Needles and pins

Sensing her mother’s resistance levels were low, the youngest begged to get a second piercing in her ears over the weekend.

I am not a fan of second piercings. I think solo ones look much nicer.

Actually, I’m not a fan of piercings at all – I’ve never had my own ears done and I’m still recovering from a former colleague having one of hers accidentally ripped out – along with a chunk of ear – during a netball match 10 years ago.

Arrrrgh!

The eldest then decided it was a good opportunity to start campaigning for a “smiley” or a bridge piercing. A “smiley” goes through the webbed bit above your two front teeth; the bridge sits between your eyebrows.

Gross! No!

But then I thought, hey, here’s some bribe material … and said I’d consider a smiley if the next school report card was good.

I think they’ve decided to wait until they’re 16 and don’t need parental permission, as doing well at school would be such a bore.

In happier news, we’re off to an interview tomorrow at the eldest’s potential new high school. I’ve been printing out their latest multi-media works to take along.

One features a picture of a sculpture that the eldest made of a torso with its limbs torn off (you can’t see the bloody stumps and exposed bones in the pic), superimposed onto a background to look like it’s flying through the air. Again, gross, but also quite fabulous I think …

It’s a loooooong way from my HSC major work, which was also multi-media, but only because I couldn’t paint or draw.

Geez the talented people in the class were pissed off when I beat them in the HSC because I could write a killer essay.

But I digress … back to the piercing … The youngest decided she wanted it done with a needle instead of a gun. I have no idea why, but there was some discussion about guns being difficult to clean and hence containing leftover bits of other people’s ears. Blergh.

So we ended up on Oxford Street, Darlinghurst, on Sunday in a 90-minute queue at a place called Off Ya Tree that the eldest recommended.

(I would advise not looking at Off Ya Tree’s Facebook page unless you wish to see photos of various body parts – including nipples – with needles piercing them.)

Lower Oxford Street was quite the blast from the past for me, as I spent many years of my youth dancing in gay nightclubs there, attended numerous parties upstairs at the Burdekin Hotel and even lived in an apartment I bought on Stanley Street for a while.

It wasn’t much bigger than a studio, but we had a fabulous time and even threw a few parties in the tiny space:

It felt like the best life ever back then. I was working a hop and a skip across Hyde Park at ACP Magazines, which made life soooo simple and easy.

Since the apartment was tiny there was no room for clutter and cleaning was a doddle.

Plus, the iconic Italian restaurant Beppi’s was actually in our building, so special occasions could be celebrated by simply hopping in the lift for a bowl of angel hair spaghetti with crab.

The apartment was also where I got the phone call to say I’d been made editor of Singapore CLEO. My ex and I were incredibly excited to learn we were upping sticks and moving overseas. We were engaged at the time and I arranged to start the job after our honeymoon – what a way to begin married life!

It sounds so golden, but going back to Darlinghurst confirmed to me that I never want to go back.

I’m a different person with a very different life now, and the grime and grunge of the city is no longer for me.

The youngest was in agreement – she dislikes the inner city as much as I do, which led us to discuss how she might do her teaching degree at Macquarie University so she never has to cross the bridge.

When we finally got to see the heavily pierced piercer he was lovely, though he freaked me out when he thought I was there for a helix and a conch piercing. The helix goes in the top of the ear and the conch goes through the middle.

No thank you very much!!!

He was so sweet to the nervous 13-year-old, who afterwards reckoned that getting a piercing with a needle was more painful than a gun because the needle is pushed in and then pulled back out again, while the gun is just BANG.

But she was very brave when it was happening and didn’t utter a single squeak.

Her mother, on the other hand, makes far too much noise.

I’ve been instructed not to monopolise the high school interview …

Song of the day: Smokie “Needles & pins”