some dingy back alley.  I was buying a little toy.  Out of all the things I could be spending money on – a teeny action figure should rate pretty low on the objectionable scale.

 

So I’m sorry Ms Checkout-Lady from Woolworths (I won’t call you a ‘checkout chick’ since it’s mildly sexist and you looked way too old to refer to as a chick anyway) that my lifestyle choices offend you.  I’m sorry you found the way I go about my existence unsettling to the point you wouldn’t speak or make eye contact with me.  But you know what – I LIKE my life!  I like looking after my kids.  I like tending to my farm.  I like making meals for my wife.  And yeah, you better bloody believe I like Transformers!  And none of this is going to change any time soon.

So if the way I live still offends you, then next time don’t try and make small talk.  Just shut your damn mouth and bag my f*cking groceries.

 

‘Woolworths, the Judgy people, with fresh judgement’s on you’

Got something to say about the above?  Would love to read it in the comments section below!

 

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Househusband Tales #1 – Pampering Poorly Perfected

Househusband Tales #2 – Bathrooms are Bull$hIt!

Househusband Tales #3 – The Library Playgroup

 

Tales of the Trev

Househusband Tales #3 – The Library Playgroup

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Before we moved, both our children went to daycare two days a week which guaranteed chances to socialize with other kids their age.  Since coming to the mountains my son has started Preschool, but with me being a househusband it makes no sense to pay to put our 2 year old daughter in daycare so she stays at home with me.

 

I worried that she was no longer getting to socialize with other kids in her age bracket (she is 2 ½) so was heartened to hear there was a Storytime Playgroup at the local library.  I’m a big library nut and our kids love reading and being read to.  In fact, we have a policy in our house – unless what we are currently doing is super important, if one of our kids brings us a book and asks to be read to, we down tools and read to them there and then.  A love of literacy – every parent should encourage this in their kids.

What story time should look like

 

So after dropping my son at Preschool, I took my daughter up to the Storytime Playgroup at the library which was due to start at 10am.  I was initially heartened to see I was not the only male there, there was at least one other bloke there who has come along with his wife and two boys.  But that was where the good impressions ended.

 

I thought that the sign said ‘Storytime Playgroup’, not f*cking ‘Bogan Junk Food Picnic!’

 

Let me give ya a rundown of the 4 other families there.

Group 1: The Chubbies

Mr & Mrs ‘Yes we will have fries with that’.  Both of them looking comical sitting on little kids chairs which their massive arses spread over the edges of like spilled pancake batter.  Their 2 bulbous boys were given pack after pack of Chocolate Tiny Teddies, I’m not sure their mastication ever stopped!

 

Group 2: The Lone Texter

Did this woman even have a kid?  I don’t know, I assume one of the ones running around unfettered was hers.  I never saw her take her eyes off her phone.  She just sat on her prolific posterior on the floor, leaning her back against a bookshelf (I think sitting up would have been too much exercise for her) staring at her phone, alternating between texting and checking social media. I’m guessing literacy is a closed book to her.

 

Group 3: The Mongoloids

This woman had three kids with her, guessing their ages ranged between 30 and 48 months.  However all 3 still had dummies in their mouths and I’m guessing they won’t be weaned off them any time soon.  She also had them on tethers – you know those awful backpack things with a long rope attached so kids won’t run away in crowds?  She had these on all her kids and whenever one got a bit far away she would angrily snap some verbal instruction and then physically snap on the cord even harder, bringing the kid backwards towards her to land on their arse and cry throughout the next story.

 

Group 4: The Brits

Now here was the only other parent present who was of normal human proportions.  But given what she was feeding her kids frankly this was a surprise.  This Pommie lady, as soon as she sat with her three kids, brought out a multipack bag of Cheetos Cheese & Bacon Balls.  She then dispensed the smaller packs within to her 3 kids, the youngest of which could not have been more than 18 months old.

Apparently a part of any toddlers nutritious breakfast

 

So by the time the librarian came out and started to read, all the kids were either that busy eating absolute shit that they couldn’t hear her over their own chewing, or they were literally reaching the end of their tether and then crying their pudgy little arses off!

 

What the f*ck was going on!?!

 

Now don’t get me wrong, I give my kids treats now and then.  Today for instance it’s been a hot sunny day so I took them to the park for an hour, then on the way home we all got ice creams.  But that kind of sugary snack is a treat, not the norm.  I’m proud to say the amount of sugary treats my kids get each week you could count on one hand. If they want a snack at home, fruit is what is always on offer, with the occasional seaweed cracker.  Banana’s, strawberries, pears, apples, mandarins, oranges – this is what my kids have for a snack.

 

And since when did it become OK to eat in a library anyway?  Last I checked when you go into a library you put your phone on silent and leave all food and drinks in your bag.  You don’t treat it like you are at a AC/DC concert and chow down on crappy junk food while you watch the show!

A good rule – FOLLOW IT!

I hadn’t brought any snacks for my daughter and she was staring at all the other kids food.  The British lady with the facial piercings offered us one of her little multipacks and I politely declined.  As nice a gesture as it was, I was still mentally indulging in some extreme judgment of her and it would have made me a complete hypocrite to accept, even if it would have made my daughter happy.

 

So yeah, stories got read but hardly anyone heard them or paid attention.  A little craft exercise was done which ran more smoothly, though I noted most parents doing all the work for their kids while the children idly watched, rather than coactively helping their kids do it for themselves.  Then Playgroup was finished.

I left there with a bit of a heavy heart.  Given our remote location the only other playgroups for little kids are run by the local churches and my skin starts to burn and smoke whenever I step on consecrated ground.  So that means I am going to have to go back as I can’t let my own judgmental attitude stop my daughter having this bi-weekly activity.

But by f*ck – if I had my way I’d be telling all these cattle to do their f*cking grazing at home!

 

Got something to add?  Would love to read it in the comments section below!

 

Related Articles:

Househusband Tales #1 – Pampering Poorly Perfected

Househusband Tales #2 – Bathrooms are Bull$hIt!

Random Rants, Tales of the Trev

Househusband Tales #2 – Bathrooms are Bull$hIt!

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There are certain laws of the universe that one considers immutable – one of the main ones I have always had no reason to doubt is cause and effect.  If you do A, then it will cause B to happen.  If you throw a ball in the air, it will come down again. If you stick your hand in the fire, it will be burned.

So if you have a room in which you use nothing but cleaning products, then ergo that room should be nothing but clean!

Seriously, why the f*ck are bathrooms exempt from the rules of cause and effect?!  I’ve tidied plenty of bathrooms plenty of times but before today, in my new role as househusband, I’d never cleaned one before.  Oh sure it looks clean enough, but when you get up close the friggin things are filthy!

‘Soap SCUM?! Since when is soap scummy? It doesn’t conduct phone scams does it?’

 

Why are they filthy?  HOW are they filthy?! I took a look at all the products we have in our bathroom:

SCENTED SOAP

     FOAMING CLENSER

ANTISEPTIC LISTERINE

     FACIAL SCRUB

BODY WASH

Look at all the words contained within!  Those are words associated with cleaning.  It should be the cleanest damn room in the house!

And the bath!  How can the bath be filthy?!  You fill it full of hot soapy water and then drain that straight down a damn plughole! I come out cleaner after being in the bath, the kids come out cleaner after being in the bath – why doesn’t the bath come out cleaner from being within itself?!

It’s bloody madness is what it is!  I spent over an hour cleaning the bathroom today and I still have the floor to mop!

 

Well, enough of that – I’m not going to be suckered twice!  From now on I’m hosing the kids off in the yard, the wife can shower at work and as for me, well I’ll just stand downwind of people as a courtesy.  Because a world where soap makes things dirtier just doesn’t make sense to me – it seems to be a joke played by a capricious universe that just wants to f*ck with my househusband brain.

 

Go to hell Bathroom – you porcelain-toting bastard you!

 

Have you encountered this freak of household nature yourself?  Tell us about it in the comments section below!

 

Related Articles:

Househusband Tales #1 – Pampering Poorly Perfected 

Tales of the Trev

Househusband Tales #1 – Pampering Poorly Perfected

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After 16 years of being a department employee, Big Angry Trev has retired to his country estate up in the mountains to embark on a career of plant propagation.  Only one problem with that…

… his wife has gone back to work full time which means he needs to care for the house as well as their two small children.

This is the first of many tales about his new career as a househusband.

 

Treat others the way you would like to be treated.

An axiom to live by, one I have tried to embody but by no means have ever been its poster child.

With the wife going back to work its put me in the new position as househusband, a relatively unfamiliar role.  Being a bit lost at sea I thought perhaps I should go with “what I used to wish my wife would do for me when I was the breadwinner” and go from there.

 

I remember what I always wanted.  It consisted of:

  • Bacon, eggs & coffee in the morning
  • A packed lunch
  • A big dinner waiting with a cold beer for when I get home
  • A bit of peace
  • A shag

If I remember correctly, sometimes I used to get a coffee.

 

Now my wife’s proclivities are not quite the same as mine but I thought the ‘do unto others’ angle worth perusing.  To this end in the first week I did the following:

In the mornings

  • I made my wife a cup of coffee just the way she likes it.
  • I packed her lunch for her which changed daily but always included:

– Two types of fruit

– A variety of biscuits

– A drink such as a can of cola or a flavored breakfast milk

– A sandwich that always contained at least one form of dairy, meat and/or egg

 

– Occasionally a thermos of soup

  • I then made the children’s breakfast and generally kept them out of her hair as she prepared for the day.  Then it was kisses goodbye and well-wishes for the day ahead as she drove off.

 

In the evenings

  • Dinner was always on cooking when she arrived home, and always a recipe I knew she enjoyed.
  • A glass of chilled wine was held in my outstretched hand.
  • The children awaited her – clean, fresh faced and eager to tell her about their days activities. Sometimes they held flowers we had picked for her that day.
  • After dinner I would whisk the kids off to bathe whilst she watched her evening shows.
  • When the children went to sleep I had my ‘bedroom eyes’ on and something sexy underneath my dressing gown in case she needed some ‘stress relief’ from her hard day.

 

Omelette made from organic, free range duck eggs- Mr Perfection over here!

Of course, that was me in the first week of being a househusband.  So far in the second week:

  • She got a glass of half-flat wine on Monday, and only then because there was some leftover from a bottle on the weekend.
  • Tuesday the kids and I slept in so she had to make her own damn lunch.
  • Wednesday the kids were filthy because they had been traipsing around the farm with me while I fixed a pump at the creek and we ate red meat because that’s what I wanted.
  • No hot dinner at all waiting Thursday as I needed her to bring home groceries to make it.
  • Today on Friday the sexy underwear got put back in the bottom draw, since it seems to have caused more bemusement than arousal over the last fortnight
Big Angry Trev’s version of ‘subtly seductive’

 

So the first lesson I have learned as a Househusband is:

“It’s easy to start with perfection, but impossible to maintain it”

 Hmmm… maybe this gig won’t be as easy as I first thought.

 

Got something to say?  Would love to read it in the comments section below!

 

Related Articles:

Househusband Tales #2 – Bathrooms are Bull$hIt!

Hobby Farming, Tales of the Trev

A letter of thanks to my former farm

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My dear former farm,

Though I have left you, I want to thank you for all you did for me over the past 6 years.

You taught me many things about caring for the land.  How to put back more than I took out.  The art of growing a tree in the right kind of dirt, the ways of composting and mulching to improve and protect the soil.  The planting of windbreaks, of nut trees, of fruit and vegetables for my family.

 

The necessity of you made me do something that my family had tried in vain to get me to do when I was a younger man – learn to properly use tools.  When you need to constantly build fences and animal enclosures, pirate ships and cubby houses, scarecrows and fire pits it forces you to finally learn how to use drills and circular saws and everything in between.  As for farm equipment, everything from the use of a humble shovel to mastering the subtleties of tractor usage became a daily activity.

 

You provided me the true experience of food.  Just how incredible so many things taste when they are straight out of your garden and grown by your own hand, rather  than having been grown on another continent and then shipped thousands of miles, put in cold storage, handled by dozens of people etc etc.  I never knew just how intense simple things like watermelon or mandarins could taste when it’s so fresh and been grown right!

 

You brought back to me the pride of properly caring for livestock.  To see the ducks growing, the chooks laying and the goats frolicking in their field in their thick winter coats – all given plenty of food, water, space and shelter to keep them at the peak of happiness and health!

 

You reminded me of simple pleasures that I had forgotten from living in the big city for so long.  Things like there is a night sky absolutely full of stars, the joy of swimming in a dam on a hot day or climbing a tall gum tree, the relaxed freedom of rambling around a paddock in a clapped-out ute.

 

You were the first farm that was truly mine.  When standing upon your ground everything felt right, I felt truly at home.  I felt a connection to the land that fellow farmers and country folk can relate to but rarely speak of, something almost spiritual.  Something sadly that your average gardener of city-dweller can never truly understand.  Just like someone cannot truly grasp the feeling of parenthood until they become one, nobody cannot truly grasp what it feels like to stand on the ground of your own farm, feeling the earth beneath your boots and surveying how you have shaped and changed and molded the land around you for the better.

Thank you for everything you taught me and gave me.  And most importantly thank you for giving my two children a safe place to spend their first few years of life – no matter how far away we may go there will always be some Mallee dust in their veins.

 

It broke my heart to leave you, but I know we leave each other better than we found one another and I never forget the life lessons you taught me.  You will always have my thanks and my love.

Tales of the Trev

How I learned to challenge my own preconceptions

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As a young man, I thought it was a sign of strength of character to stick to your guns.  That if you held an idea about something, you stuck to that idea and you didn’t let anyone mess with it.  You fought them tooth and nail and showed them that you were right and they were wrong.

Only one danger to that – what if you are the one that is actually wrong?

This is a short story about how I held a strong perception about a certain group of people and it took one experience to show me that my opinion was total bollocks.  And that group of people are hippies.

 

That’s right, hippies.  And I figured I had them down pat.  Long haired, pot smoking yahoos that never did a day of work in their lives.  Smelly, filthy people putting more faith in a healing crystal than an aspirin and would lecture you about how you should eat nothing but lentils.  Tree hugging nudies who deserved a good kick in their chakras.

I was 24 and living with a couple in Yarraville.  Good friends who when they heard my first marriage was breaking up turned up with a moving truck and said “We are getting you out of here”.  I’d been living with them for several months and was healing nicely from being used as an emotional punching bag for so long.  With New Years coming up, they were going to Confest and wanted me to come along.  Confest is best described as a hippy festival that takes place twice a year along a piece of river bank in the bush in southern NSW.

Did I wanna go?  Hells no!  If I went to the bush it was to do proper camping, catch some fish and maybe shoot a few rabbits.  I wasn’t going to no damn hippy festival and see blokes walking about with their tackle out!  I especially wasn’t going to go when they told me there was no meat allowed – bugger that!

But my friends wore me down and I ended up going along.  I made ‘filthy hippy’ jokes the whole way to the point my mate Michael was asking me to give it a rest, and I had a big store of dried beef jerky (the proper stuff from a butcher at VIC Market, not that rubbery crap you get at a servo)  hidden in my bag.

When we got there I was very non-plussed.  Taking tickets on the gate were indeed two naked people, a man and woman in their late 40’s if I was any judge.  As we parked and lugged our tents to find a spot, I was even less enthused when I saw the ‘workshops schedule board’ and saw there was actual tree hugging on it!  As we walked past there was indeed people there embracing trees with their eyes closed.  Oh gawd, I thought, I’m stuck here for a week with these friggin lunatics!  This is gonna suck!

We found a spot and set our tents up, me grumbling to myself the whole time.  I was an alpha-male stuck with a bunch of fruitloops in the middle of bloody nowhere.  I figured since I was stuck, I might as well make the best of it and went for an explore.

Over the afternoon some things started to confuse me.  There were naked people yes but plenty of clothed people too.  You could smell pot coming from the odd tent but certainly not all.  People were openly friendly without trying to convert me to crystal worship or lecturing me on the evils of a good steak.  I was very taken aback when I stumbled across a cricket game in progress which I quickly joined and even managed to take a catch or two.

 

What was going on?  Where was all the self-righteous condemnation for me not being one of them?  Besides being perhaps a bit more openly friendly that is usual, these all seemed like normal people, that couldn’t be right!

 

Well guess what – it WAS right.  It was right and I had been wrong.  I had a brilliant time over the following week!  People were really friendly, no one was in your face about anything, there were no people drunk out of their brains or off their heads on hard drugs.  I had lots of great conversations with people who turned out to be very intelligent and well informed and seemed to have made their own minds up about issues rather than simply subscribing to some ‘hippy dogma’.  Yes there was no meat allowed but I think people probably just pretended they couldn’t smell dried beef on my breath.

The Swan-Sarong Song

A few days in and I had had a go at a lot of interesting stuff I had not considered trying before.  I wandered round in a sarong, very comfortable in the heat.  Hell, on occasion I just disrobed and went for a walk in the nude which I found to be quite liberating!  I went to a few workshops (though not the tree hugging one) and learned about yoga and crafts and all kinds of stuff.  I learned to fire-twirl and developed a real taste for properly brewed chai tea.  All these things I would never have tried if I had stuck to my guns, dismissing them out of hand and therefore never enjoyed experiencing.  Come New Years night I danced hard into the wee hours of the morning, covered in sweat and body paint as a dozen guys smashed out a bestial rhythm on their bongo drums – it was primal and it was bloody fantastic!

“It’s 5am, do you know where your hippies are?”

I left Confest on the 2nd on Jan, my mind reeling from the previous weeks experience.  I had been wrong all my life about hippies.  Oh sure, there were plenty that did exist that fit my preconceptions but it turned out there were way more that didn’t.  And they all seemed to be onto such a good thing, it was probably one of the most chilled out weeks of my life.  Just a bunch of happy people being happy around other happy people and not bothering anyone else.  Instead of continuing to condemn them I had actually learned from them.  So if I was wrong about hippies, what else had I always believed that I could be wrong about?

I learned to examine my own opinions, looking for flaws in my own arguments.  I learned just because you believe something strongly, whether that be about a group of people in general or because it’s the popular thing to believe or it’s what your parents taught you was right, it doesn’t make you correct.  I’m not talking about abandoning your ideals, I’m talking about challenging yourself and making sure that if you believe something that you are right on the money, not simply believing it as that’s the comfortable thing to do.  Of course it can work both ways, while some people hold irrational prejudices, don’t believe something just because it’s a politically correct thing to believe either.  Find out the truth for yourself – good or bad.

 

This has served me well in all the years since.  I’ve learned to admit when I’m wrong.  I think it’s made me more intelligent, or at least better informed on issues as I’ve learned to examine something rather than letting someone else or popular opinion mold my own.  A lot of the time popular myths are wrong, for instance I went to France a couple of times and the people there were quite polite.  Besides one old street lady  no one was overtly rude and it turned out the French weren’t a bunch of sex obsessed, cheese eating surrender monkeys.  Back home I walked down the street one day in Broadmeadows and saw a big gang of Lebanese guys on the corner.  I nearly crossed the road then thought “Hang on – the only times I’ve been punched in my life was by other ‘Aussies’”.  So I continued walking and they couldn’t have cared less about me, let alone get violent or try to sell me drugs.  Preconceptions smashed.  I think the show A Current Affair might need to fact check things a bit more.

 

So challenge your own preconceptions, you might be surprised what you find out.  And as for the long-haired fruitloops at Confest…

… I went back the following New Years and met a very pretty one.  It’s now 14 years later and we are married, have 2 kids and organically grow all our own fruit, nuts and veg on our hobby farm in the countryside (they go well with meat).  God bless the hippies!

Big Hippy Trev (my god I was fit back then!)

Got a similar story?  Would love to read it in the comments section below!

*Please Note: I have subsequently been informed by Ms Emily Taylor that meat is indeed now allowed at Confest except in some of the communal kitchens – thanks for the update!

Tales of the Trev

Why Footrot Flats meant so much to me

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Today I shed a tear for a man I had never met.

 

I woke up this morning to see on social media that Murray Ball had passed away.  A minor celebrity that Gen Y or anyone outside New Zealand or Australia has probably never heard of.  He was a Kiwi Cartoonist who had written a few books but was most famous for being the creator, artist and writer of Footrot Flats, a newspaper comic strip that ran for a few decades and inspired an animated movie.

Murray Ball and The Dog

So why did this cartoonist whom I never met mean so much to me?

Growing up on a farm in Australia there was not a lot of media one could relate to.  We only had two TV channels and I had no concept of Cable TV, let alone the internet that would come along decades later.  Everything on TV was from America or the UK, the exceptions seeming to be the news and soapies – neither of much interest to a young boy.

But there was Footrot Flats.

Whenever Mum would buy the paper, when she had finished with it I would grab it to read the comics section and my first port of call was the Footrot Flats strip.  Here was something I could relate to.  There was shearing and herding cows and sheep. There were magpies and pigs and feral cats.  There was marking lambs, making sure the sow didn’t eat her young, dealing with droughts and cutting hay.  It didn’t matter it was set in New Zealand and not here in Australia, it was still my world.

And it was funny!

Footrot Flats was laugh out loud funny!  It didn’t rely on the same joke every strip (yes Garfield we get it – you like lasagna and don’t like Mondays) and after the first few years the strips became stories that actually progressed.   Through a series of 6 to 8 strips you would find out how The Dog (the only name the main character ever received, except for the one given by Aunt Dolly we were never told) was dealing with the latest rivalry with the Murphy Dogs, or trying to get to Jess when she was in heat, or was observing Rangi going through the first crushes of puberty.  That was the other beautiful thing of Footrot Flats, the characters grew.  Pongo grew from a screaming kid always trying to push The Dog around in her pram to an outspoken feminist teenager dealing with what she perceived to be a misogynist society and her burgeoning bisexuality (she had a major crush on Cooch’s Cousin Kathy we never saw the face of). Wal and Cheeky Hobson (whom I blame for my lifelong penchant for comically large breasts) went from dating to being engaged to eventually breaking up when she left Wal for the male stripper at her hens night.  The characters grew and changed and evolved over time, both in the way they acted and the way they were visually represented.  As I myself grew from a kid to a teenager to an adult these characters grew with me and they seemed a reassuring constant in my life.  Then there was The Dog.

The Dog.  The main protagonist of the series whom we saw the majority of life in Footrot Flats through the eyes of.  An intelligent and thoughtful character, who seemed to be beset on all sides by characters who were much tougher than he was that were likely to give him a good hiding if he looked in their direction.  Yep, to a kid who was always the smallest and skinniest boy in his year level at school and seemed to lack the aggression that all the other boys had an abundance of, he was a character I could relate to.  A character who would try to become friends with the tough PigDog Major and instead of receiving friendship would get beaten to a pulp.  For little Trev, between the ages of 8 and 16 that seemed to be my life in a nutshell.  Not only would The Dog make me laugh, but he gave me a character to identify with.

Even as I became a (reasonably) well adjusted adult who moved off to the big city and had plenty of friends and girlfriends, my love of Footrot Flats never waned.  It was a little bit of country life I could carry with me always.  I always checked the bookstores in case the newest compilation book had come out.  Footrot Flats was pretty prolific, there was always a new compilation book each year as well as the odd Weekender book.  When Murray Ball stopped writing Footroot Flats there was still the odd art book released and I bought the Footrot Flats movie the moment it came out on Blu Ray.  Ah the movie, it was absolutely brilliant!  Let me change that, it IS absolutely brilliant!  To this day, despite the fact I know they survive I still get a bit choked up when the other characters think The Dog, Horse and Jess are dead and I groove along as they surf back into life!  As for the song ‘Slice of Heaven’ – it’s hard to find a Gen X’er in this part of the world that doesn’t adore that song!  Truly timeless.

 

When Ball finished writing Footrot Flats he wrote some other books, funny yet heavy with social commentary and a huge dose of his distinctive comic art thrown in.  I have ‘The Flowering of Adam Budd’ and ‘The Sisterhood’ in my collection and every few years they get taken down for a read.  Ball was a funny, intelligent and perceptive writer who used both the written word and the visual medium to comment on society in a way that kept you turning the page.

But it was Footrot Flats that always remained dear to my heart.  It was a part of my childhood and a companion growing up.  My bookshelf boasts nearly every Footrot Flats book ever written, even the books about the movie.  So when I heard Ball had passed away this morning I felt an acute sense of loss, a man who had brought so much joy to my life, whom I had never met or had the chance to thank, had left this world.

 

So let me say it now: “Thank you Murray.  Thank you so much for meaning so much to me for so long.  I wish I had taken the time to track you down to at least write an email to say what a wonderful creation you had brought into the world.  You may always remain a legend in New Zealand, but there is also one little Aussie boy, now a man, who will never forget you”.

 

Did you used to read Footrot Flats or any other of Balls work?  Or have something to say about his passing?  Would love to read it in the comments section below.

Tales of the Trev

My immortal words on the Big Screen!

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Back in the days when I still held hopes and dreams of being a brilliant actor – adored by the masses and mobbed by beautiful women wherever I went, I mainly scored the highly glamorous  work of being an extra on different TV shows.  Name a bad Melbourne-made Aussie cop show from the 90’s and chances are if you watch a few episodes carefully enough you will eventually spot me milling around in the background.

I did however appear in three movies.  One was ‘made for TV’ (On the Beach) and two went to cinema.  In one I was just an extra (The Road to Nhill) but in the other I auditioned and actually scored a speaking role!  This is the tale of how I ended up there and the immortal words I got to utter on the big screen.

There is zero chance you have seen this film…

The movie was Strange Fits of Passion, a very teenage-angsty flick.  It was being shot in 1998 for a 1999 release.  Quite a lot of the people I was doing Drama with at La Trobe Uni auditioned for different parts but if memory serves I was the only one who achieved success.  Yes I got picked but I’m not sure, given the role I auditioned for, that this was a compliment.

I auditioned at some studios in St Kilda along with probably a dozen other guys.  When I went in they had a camera set up to film me and asked me to riff some ‘sexist abuse a yobbo would yell at a girl’.  Now, being a country boy while at the same time dating a woman whom I secretly loathed, I had me a plethora of inspiration to work with.  I looked down the camera and let fly with the kind of gutter talk that had never before or since passed my lips!

I was thanked for my time and told they would be making a decision in the next 10 days.  However 40 minutes later as I was driving home my mobile rang – it was my agent calling:

 

“Trev, we don’t know what you did in there but they said you are perfect for the role.  You got it!  They shoot in two weeks”.  I was officially Hoon No. #2

 

A fortnight later we are shooting on Little Flinders street in the city.  The police had the road closed off and were redirecting traffic.  I sat there in my flannel top and footy scarf in my actors chair awaiting my scene as the stunt driver pulled up in a two door car.  I got told to sit in the back  and to then lean up and over the driver’s seat so that from the waist up I was hanging out the window.

We did about a dozen takes, each time doing a blockie to come back and shoot again.  It was very cool to be doing 70kph in a 40kph zone whilst hanging out the window  from the waist up, all in front of police who not only did not stop me but blocked traffic so I could do so!

 

So here we are, the scene and my immortal lines:

The heroine of the movie is at her lowest ebb.  There is a fine mist of rain.  She walks down Little Flinders street in Melbourne with her head hung low.  As she passes a construction zone where someone has spray painted “Kill yourself – it’s cheaper” she looks up to see the man she craves silhouetted at the end of the alley.  As she starts towards him a car slowly drives by which distracts her.  There is a handsome yobbo hanging out the window who yells at her:

“Show us ya pink bits baby!”

“Give us a headjob ya uptight slut!”

Then as the car continues down the alley he looks back and chants “Shows us ya tits!  Show us ya tits!”

She looks back down the alley but her dream man has gone.

 

I got paid $52 an hour for that gig (a lot of money for a struggling actor back in 98′) and got to watch myself say it on the big screen to boot!  I may have never become a star, but I will always have that warm memory from my short lived career.

 

Update:  My mate Kenan actually found this movie on youtube!  If you wanna hear the line and see a red beanie blurring by which is yours truly, you can find it here at the 32:20 mark!