Being Demi Moore: for twits, British gits or cool as hell?

Brace yourselves: it's confession time again.

Forgive me my sins today, for I have joined the fray.

Despite being buried deep in the Aussie bush, miles from the merest hint of a mobile phone signal, I have joined Twitter. Have you already noticed the little (mostly one-way) conversations I have been having in the sidebar? Scroll on down to "Riding the Twitter Critter" or as I like to call it:

Being Demi Moore.

Of course I should state categorically that I am NOT Demi Moore. I may be brunette, but I am not nearly as interesting or buff, nor do I really wish to emulate her frantic twitter-pated life... although I must say that I wholeheartedly applaud the 'younger man' thing. Heh.

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If you are up on the Twitter game, and more advanced in modern technology than I (let's face it, that would make you part of 95% of the world's human population!) you will already know that celeb couple Demi and Ashton Kutcher are 'hawt' professionals at the Twitter Game. The gossip mags hang on every strange staccato offering they tweet out into the world. And let's not forget that nasty bit of work, whatizname who went and dumped Jen again... and let the world know on Twitter. Nice. They post (what seems to be) to be the most inane twaddle, in cool code that most people over 30 couldn't possibly interpret to (I imagine) amuse themselves while waiting in lifts and after holding auditions, and generally mess with heads of the paparazzi in their vicinity. I don't have that tempting option as motivation for my own twitter twaddle (seeing as how my paparazzi followers are all closely related to me).

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I do kinda like the fact I can update those of you who bother check in on my silly little bush blog - providing snippets that I don't really want to write a whole post about - stuff like the weather, and the washing and providing riveting mental images like:

Watching 20 to 1 and catching up on emails - now singing Sweet Transvestite loudly at my computer. It's not pretty!

and

Clear skies and sprinkler off versus jeans on the line and clean car - weather prediction anyone??

Because nothing sucks people in like imagining a 40-something woman getting all 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' in the office, or being asked to be a weather forecaster... I feel the need to paint a picture for you, to really colour in any romantic outline you have of my life!

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And the excitement doesn't end there.

I can 'reply' to the people I am 'following', by clicking the arrow link after my friends' little pieces of witty repartee and starting my twitters with the '@' symbol... like this:

'@utahzen I KNOW... perhaps I need to wash the rotten thing more often! Lord knows we need the rain...'

or

'@thepioneerwoman you rode a horse?? You are pulling our legs!!'

...

That's right.

I can pretend that I am talking to famous people and fellow Twitterers like The Pioneer Woman and Dooce and John Cleese.

No, seriously. John Cleese!

My favourite Python of all, whose twitters I imagine being uttered with a marvellous clipped British accent. Possibly accompanied by a silly walk.

Of course Ree and Heather and John don't actually twitter me back (having 11, 843 and 325, 010 and 129,054 followers respectively to keep twittered up) but they might.

One day.

And that would really give me something to blog, wouldn't it?

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Cause Lord knows how I am going to keep my, er, 7 followers entertained otherwise...

So be brave and Twitter me back, my sweets.

Or not.

I'll still love ya!

In ridiculous-yet-heartfelt twitter-twaddle

@BB

(Your technologically challenged but game-for-anything bush blogger)

The tin trunk...

I have lived a pretty full life - heck, I am over forty years old, have lived in almost 30 different locations, been around the world, and had a pretty good career to boot. It makes it tricky sometimes when I decide to share something (other than the latest pics) because I think:

'Oh, if I mention that I will need to explain this, and by the time I get back to the point of the story, everyone will be snoring'

...and it all gets too complex, and big and I get a headache and just leave it.

And take another photo.

That's just the way I swing.

I distract easily.

...

But today I am going to start.

Not quite at the beginning, but at one of my earliest memories.

An extremely formative memory of an extremely formative day.

This memory is so much part of who I am that it kind of scares me.

Shall I begin?

...

Okay. I am four years old. My sister Jeanie is two.

Our little brother (the imminent Piglet) was just a few weeks from being born into our family. My uncle lived with us at the time - his name is Tex (nicknamed by my 12-years-older father, a label which stuck and stayed). Tex was in his teens at the time and a bit of a cowboy - in his 20s he would play fast and hard at pretty much anything: rodeo and utes mainly. But in his teens he was learning polocrosse. A sport for which he was born, and is in fact still playing at top level. (Do you see how I am getting side-tracked already! Hang on while I swing back on course!)

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Anyway, Tex had a tin trunk which housed his polocrosse paraphernalia - netted racquets, pitted soft white balls, knee pads with buckles, leather bits and pieces and colourful embroidered saddle blankets. Interesting stuff. Especially to two little girls, sent outside to play by their heavily pregnant, vacuuming Mother. Jeanie and I wandered in our quest for entertainment, down to the carport, some 15 metres from the house, to investigate this big, heavy treasure chest.

...

We had the loveliest time.

Ransacking the trunk, casting each item aside after thorough investigation, burying our little heads in it's cool recesses until the smooth floor of the chest was bare. And inviting. I cannot recall how the next game began. I suspect it was my idea (after all I was older and quite the little bossy-boots). I think Jeanie might have crawled in first, while I shut the lid over her, blanketing out the sun and giggling at her muffled protestations. I let her out. We giggled some more, feeling the slight hint of naughtiness of the game.

...

I climbed in next and asked her to do the same to me.

She shut the lid down heavy, then strained to lift it up, letting shafts of sunlight into my cool tin cave. Those shafts fascinated me, dancing beneath the lid, and we did it over.

Shut, lift, see Jeanie, shut lift.

Oh, can't you see it?

Climb in with me then...

See? Shut, lift.

Streaming light hitting our faces, delighting us both.

Beaming through the dust particles floating up from our tin plaything.

Shut, lift.

Shut.

Click.

Push, silence.

No light.

Push again.

Harder.

Darkness.

We giggled a little, that edge of naughtiness growing, niggling at our ribs.

We talked for a brief moment of being in a cave.

Then pushed again.

The tin lid stayed still and heavy over our heads.

No longer fanciful plaything, but dark, angry, unmoving.

And I remember the next bit very clearly.

Like it was 5 minutes ago instead of almost four decades. That moment when the edge of naughtiness morphed suddenly, enormously, into dread.

Heavy, suffocating, oppressive dread.

I tried hard to swallow it, and called out in a trembling voice.

To our mother, heavily pregnant and vacuuming, 20 metres and 20 million miles from our little tin prison. Silence.

We kicked, we pushed, we panted, we yelled.

We huddled quiet in the hot, sweating, waiting.

Then burst into frantic panic once more.

I have no idea how long we were there.

Ten minutes. Ten hours. Ten years.

Finally, the lid lifted and our mother's terrified blue eyes filled the white light space she had created. Something had made her stop the vacuum. Something had made her call and chase the silence to find her girls. Something had made her look in that still shut tin trunk surrounded my little mountains of polocrosse debris. And she hauled her two terrified, wet-with-sweat daughters from the trunk and hugged them hard.

...

I recall nothing more of this day.

Perhaps there was relief. And lecturing. I'm not sure.

But that moment when thrill-turns-to-dread? I live it daily.

Less here than in the city where impossibly tall buildings loom over me, or in crowded airports, or in lifts or office cubicles.

But it's with me always.

There was even the time some girls - in squealing fun - shut me in a cupboard at boarding school. I kicked the door clean off the cupboard.

And they never really looked at me the same again.

I have since learned to breathe and slow my heart rate and hide it from the outside world.

...

I hate it - I am a logical person and this bit of me is not logical.

It's crazy, and refuses to listen to that other part of me that reasons and calms.

I like reason and I like calm. I like healthy and clear and clean.

This is none of those things.

I would like to cut it out. But I cannot.

It's my darkness. My devil.

...

My name is Bush Babe.

And I am Claustrophobic.