It just doesn't happen like in the movies!!

I haven't written recently about my love life.. lack of it.. might be more of the reason... or lack of inspiration more like!

I am resigned to taking myself out at weekends, getting all the rounds of drinks in (for 1) and having a virtual friend (whose really real) who spends her time sitting at the pokies and I can't sit with her as she says if someone sits with her then they bring bad luck.  I usually arrive around 10.30 so I don't have to spend too much money.. and can get away till 2.00 am with about 5 drinks bought (my tipple.. cider at $6.80 for a shooner).

My weekends are like bad versions of Groundhog day..  Wander down the Courthouse Hotel, watch the band.. at 12.00 wander to the Iron Bar and then depending on the weekend, it's mingling with a crowd so thick that their acne creams are almost blending, or where the ultra violet lights light up so many white shirts of the wedding party guests you have to wear sunglasses for the glare.

I had been invited beforehand to a BBQ at the very swanky Niramaya Resort where I have one friend managing it and another living in it!

I did take a bottle of wine.. and it was a really pleasant evening.

So I was at the Courthouse much earlier than normal  .. and was certainly getting relaxed.


By the time I wandered into the Iron Bar the wine and a few ciders were certainly making me feel rather merry.

So it was a bit blurry in my memory why I ended up chatting with Darryl, but it seems on post analysis he had 'spotted' me and had headed me off at the pass and engaged me in conversation. Just like the movies we just hit if off immediately... the world whittled away like a Dali watch and like a film effect the camera zoomed in on just us chatting and laughing.  He had the biggest smile that was totally all encompassing and I have such a soft spot for men with a sense of humour and a beaming smile.  Under his shirt (yep... wedding guest!) I could see bulging arm muscles and I coudn't believe my luck that I had received attention from such a lovely man!

It was seamless... from chatting, laughing, totally engrossed in each other to the walk back to my house, some half finished wines on the balcony and then to bed! It seemed so natural.

The next morning for the first time for me in YEARS!!!  We lay in bed chatting and cuddling (he complimented me on being a good cuddler!,  How wonderful to just lie in bed in the morning basking in the afterglow of passionate, intense and beautiful love making and the feeling that somehow we 'clicked'.

It was about 12.00 and I thought I had better mention that some new guests were arriving that day to rent the downstairs bedroom (the one we were lying in).   I didn't expect them till later in the day especially since all the roads were closed due to the Ironman competition going on in the road.

Barely had I mentioned this than the door bell went... eeeeek! The room had to be cleaned, sheets changed, and one hunky man had to be exited from the bed (I had already exited pretty quickly as I was running round like a naked headless chicken trying to find something to cover myself up with to answer the door).   In the end I gave up and just answered the door naked and just popped my head round (though forgetting that the top half of the door is frosted glass!).  They could see with great insight that I wasn't ready, so the words "we'll be back in 15 minutes" was indeed music to my ears.

Darryl by then had got his wedding gear back on.. shirt and dress trousers.. all ready for his walk of shame back to his hotel (only about 2 minutes down the road).. but it was a road filled with spectators for the Ironman competition!  We left with a hurried arrangement to meet up later.

That evening we met up and had another wonderful evening.  He was lovely and even bought drinks for my friends (who were more like people that I know here who were all chatting to us... it's big news for me to be seen with a man here, so some were very curious).

He works as a policeman in Canberra, and he discussed how emotional the job can be and the sights he has had to cope with at one point tearing up a bit.. so I gave him a big hug.   So lovely just sitting and chatting and he held my hand under the table...  He came out of a 3 year relationship 5 months ago and I think it cost him a lot of money.  He wants to meet someone to have a family... So a couple of klaxon warnings methinks!

We went back to his hotel later and again, had a lovely tender lovemaking session and great cuddles in the morning.

I bid him goodbye with a kiss on the lips as I left and then rather embarrassingly for my grand exit walked the wrong way and had to u turn back past him (did get another kiss) as I had taken my contact lenses out the night before out and so my eyesight was rather diminished.

He was leaving that day to drive back to Canberra with his mate... which was going to take a week...

He said comments like 'don't give me your Facebook details as I won't be able to stop myself messaging you all the time'

And so he disappears off into the sunset...........


We have been text messaging all week... some of his messages:

Hope you are well, I had a lot of fun with you!

(I sent him a photo)
omfg you are gorgeous :) Love the pic.  Thank you!  Trip is good. I miss hanging out with you!

I'll be back for sure! Hope you are still around when I do. 

OK, so we are not talking undying love... but hey.. early days so we shall see....


Last night I went out on my usual Groundhog day night and ended up at the Iron Bar.

Up lunges up this slightly drunk woman  (now, I don't want to be rude.. but I am trying to paint a picture here).  She has to be a not so well kept 50+ woman.  Wearing a kaftan that covered her curvaceous body and at about 5'5" no height to really offset this.

She is a friend of a friend (Jane)  who I have chatted with on the odd occasions before.

Her opening words were  'So what do you think of Darryl? - I found him to be a bit of a dud"

Flummoxed I said "Dud? How do you mean"

Her reply with great knowing gusto " He's, you know, really bad in bed - you were with him the other night weren't you? I was with him about 4 nights ago"

Keeping my composure "No, we never slept together, we just had drinks - but I think he's a lovely guy - don't you ".  There's me thinking that only 6 hours before I had gushed to Jane how I had met this wonderful man!

To which she replied, "Nah, did nothing for me"

The picture of us two together living a romantic fairytale just shattered into little cutting shards smashing with the screech of gramophone record at my feet...

I was upset, not only did I feel taken in,  used, abused, taken for a ride, but how could he have such little regard for any quality or higher characteristics than to end up with a woman like that!

After much thinking I thought the following:

He isn't committed to me, we have no relationship.  He's on a road trip with his mate exploring all 'possibilities' - they have both just come out of relationships.  Maybe he is genuine about his feelings for me, in which case, whatever has happened doesn't alter that.  I still really like him, just disappointed as I thought he was a man with higher integrity and better taste.  I have decided not to mention anything......  there will be an appropriate time but it's not now.........................

And so we shall see..............................

Vanity is not beatiful...

Oh dear.. time flies or as the Romans said "Tempes Fugit"

I haven't been able to update this blog as much as I would like as despite living in a first world country the internet access up here in Port Douglas is not third world.. it's fourth world.

Intermittent, slow and unreliable.....

So what's been happening in Penny world...

Whilst working at the local paper I wanted to place an editorial in our beauty section for a local beauty company.

I was particularly intrigued about a new treatment they offer.  It was first bought to my attention in a magazine in a waiting room.  A photo showing a pregnant Kim Kardashian with a bloodied face and the announcement of a new beauty treatment that uses the plasma from your own blood to help plump out lines and those nasal labial fold lines.  It looked particularly dramatic and I did think literally 'bloody hell'.. whatever next!

Little did I know that a week later I would be lying on the treatment bed about to do an impersonation of an overly enthusiastic dart board.  Succumbing to the statement by the owner "you can't write about it if you don't experience it, I will give you the treatment for free" (We are talking a $400 treatment free!).

Despite people asking if I have had plastic surgery or anti-aging treatments I have always been  a firm believer in the beauty of spirit, soul and outlook to keep young (and the benefits of good genes helps).

I can't comprehend the pain and procedures that women go through in the pursuit of beauty. That women will put themselves through major surgeries just for a fad or for vanity.

So it was against my philosophy to be lying down enduring the pain as she searched around my arm with a syringe to try and hit the vein with words 'get me out of here' incessantly echoing through my brain.  After 15 mins of unlucky jabbing I suggested she move to the other arm. After finally filling up a test tube with my blood (and obviously spilling it over the table and over the floor as she dabbed it up with tissues)..  Now going through my brain was.. 'has she done this before?'.  My confidence wasn't boosted when she asked for a 3mm gauge syringe from her assistant and when advised that there was only 2mm said "well, that will have to do". 

After centrifuging my blood she then proceeded to fill up the syringe with the clear plasma.  This was then injected along my nasal labial fold.  At one point (literally!) I felt a pricking to my dimple (I only have one)  to which I said "that's my dimple! Can you leave that!'.  She was less than reassuring when she said that the plasma kept clotting and it was making it difficult to inject.  Another test tube of blood was taken for under the eyes. Yowzer! that's a sensitive area for sticking in syringes - now I was at the point where I was just trying to get through the procedure and trying to refrain from  running out the door.  I also could tell that she was injecting uneven amounts on both sides.  She started on my crows feet, but I said.. no, I call those laughter lines and I want to keep them.

Finally, she finished I looked in the mirror.  Looking back at me was a face that certainly looked a bit battered.. and bruised.  A blue bruise mark under the eye where one injection hadn't been so clean.  Instead of my caved in under the eyes the fluid now had gathered into two uneven sized liquid pouches - so now I looked more like two swollen eyes peering over the top of two water-filled balloons.

She immediately gave me a little drink of Arnica to help the bruising....

Mmmmm... the sentence I had used with her when I first went in and she asked if I had ever had a treatment went into my head "Oh no, I never have treatments, because I am sure karma would punish my vanity and make things go wrong".

I write this a week later and can only say that a few days after the swelling had gone down.. and despite an improvement for maybe a day or two (which was offset by the bruise under my eye)  I now consider I look the same now as I did before.

Luckily, any damage wasn't long lasting, but what an interesting lesson in so much pain (luckily no expense) and time (1 hour) being such a waste of............