The Long and Short of it - a poem about shorts

#SilkByEloise sexy-long-short, avail Jan 2024

The Long and Short of It - a poem about shorts

 Summer arrived calling for shorts

in the peony patch I caught sight of a sight

all droopy muslin cheesecloth to the knee

thighs in need of a detox wrap or a timely longer short

I trotted to Rebel Sports - it was Black Friday - I felt black

a too cheery woman in high viz greeted me at the door

welcome have a nice day you’re welcome sort of nothing

what country was I in? I soon found myself in synthetic women’s

apparel country, a mum with daughter fresh blossomed discussed

sports bras, if they’re bouncing they’re stretching I offered not

and chanced upon some relaxed-fit basketball knee-drop shorts

talk about activewear as a mutton chop, a shoulder roast

Waikato green with lemon strips, excellent pocket form though

secateur deep, a market gardener’s handy short for sure

 

at the counter, a red-faced man strode in, before he got the door-drill

he yelled across the shop floor  – do you sell fridges?

he may as well have asked for a turkey-sized air fryer

have you tried Briscoes offered door lady

sold out

The Warehouse, counter lady

sold out, head hung, eyes close to weeping blood

a car park backlit plaster cast Madonna

what kind of fridge was this man after

walk-in, display, beer, camping, titanium, E-bike capable

cold sculpting fat freezing             polka dot?

Abruptly he about turned before melting a chocolate Santa

blocking the doorway, Black Friday had turned black comedy

Noel Leeming mumbled Berlie Sports underwire

 

back home I ripped the tags off my long new shorts

now also available in black

 

 

Jane Bloomfield

Collection 2023/24

Let's Talk About SLEEP, Baby! & Calm App

 

In a desperate quest to get more zzz’ds every night, I recently downloaded Calm. App. It’s been a total gamechanger for this ol sleepless pillow princess. So while I’m on a sleep-buzzed high I’ve reviewed my favourite sleep stories for you.

Let’s start with Harry Styles’ - Dream With Me. Hazz stepped up to voice a story after a heavy-fan-flex requested it during our first introduction to Lockdowns, 500 years ago now. DWM is the most listened to story and crashed the site when it was first released.

I can almost guarantee that as soon as you get horizontal, shut your eyes, don your noise-canceling headphones, and flick on ‘Dream With Me’ you’ll be seeing Mr. Styles in a Gucci loin cloth flying about the Sistine chapel playing cupid with a heart-bow-and arrow. I was. But honestly, his voice, with a backing track of wet violins and wetter piano is so oozy it can only be described as sexy-whisper!

I’m proudly a late adopter of most of the tech whizzes of our world. Tik Tok wot? I’ve nary listened to a podcast, nor a talking book but if you haven’t tried listening to a sleep story when you’re all alone and wide awake in the middle of the night; let me convince you in one word why you need it. Harry.

I had to google, “why did harry styles narrate a sleep story”. To grab a quote from the sweet boy of rock and good god almighty up popped 471,000 results in .54 seconds! 

Harry said:

“SLEEP AND MEDITATION ARE A HUGE PART OF MY ROUTINE … FINDING A BALANCE HAS BEEN ENDLESSLY BENEFICIAL TO BOTH MY PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH. IT’S CHANGED MY LIFE! I’M SO HAPPY TO BE COLLABORATING WITH CALM AT A TIME WHEN THE WORLD NEEDS ALL THE HEALING IT CAN GET. TREAT PEOPLE WITH KINDNESS.”

Also, every lusty wench and her apartment-bound cavoodle had already written about him. It. 

The co-CEO of Calm states, “Harry’s mellifluous voice is the perfect tonic to calm a racing mind.” 

While Elle magazine reported, “Turns out Styles' sometimes rhyming, always rhythmic delivery is counterproductive to the REM cycle.” Elle also noted, “Harry is terrible at putting me to sleep”. 

No doubt because every single gal or guy searching for a Tinder date is gonna get quite carried away with Harry’s ‘you’ and ‘me’ narrative. It begins. 

“Hello I’m Harry Styles”

And tonight, I’m going to help you drift off to sleep

With some soothing words and calming music

A sleep story just for you!

With all the business of your day I know how hard it can be to get to sleep

So thank you for choosing this story and ME to help you

I wish you a wonderful night’s sleep

So make yourself comfortable take a deep breath in and then out

In and then out … and when you’re ready close your eyes”

Yeah baby they’re closed! I spent 50 bucks on an annual subscription and here I was instantly under the duvet with Harry Styles! He seems to lick his words at the end of every sentence.

“Tonight, we’re going to think about (sexy pause) anything you’d like. 😜

So first let’s visualize some scenes to see us through the night.

Settle back and clear your mind, where heading somewhere special

Beyond the world of consciousness to places more celestial.”

(watery music interlude)

I’d like you to imagine …”

 

Well, let’s not go there. He does hold your hand. And snuggle with you on a raft. There's even a log cabin with an open fire. I’m not going to let on about the bearskin rug. You will never tire of my #1 Harry but if he’s not your jam …

#2 Cillian Murphy’s gentle Irish brogue will lilt you in an imaginary locomotive across the verdant plains of leprechaun country in the aptly named ‘Crossing Ireland by Train’. Not that this travelogue, circumnavigating the Emerald Isles reads clackety clack. Cillian’s dulcet tones are more of a meditation, a literary lullaby. He points out the landscapes that inspired the enchanted world of Narnia in the C S Lewis classic and quotes Wilde, Beckett and Joyce. This is your thinking women’s bedtime story. A mattress masterclass of sorts through an enchanted green, green land. By the end, you won’t give Peaky Blinders a thought nor see that rude Thomas Shelby haircut again. All hale, Kill-ian. I’ve never been to Ireland. But I feel I want to now. This story can only be described as a polite invitation. 

#3 Matthew McConaughey pants his way like a lanky rhinestone cowboy through ‘Wonder’. To claim this is a “story about the mystery of the universe” is a bit of a push. With all these narrations, it’s all about the voice, not the content. While Matthew gets all hippy trippy about the infinite magnitude of the cose-mose, I find my subconscious drifts happily towards come-a-tose. There is probably a smirk on my face as I imagine Matthew chewing a piece of grass in his Wranglers beside the campfire. He’s just polished his cowboy boots, fed me beans with a spoon, and is reading to me as I lie exhausted after a day rustling wild horses on the range.

“Well, hello there I’m Matthew Mac-Con-nay-hay and tonight I’ll be reading a special sleep story called Wun-derrr. Before we begin, as you settle in under the covers with your head eeeeasing into the pillow and your body eeeeasing into the mattress I’d like you to let your mind drift with me…”

I should point out that it is a rare thing to find yourself awake on the conclusion of these readings. Like the child you once were, you will happily listen to them over and over. And never tire of their repetition.

#4 Idris Elba reads ‘Kingdom of the Sky’ a ‘trek across the mountains of Lesotho.’ If you know nothing about this “tiny jewell of a country, nestled in the breathtaking mountains of southern Africa” you might learn a few facts. However, alas, you will also find yourself seeing Idris (Idd-riss) as a middle school geography teacher, not the next James Bond. This is a wholesome Sunday night story of the geographical kind, for all ages.

If you’re not single or middle-aged, or for some strange reason you don’t feel comfortable nestling into your feather topper and deep breathing with a male movie star, there are alternatives.

I have enjoyed ‘Dr Doolittle’ with Stephen Lyons. Stephen’s lively yet calming voice is bound to make you feel like a contented child being read to by a loving grandparent while under a lavender-scented eiderdown.

Former Great British Bake Off judge, Dame Mary Berry reads ‘A Very Proper Tea Party’. This very proper story makes Jane Austen read like a bodice ripper. I’m still alarmed that the host made herself a pot of Darjeeling and enjoyed a cup in the window seat before her guest arrived. WTH? 

‘Sienna the Sleep Sloth’ with David Walliams just gave me creepy Little Britain vibes. For some reason, DW’s voice (which is either on fast-forward x 2, or he’s on diet pills) made me envisage a grown man with five o’clock shadow and a dad-bod snug within a wife beater and nappies. IKR! I shut him down pdq. I have no idea what the sloth got up to.

The library is varied and endless. In conclusion, Calm App is a great way to clear your mind and get more health-giving sleep. I’m a convert. Chucking on my headphones at 3am and listening to “Softly Back To Sleep” is a whole lot better than lying wide awake catastrophizing about my current worries. Even a soundscape like “Bamboo Forest” or “Silk Waves” can do the trick.

Lastly, in the hope of improving focus on my book writing projects, I’m eleven days in to ‘How To Meditate in 30 Days’ with Jeff. Jeff promises that once you master the art of meditation your concentration will be next-level! I’m so glad I found Jeff. My concentration is shot. But I’m learning how to shut out the voices in my head. Be present. Yeeha!

Jane x

ps. I’m not sponsored by Calm App lol. If you fill out a survey on their site you’ll receive a discount voucher within days. Or sign up for a free 7-day trial.

Do leave a comment if you have success, insomniacs.

Sweet future dreams! Nightie night!

Aging & The Subtle Art of Giving A Lot of Phucks About It

I wrote a somewhat poignant line in a poem recently -

I prefer my hair turning white than paying into disguise

And I do. For the most part. I’m cool with being prematurely in silver-vixen-territory. But earlier this week, when a bank teller insisted to the point that I must have lost my marbles, along with the pigments from my hair that I was an old aged pensioner I wondered if it was time to hit the Clairol. I just couldn’t for the life of me think which colour would suit? Forever Blonde. Honey Honey Honey. Chesty Chestnut.

I forgave the poor child her mistake as she blushed and tried to back-track by saying that the qualifying age for a Super Gold card was 60. Only. I corrected her again. Thing is, to her it all added up. I hadn’t just breezed in with my freshly washed white hair after my injectables appointment. LOL. Oh no, I’d been stood at the counter for a cool ten minutes, trying to redeem my BonusBonds – the kiwi saving scheme for gambling addicts. Curiously I’d checked their website, I thought I knew what ID I needed. Clearly, I’d overlooked the third requisite. 

Anyhoo, there I was with my undone, white hair. My middle-aged face. My unknotted brow. It was an easy mistake for a young woman to make, (lack of general knowledge for a frontline job aside.) I would struggle to identify a twenty-five-year-old from a thirty-five-year-old in a line-up. But I’m 56, not 65. A cool, nine years of my life was obliterated right before my very eyes. Poof. All that lovely growing old, fast-forwarded in a puff of future-fairy-dust. I should add it was the previous customer, let's call her Brenda, who was the owner of the SuperGold Card. The teller had somehow flicked to her file.

My great grandmother, Mackie, had long white hair that she pinned into a donut-shaped-bun at the nape of her neck. She was 100. I’m not sure why my hair colour went west in my forties? The stress of having three children in my mid-thirties. 34. 36. 38. Perhaps. I recall my midwife, telling me that each one of them had given her grey hairs, and it wasn’t her birth canal they were stuck in at the time. 

My lovely friend Sue, texted me earlier this week, from the mall. She’d accompanied her daughter to her colour appointment. After four hours in the chair, daughter was not happy with the results. Four hours! That was one of the reasons I stopped colouring my hair. The money! The time! I would honestly be on the verge of a panic attack around the two-hour mark. Get me out of hair! It was such a relief to stop. 

I was asked to interview the wildly famous and fabulous UK Children’s Laureate author/illustrator, Lauren Child, soon after I took the au-natural-road. I had a moment beforehand. Well, quite a few moments actually. I thought I cannot interview the super gorgeous, super stylish Lauren Child while I’m growing out my hair. I. Need. Just. One. Last. Colour. One. 

During the interview, Lauren cutely asked me several questions. I’d been introduced to her the day before at Remarkables Primary, along with her UK publisher and PR assistant, Lozzle. Even so, when she said, “We were talking about your hair yesterday!” I laughed a startled laugh.

“You were? That’s so embarrassing. I stopped colouring it. I’m so white.” Then I leaned in and showed her my whitest locks. On my temples. OMG I still cannot believe I did that. “I kept ringing up salons to make an appointment but I couldn’t get in anywhere.”

Lauren said, “No, it’s lovely. It’s all the rage in the UK right now. To grow it out. It’s great.”

Mmmmm. Lauren’s blonde hair had subtle, baby pink highlights. “The key is putting the right amount in,” she told me. “It doesn't last long.”

Three years ago, only punks had pink hair. Not like nowadays when every rad gran you pass in PakNSave is rocking pink pastel, asymmetrical fringes and undercuts. But from that moment, I knew I’d dabble in a pinkaluscious-balayage-future. So I can’t tell you how thrilled I was when I discovered De Lorenzo Nova Fusion colour shampoos. $29.99. Salon only.

Believe me, I have tress-tested these babies and will happily pass on my knowledge. I do pretty much have a blank palette to start with, which helps as results depend on your base colour. But you can’t go too wrong. ** 

Jane says:

Beige Blonde - adds a certain blonde-creaminess and goldy highlights. My fave.

Rose Gold - adds soft, baby pink tones. You will be pink!

Coral Peach NEW - adds odd orange-pink tones. (I was so excited when I found this. But after several washes, I felt like a fruit salad. And when people told me things like my hair matched my shoes I was outta there right back to Beige Blonde. Don’t be fooled by the name. This colour would also tide you over between salon colours if you have blonde highlights. I believe.)

On this Hi-Ho-silver journey, I discovered a few Instagram feeds of women pushing the greying-gracefully mood. But most of them were ex-models with goddess-like cheekbones, soft-filtered tanned faces and thick, long luscious locks. And after reading how they maintained that youthful glow: “I brush myself with a stiff-bristled dry brush before showering, twice a day! I don’t touch red meat, sugar or alcohol.” This old cardholder left them to their namastes and their nettle tea.

(Parts of this post also appear on Stuff NZ. Bubbly brunettes wanting to enhance their greys might find Nadine Rubin Nathan's dye tips helpful.)

** Directions. Do a quick first wash. Towel dry. Apply a generous amount of shampoo. Go about the business of shaving your legs or dreaming up a new novel. (I still can’t get the image of naked writers coming up with their best ideas while wet 'n soapy. Melinda? Sue?) Anyhoo, leave the shampoo on for 5-10 mins. Rinse. Condition with Nova Fusion Colour Care conditioner. Next time you wash, repeat above to maintain colour. Or if you don’t like it, use normal shampoo to wash it out. I sometimes do a lucky-dye and mix the colours. 

ps. Three days later, my Bonusbonds savings have not been transferred. They say, Allow 10 days.

pps. I interviewed Lauren Child during the Auckland Writer’s Festival May 2017, for The Sapling

Author with Lauren Child. Photo by Lozzle

I've Just Discovered Nora Ephron, an essay

**

If you haven’t read Nora Ephron’s middleaged bible:

I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK

AND OTHER THOUGHTS ON BEING A WOMAN

Find yourself a copy, and a deckchair on a sunny tropical isle and start reading! Then try very hard to stop yourself from laughing out loud through every chapter. This fine collection of hilarious essays on all important-things-women. Hair growth. Hair loss. Handbags. Anti-aging-creams. Food. Fashion. Family. The joy-of-reading. Diminishing eyesight. Sex. Necks. Teeth. Turtlenecks. Everything! Is a riot. It will have your girlfriend beside you in a state of major FOMO until you read the last bath-oil-filled chapter and pass this light, yet weighty tome, over.

“Everything goes with black, especially black,” Nora instructs.

I’m sorry, Insta-Influencers, but this would have to be one of the most sensible pieces of advice I’ve heard in a long long time.

Born in New York to Jewish screenwriter parents, Nora took on board her mother’s advice ‘everything is copy’ and became a journalist after college. But not before she interned, in that white house on Washington Hill for none other than J F Kennedy. Did-JFK, or did-JFK-not, make a pass at Nora? You’ll need to read Chapter 7: Me and JFK: Now It Can Be Told, to find out.

Nora’s writing went on to include, fiction, playwriting and screenwriting. She received Academy Award noms for her groundbreaking romantic comedies, Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle.

NOW had Nora written about elbows in this book, I’d be in a more stable place today. Minutes after falling in love with her writing, (thanks to my daughter Lily and her Sydney flatmate, Sara) I felt the need to get my hands on her every work past, present and future. Then thanks to the online Reader’s Digest Wikipedia, I discovered Nora Ephron died in 2012.

Honestly, I was in a flap. Literally. A barren, layer-mash-munching-hen falling off its roost. Me. Because I would be fan-emailing Nora right this very minute to ask advice. Help ME! PLEASE! Nora!  I’d write … I need to make a confession. I feel bad about a lot of things. From my shoulders up. Under-eye pillows. WRINKLES. General greyness. Sag. Well. I won’t go on. But, Nora. Nora, I apologise. I feel fine about my neck!

(Breaths out. Breathes in. With brown paper bag over her mouth and nose.)

However, Dear Nora, I feel bad about my elbows. Really bad. Hells Bells, I caught sight of these curious objets just last week, when I was trying on a silk silver fashion garment I’d had knocked off by a charming tailor in Sanur, Bali for 250,000 Rupiah. Twenty-five dollars! Good god almighty, the elbows in the mirror may appear closer than they are. The elbows in the mirror, in fact, may appear altered. Said elbows are no longer elbows. They are a new breed of miniature dog. Teacup-Shar-pei. Mottled-tan. What’s one to do? Has any middleaged journalist-du-jour written a self-help booklet on elbows? Please! No amount of Kiehl’s Crème de Corps (Superb All-over Body Moisturizer of Superb Quality) is going to fix these puppies. These what-cha-ma-call-its? I’ve searched a lot of weird shit on Google. But never before have I searched ‘skin over elbow name’ to discover: Your Wenis is the Epidermis on the Peripheral Epiphyses Dorsal of your Humerus (the SKIN of your elbow.) You’ve got to be kidding me! Wenis! Does this mean that when discussing both elbows they should be referred to as wee-nigh …?

I think not.

My only saving grace is that I did not, once-upon-a-long-time-ago, get large eyes tattooed over my wenii after a magic-mushroom milkshake in the Gili Isles. Because any winking, open-eyed, long-lashed orbs would now look triple-hooded, reptilian, crows-footed. Much the same as my very own eyes on a bad morning. The ones I’m currently anointing with *Dr Dennis Gross Ferulic + Retinol Triple Correction Eye Serum. Apply to entire eye area, including eyelids, the results will be transformative, Dr D an NYC dermatologist, claims. Goodbye eyelid crepe. Bring it. Or sucked in! Again! Cah-shing.  

Curiously, Retinol or Retin A is the current in-vogue anti-aging-must-have ingredient. But its many guises have been around before. I laughed very loudly when I read Nora’s chapter titled Maintenance. Broken into subjections, and listed under Skin, were all the potions I for one have slapped on my visage in vain. And vanity. And at vast expense. I recalled driving across LA with my sister, in her beat-up blue beetle, to buy a tube of StriVectin-SD in the early 2000s. We may have well have been buying a kilo of Class-A-dope from a dodgy dealer, such was the drama and mystery surrounding the purchase of this tube-of-eternal-youth. It turned out to be simply skin lotion, noted Nora. The only thing Stri-Vectin-SD gave me was red, raw, itchy skin. So I stopped using it. 

I really do feel bad about my elbows. Nora. And fine about my neck.

But having got this off my chest, is my neck now going to huff and puff and turn into a Bernard-Mathews-boneless-lamb-roast (thick, greasy chub of sweaty meat) in a couple of years? Tomorrow? Nek week? I know that whatever’s in store for me, the chicken, the turkey gobbler, the elephant, the wattle (as describe in Chapter 1) is already pre-programmed deep within my DNA. And no amount of money or time is going to change a damn thing. Mayhaps in the not too distant future, Instagram will have developed an App which applies filters to necks as well as faces. Should one be inclinded. To employ it.

As my fan girling of Nora Ephron reached fever pitch, I went to purchase her published works via Amazon. The postage was prohibitive. Redic. Where can you get a decent priced book these days I pondered? Aww, I know. The library. After a trip to my local, I discovered Central Otago had an okay N.E selection. I requested her novel Heartburn, the fictionalised retelling of her marriage breakup with Carl Berstein. It was also made into a movie with Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep in 1986. It’s a sad and funny book. Heart breaking in places.

I yarped so much about the enviable writing skills of N.E that long-time librarian Sharon was on to Wheelers toute-de-suite and has since supplemented the QT Lakes District Library shelves. It felt good to be doing some fellow-authorly-kindness. I hoped her children receive her royalties.

Yet I must credit the Z Generation for spreading the Nora E love. I only hope that reading a middle-aged woman’s bible can install in these beautiful young women of today a huge love for themselves and the skin they’re in. I for one hated my body for a way too long a time. I was pretty much on a diet from age 12 to 28. The Israeli army diet was one of my first, thanks to the informative pages of Cosmopolitan magazine. It was also thanks to Cosmo (as we so lovingly referred to it) that I discovered/realised I was pear-shaped, at age 13. Yep. My arse, hips and thighs were wider than my frame. Too wide. From that moment on, all I saw when I looked in the mirror were my hips and thighs, like an ugly, yet ripe human-sized William Bon Cretian staring guiltily back at me. Even when I grew First-11-hockey-shoulders. Then breasts. Those thunder thighs haunted my five foot four, fifty-seven odd kilo frame.

Nora said, “Oh how I regret not having worn a bikini for the entire year I was 26. If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini and don’t take it off until you’re 34.”

I’m 55 and I still wear a bikini. For the first time the other day, when I as getting out of the pool on that tropical isle, I wondered for the first time in while that perhaps I shouldn’t. What are the rules? I’m smaller than I was in my youth. My three children did not give me stretch marks. Thank whomever, big time, for that favour. I did receive major muscle separation with my third baby. Post birth, I could fit a sideways fist in the grand canyon running from my belly button to just above pubic bone. Thanks to 15 years of Pilates I’ve kept the crevasse narrowed to a few centimetres and my lower back in okay health. But back to the bikini. Nora? Anyone? I’ve decided, aged sixty orta do it. I’ll probably be in a skin protection suit by then anyways, such will be the size of the whole in the ozone layer. Or just the ground-heat of the planet will be enough to burn. Hey, we might all be in fire-fighting kits, with full face masks. Who will see all our devotion to eternal-yoof? Then.

Hopefully, by sixty we won’t care ... I know of course we will. So in the meantime, let’s hang on to another bit of excellent N.E advice: “If the shoe doesn’t fit in the store, it’s never going to fit.”

In praise of Nora Ephron (1941 – 2012). "There are no secrets." Thank you, Nora!

*Available from Mecca.

** Photo taken while lying on a sun lounger at Pondok Santi Luxury Resort, Gili Trawangan, Bali

To Flash or To Flush - That Was The Question

A sweary rant from one really HOT lady. I’m not now FYI. Cos HRT. But.

Sweats. A History. Actually, a Her-story.

Begins:

Ahem. At the height of my internal volcanic disruptions, every time I flushed (or flashed some prefer) I wanted to tweet it. But you know, 6 times in two hours would lose me followers. And I’d just reached 666.

I tried reading some of the truly helpful information on how to deal with these random and ridiculous spikes in body temperature when mine really started to come on with a vengeance, with the added icing of nausea.

Articles cheerily titled, “The Mystery of Women’s Thermal Chaos.” Whoopee. I was a character in a sci-fi novel. I just didn’t know it. One menopausal-advice-writer-person recommended, ‘Undress! Open a window!’

Undress! Good one! Classic! I could see the future for us middle-aged, involuntary sauna seekers. We’d have our own back corner in the café. It’d be opposite the almond-friand spreading, fluffy slurping midget corner. Only we’d be in the nuds, under a low ceiling fan, sitting at a circular table (nonchalantly shelving our pale tits) sipping our free ice cold soy milk with goji sprinkles. Grey Ladies rule. Fist pump, girls. We’d be sat there, staring straight ahead, hoping like hell our left-to-grow-out (because dye chemicals cause heat and au naturale is so so 2020) silver-streaked hair was making us invisible. We’d be sucking our cold drinks through bamboo straws because milk on your moustache just isn’t that sexy. While nibbling flax seed, apricot, soy powder and cacao nib slice. Sugar-free. Joy-free. Raw! But sweetened with fresh organic dates. Those ugly, expensive little fuckers.

Yerp, we’d be sat in the naughty corner, incorporating some self-help-hot-flush-reducing measures. Little clothing. A plant oestrogen rich morning tea. When what we really wanted was a full dairy cappuccino, with a jumbo mixed berry and white chocolate muffin, heated and served with a generous pat of salty butter. As well as a new pale pink cashmere polo neck jumper and some comfy elastic waist slacks. Black. Plus a bloody good laugh.

Yet, we’d be sat there at that circular table, sucking our milk and skiting about who woke up the most last night. Pick me! Yes me! Oooh, at least ten times! It was magic. It was …

 It’s all right I’m Jumping-Jane-Flash, I’m a gas gas gas.

“Are you going through menopause? No, I'm just on fire." Said famous kiwi novelist, Emily Perkins. “Waves burning arm tantalisingly close to your rayon coat.”

Me too. I was a woman on fire alright. Mostly at night, in bed, while the H snored and farted happily beside me, I followed a random pattern in the dark …

I threw back the covers, panting and welcoming the cool night air. I dabbed the damp creep, circumnavigating my cleavage with my silk nightie. I panted. Even though I did not realise I was panting. I looked out the window. Venus winked at me. I winked back. I saw a shooting star! Then another. Then snap. I was shivering. I pulled the duvet swiftly back around my ears and set to restabilising my body temp. I took a slurp of water from the glass on my nightstand that I share with my cat. Parched. I worried about how much vital moisture I’d lost, alone in the dark over the last four years. My insides a desert. A fossilised forest. A natural history museum exhibit. 

I thought of lovely nurse, Sharon. ‘You can always go on HRT,’ she’d advised, months earlier. While listening to me whinge about my Olympic-level hot flashes, not the cervical smear she was undertaking at the time.

A new and very hot day dawned. In the middle of winter. I was sat at my desk. Oh great heavens, here it comes. I’ll type through it. Present tense. First-hand research. Go!

I’m having one now. I’m flushing. Bless. Joy. It’s a big one. (Flings open door.) I could plug myself into the grid. Reduce my heating bill. I could recharge every tight arse hippy in the country’s 12-volt battery pack. God almighty, right now I’m so radioactive I could light up the sky tower. Even power the lift. 27 floors. My pits are dripping. So are my underboobs and that crease under my bum. I’m hot alright. I am so sexy to myself I could dance like there’s nobody watching. Not. (Heat wanes. Nausea lifts.) I feel like stepping out of this skin and leaving it somewhere. Slithering away. A hissing snake. Another person can have a turn. In my nuclear reactor suit. I’m done.

It was 10.23am and I reckon I’d had 23 of the little bastards since I woke at 5.47am. Some spiked by hot drinks. One by what my 100-year-old gran gigglingly refers to as sport. That was attractive!!!!!!!!

The results of research circulated around 2001 warned of the harmful side effects of Hormone Replacement Therapy, i.e. the increased risk of breast cancer and heart disease. Governing bodies recommended medical professionals halt prescribing HRT immediately. The number of women taking HRT fell by 66%. The UK's Women's Health Concern (the patient arm of the British Menopause Society) concludes that the research groups in the US in the 1990s were women in their mid-sixties, often overweight. Therefore those women for which HRT was considered suitable - fit women around 45 – 55 were not represented. “ … almost  a generation of women was denied the opportunity of improved quality of life during their menopausal years.”

The current buzz is that HRT does not increase the risk of breast cancer and heart disease, and can reduce your risk of osteoporosis when prescribed correctly. Moreover, the many benefits of HRT (no. 1 for me!) alleviates hot flushes & insomnia, far outweigh the possible side effects.

  

I know the early ‘facts’ still linger. I’ve had more than one girlfriend repeat them to me. I've thought them myself. That's probably partly why I panted in silence for so long. I'm not a medical professional. And I know general medicine is not every women's cup-of-jo. But if you’re hot and bothered about it, find a GP well-versed on the subject of women’s health to discuss your options.

I started HRT six months ago. My hot flushes stopped within three days. Three days! I do not lie. Not to mention all the other bonuses. The HRT Diaries … coming soon … or sometime in the cool future.