Author: frankiebanks27@gmail.com

Big and Horny

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Big and Horny are a Melbourne based cover band with an amazing brass section, although it’s been a long time since I have played saxophone as the singer called, “more sax or more sex?”  I knew which I wanted.

Being from Essex, Brassy has always been in my blood I think. Amazing how a derogatory word ‘mainly associated with women’ can bring out the rebel. Why not be loud and proud, audaciously entertaining. Surely the times of being little submissive wifey are over, well they certainly are for me!

A few days previously I had bought a cheap clarinet and then found myself at the front of the stage at Big & Horny shaking my thing. I did take the clarinet out of the box and put it together.  However, I then realised my brassy lung power had obviously dwindled in the woodwind section for quite some time now, I would need a lot more practice.

It was fantastic to see some great musicians and reminded me of Ronnie Scotts in London.  It was innocent fun, enjoyed by all, a collective of conscious happiness, boogying into the early hours. Dancing on a glass table at Ronnie’s Scott’s in the private members lounge will always be a fond memory, far too much champagne! When the two doormen gently helped me down I felt like a Princess being escorted from my carriage.

On this night however my dance partner for the evening was a 6ft4 Aussie with thankfully no glass tables in sight. I’ve never danced with anyone that tall before and it was an exciting expression of our growing friendship. Being twirled around by his big strong arms reminded me of my dancing days as a kid, latin and ballroom classes that I loved so much. Freedom on the dance floor, letting go of the stresses and strains.

Thanks, Big and Horny for reminding me that brassy is definitely a good place to be!

The Silly Hat

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Whilst on holiday this Easter with my folks and kids at Warburton in the Yarra Valley the silly hat made an appearance. This has long been a theme in my life, has it been in yours or perhaps you are more of a cool hat kinda person?

It started with my parents, it always does, doesn’t it? My Dad would generally be sporting a floppy wide brimmed hat for his boat. I say for his boat as if this is some kind of excuse oh no, that was just one silly hat of many, there was his silly camping hat, very similar in fact to the boat hat just a slightly different shade of khaki and of course his summer hat. Then one Christmas to top all silly hats, someone bought him the hat with the propeller on the top, luckily even he thought that was way too silly!

My next silly hat encounter was my mums silly floppy white summer hat, I have a memory of her and her four sisters all wearing the same silly white hats on a summer day in my Nans Garden. I might have made that up as a memory or it might have been true. But I can assure you that they all looked very silly!

My Sunday school teachers had also bought the same white floppy summer hats and on our trip to Seaton in Devon they all proudly wore them every day. Somehow because they were Sunday School teachers this didn’t calculate to silly, I’m not sure why? What was silly was that I had forgotten my swimsuit and so one of the teachers (all over 50) had lent me hers. At around nine years old I though it strange that this very flowery swimsuit had some kind of chest structure of which I had nothing to fill it with.  It didn’t stop me swimming for a good long way, I think probably the longest swim of my life. Maybe I was simply trying to get away from these silly white hat wearing ladies or perhaps I just didn’t want to get out of the water wearing the oversized swimming suit with the huge hollow pointy things in front. Silly it would seem I did not yet want to embrace!

And so, this Easter as I wandered back up the muddy bank from the rampaging river in Warby the kids were laughing their heads off at me, it was my turn to wear the silly hat. The horrible truth is I don’t think it is a silly hat, I think it’s a lovely hat, in fact it’s my favourite hat! However, I am more than happy to be silly if it makes anyone laugh or even smile. Yes, I have turned into my parents, inevitable, I guess!

Some people never look silly in a hat they look like they were born with one on their head. The Australian Akubra for example is a serious hat and can look oh so handsome, not silly at all! One day I might just be cool enough to wear one.

Friend or Foe

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We all have a foe in our lives.

Whilst chatting with a girlfriend at our usual beach cafe I started to share the woes of an extremely ‘not for profit’ relationship I had experienced a while ago. You know the ones, put everything in and get nothing out other than an overwhelming feeling that you are being ‘good’ by keeping the status quo and continuing to give.

My friend who then as with the way of friendship took her turn to tell me about Harry, an old boyfriend who was still following her around when he could. (Another not for profit relationship). All of a sudden I realised everyone has a foe, that person that you can’t ever seem to make disappear, however much you try. They hang around and try to bleed you dry of your kindness.

This foe is manipulative and disruptive and more stubborn than a 2 yr old. They won’t let go because they know you’re an easy target. You want to please and be good and love everyone and so they exploit your good nature.

The foe wave however as with most waves ends in a crash, in Australia those beautiful, dramatic, chaotic waves can put you in the ‘wash cycle’. Your head spinning, the wave dumping you on the shore, literally washed up. Sand in every crevice, and that horrible tingling in your sinuses making you nauseous.

‘Harry is your foe not your friend’ I tell her and we laugh at this strange old fashioned word.

‘I’ve know him for so long’ she says in defense.

Just because you are aware of your foe it doesn’t mean you actually want to let them go. They bring excitement that you have become accustomed to. Your kindness to them is a cycle you know and enjoy.

You continue your walk in the sunshine the squalls of seagulls warning you of the next predator. However you’re too stunned by the last trauma to see that this is just another foe walking towards you surrounding you with their devastating charm, this one has its own banana boat, what could possibly go wrong?

Domestic Violence

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In my life D.V has been prevalent, maybe not glaringly obvious and perhaps not discussed as much as it should be but it’s there in all our lives. To think that I witnessed this as a child in a neighbouring house and thought that it was a funny game scares me as an adult as much as the ‘boogeyman’ scared me as a child. We were so busy looking for Mr Boogeyman that the abuser could hide.

I don’t want my daughter to find herself in a DV relationship wether that be emotionally manipulative, financially manipulative or physically manipulative. The continuous word here is manipulation and that is how it starts and ends.

I thoroughly enjoyed going back to education to study criminal law and D.V was a huge part of that. To learn that 60 percent of crime in Victoria is DV related was astonishing! The phrase ‘eyes wide shut’ springs to mind.

We have a perception that these awful things happen to others or are a socioeconomic problem, however as with drugs and alcohol, DV exists in every socioeconomic situation. Money doesn’t buy sanity, money does try to normalise toxic behaviour.

In my close circle of friends I’ve witnessed DV and ignored it, as I’m sure we all have. In a world where speaking out or POV as my kids would call it is now allowed. Let’s all be aware and if necessary make others aware too. Sometimes we live in a bubble and that bubble needs to be burst.

Cars have been tracked, Microsoft accounts hacked, houses broken into, stalking, financial abuse, emotional manipulation, obsessive behaviour, compulsive behaviour, generally developing from jealousy and insecurity and that’s only what one person has witnessed.

So why am I writing this now? A conversation with a guy whose sister was killed last year in a DV attack. His words made me stop in my tracks and brought a shadow to a normally bright and sunny day.

‘I tried to help and get her out of the situation but she just kept going back’

Helpless and hopeless is all that entered my mind. And yet this guy tried his best, not like most of us that look the other way.

I can’t speak for other violence however I do know that DV is at its most heightened when the victim/survivor pulls away, when the game is slipping away from the perpetrator. This is a critical stage at which support is required in abundance.

It’s on the news every day, it’s actually in our lives every day so before it gets to that point of no return, let’s make sure we know what’s right and wrong in a relationship and NOT let even the slightest manipulative behaviour breed.

Merry Christmas! – more positive posts to come I promise xxx

Too Much Love

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Watching my daughter play tennis is such a rewarding experience as it would be for any parent, surely? The love just swells in my heart to see her enjoy the game.

Even when my kids are not the most competent watching them ‘have a go’ is inspiring. The ‘you never know, have a go’ mentality of Australia is one of my favourite things about living in Aus!

So, when another child’s parent started clapping at my girls mistakes the fierce mumma bear reared her angry head. Maybe this parent did not know the etiquette of tennis and that you clap at points won not lost? In my English way I glared in the direction of the other mother, the glare gone unseen by her but not the other parents.

At two games all the clapping was becoming annoying to even my levelheaded daughter who I could see an Andy Murray esq muttering under her breath as she prepared to serve, the morning sun beating down on the clay court exacerbating the heated game.

‘I kept muttering what’s all the clapping about? You clap at the end of a game not every point!’ she later confided in the car.

‘Yes, it must of been very distracting and was quite rude really’ I replied. ‘It certainly didn’t help her son win did it?’

‘Did you see that he came off crying, I think she put too much pressure on him’ she replied.  I hadn’t seen that and felt sorry that this child we did not know was made to feel like he had done anything wrong.

My girl won 6-3. She walked the length of the court to touch rackets and say well done (handshaking since covid now a thing of the past). Unfortunately, her opponent threw his racket to the ground. Ignoring his tantrum, she persistently made eye contact with him and said, ‘You played really well’ to no response.

I was proud of my daughter not because she won but because of her humility in her actions.

Later whilst watching Enola Holmes together on the sofa, I said ‘maybe that parent felt the pressure of being the away team and not in her own surroundings!?’

‘You have too much love Mum she just shouldn’t of behaved like that!’

I think back to my first experience of tennis, watching Wimbledon on tv with my Nan. What would her reaction have been to this parents’ actions; she would of tutted for sure! Whatever happened to tutting? It must be a generational thing; I haven’t heard anyone tut at something for years! Another passive aggressive way of showing emotion, slightly more acceptable than clapping at someone’s mistakes, I wonder?

Tinder All The Way!

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That was my mantra whilst my babies were abroad, I hung up my apron and concentrated on being Me not Mum.  It’s actually a great excuse to meet new people, coffee’s, lunches, exhibitions, new bars and yes the inevitable, well hopefully, love of course. What were You thinking?

Meeting lots of new men in the space of three weeks I’ve realised how lonely we all are as a human race. To hold someone else’s hand, to have someone to vent to, someone that checks in to see how your day is going, this is now an app, not a normal state of being!

Most of us are in a very vulnerable state when tindering, nervously excited, we are all fragile souls, well the ones over 40 are anyway! Those 31 year olds still have the superman spirit of a teenager!

I have met men who have been in the armed forces, prison, fostered, looked after by brothers and sisters. I’ve met high flyers, miners and pilots but can honestly say and I wasn’t expecting this at all, I have met some of the kindest humans. Tinder has given me back my love of humanity that the two years of lockdown tried to take away.

Love is still the ultimate goal for many on tinder and if that love arrives in the form of a new friendship, surely that’s still progress?

So if you’re single, go mingle! You might just be surprised by what you find.

The Humble Dick Pic

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I happen to be single at the moment which invariably means men send me pics of their dick.  To say that this first happened a year or so after I had split up from my husband, would be a lie. However, it was the first time that I took it seriously. It seemed like an invitation of sorts.

Oh how I wonder if Jane Austen would giggle with glee. Her eyes wide with anticipation when opening the hand written invitation to the next debutant ball, (no envelope knives please Jane!) only to envisage the engorged phallus.  Probably a pencil drawing do you think?  Maybe that’s why those girls were always so giggly, we think we invented the dick pic, ha it’s been going on for centuries!? Respondez S’il Vous Plait.

So how does someone rsvp to a dick pic? It’s hard enough getting the head tilt right to eliminate the double chin in a selfie, let alone any other posing. It probably takes a lot of effort but I still tend to get distracted by the surroundings; he could of picked up the towel from the floor! Although I’m glad he showered first, that shows consideration…

My first serial dick picker for want of a better term, (continuous dick pics for about three years) was a South American stripper, extremely built body, abs upon abs. I would try and ignore the pics and use words instead to communicate with this glorious individual (whom I had met on one occasion) but these words would fall short, go nowhere, chatting would stop and a few months later the pics would reappear. Then one day the dick pics stopped, I was dismayed, I was no longer being invited to the ball! What had happened? I stalked him on socials and there seemed to be no change in his situation.  He had just given up. I was quite sad, not Jane Austen sitting by the window looking longingly out over the fields waiting for the sound of galloping hooves kinda sad but have another vodka and jump back on tinder kinda sad.

Now that I am actively looking (for a partner not a dick pic), they are coming thick and fast, quite literally, it is not just a pic now, it is a recording, oh how technology advances in the blink of an eye!  I have stopped being shocked or alarmed and instead my brain responds with a good Aussie phrase ‘good on ya mate!’ It’s his body and he’s proud, there are no underage anyone being forced to do anything and I can always press delete or block. It is sometimes titillating and amusing and some effort has gone into these clips, so much action, gyration yet still able to keep the camera angle just right. I have found a new respect and my response, when encouragement is the desired effect is a negligee pic, no genitalia, no peeking anything, just good old fashioned heaving cleavage, Jane would be proud.

Gavin and Stacey and the less funny Covid Conversations

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‘I haven’t looked at the death toll today!’ I exclaimed, a conversation I had a couple of months ago with my brother. We compared covid statistics him in England and I in Australia these abhorrent words came out of my mouth. Yuk! ‘There’s still a lot of cases over here but not so many dying’ my brother replied.

My brother and I talk once a week on FaceTime and obviously over the last 2 years the conversation has revolved around binge worthy shows like Gavin & Stacey and the less funny Covid statistics. I’m not sure what I would have done through lockdown without Gav n Stace let alone Nessa! Sorry Smithy you might have stolen the late late show now but back in the day you really weren’t the main man!

I’m not gonna lie Death tolls, vaccination rates and protests are not normal conversations but ones we seem to be having constantly. No wonder so many are struggling with their mental health. Whilst the uber rich have continued to fly in and out of Australia to visit their friends in Byron Bay. Now even tennis players are fighting for their right to get into Australia, unvaccinated whilst so many have not been able to see their loved ones and hold their hand for the last time. Sling your hook Novak!

When all said and done it’s just not human nature to be locked up for months on end. Institutionalised, becoming hyper reactive to everyday norms that you would normally laugh. We all just need a Kutch!

Whats Occurring? Our kids will be the ones who will remember this time in history as a large part of their development or underdevelopment as many have lost 2 years of progressive schooling, let alone progressing their social skills. Some kids have thrived at home with less distractions in class but those who need interactive learning have suffered the loss of community encouragement. We have All suffered the loss of community.

As my kids return to school and they test twice a week sticking cotton buds up their nose and twisting it I smile at them with empathetic eyes. Internally however I’m shaking my head I can’t help my internal dialogue of Nessa and her brash way of putting things Oh my Christ!

If only Dave Coaches was here to reply! ‘Well sugar tits, I haven’t a Scooby!’

Thank goodness for I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! Escapism is always a good alternative.

The Adult At The Gate

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It was a normal pick up from school, I was as usual listening to the music in the car and then unusually I was masked, standing my restricted distance from the school, the gate and any other human! I noticed my daughter was walking quickly and when we got inside the car I expected the usual tirade about annoying boys, which happened, I listened and we laughed, then sang along to Pink.

The next day on the way to school it all came out; ‘there was a man at the school gate yesterday and he was smiling at me, he didn’t take his eyes off me and made me feel uncomfortable.’

‘he didn’t take his eyes off me and made me feel uncomfortable’ This made my stomach tighten and my eyes sharpen as we pulled up to the school. Any 10 year old uttering those words needs to be heard. I told her that her gut feeling was right and that is what to listen to. She got out of the car and I walked her to the gate, a lioness protecting her cub. I told her I would get there early tonight and would keep an eye out.

The most terrifying thing about this in my mind after alerting the school was the sinking knowledge that this was another parent. There was very little to be done. I kept the communication open with my daughter and watched her closely. For the next week the deputy head walked up and down the gate as the children left waving and smiling at me and I wondered how many times this had happened before. It didn’t happen again.

For those who think that this wouldn’t happen at ‘their school’ or to ‘their children, and it only happens to others, wake up! As women we know when someone makes us feel uncomfortable whether we are 10 or 85.

My family live in a wonderful community in beautiful sunny Melbourne but we still need to be wary and alert.

One in four children has an abuser at arms length! Unfortunately they don’t look like monsters, have horns or fangs. They are just like you and me, they can be kind, happy and loving but they can also be the terrible change in your child’s innocent life.

Over 45% of females have been abused by the time they turn 18 and that figure is just the reported cases. I believe the figures are similar for males.

Be aware, Be Safe and most importantly as a parent be approachable to your children about every subject even the difficult ones. There’s some interesting information below.

https://www.parents.com/parenting/better-parenting/advice/practical-ways-to-talk-to-kids-about-strangers/.

We are all Artists

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Our lives are our Art

We are all artists of our own life. Some of us wear emotions blatantly that others dare not; love, peace, fear, anger. It doesn’t make them wrong, it’s our expression, we don’t have to create huge canvas’s or volumes of novels to call ourselves artists. Our lives are the best canvas on which to create our expression.

‘We all try to escape reality sometimes. Artists do it all the time and are brave enough to show the world their most vulnerable inner thoughts, their subconscious and conscious minds so that maybe someone somewhere will relate and not feel so alone’  Sex Education – Netflix

Rage

My daughter says to me now, ‘you’re definitely a bit rage today Mum’ if I shout at a fellow driver as he cuts me off. ‘Yep’ I say and that’s ok. She has rage days too, we all do. It’s nice to acknowledge it and laugh about it.

One of my favourite memories of my Mum as a child was her getting angry in the car, Mum didn’t swear much and doesn’t now. So to hear her call someone an arsehole, (such a descriptive swearword) was shocking and yet hilarious. I remember sitting in the back and quietly giggling as the turned the corner and realised it was quite funny and she laughed at the outburst too.

Love

Expressions of love come in so many different ways; touch, smiles, help, gifts, words.  It’s not always easy to give what is needed or wanted. Cuddles are my favourite expression of love to give and recieve and I cherish those moments with my teenagers.  Help is a little more difficult to receive or give, sometimes it’s too much, not wanted, in the wrong area. Giving help can be complicated. 

Fear

Fear is probably one of the hardest emotions to deal with and maybe the most difficult to express.  Telling someone you are frightened is a vulnerable state to put ourselves in and yet receiving someone else’s concern of fear is always so welcome and relatable. Sometimes fear can turn into anger. Fear of the unknown surrounds us daily.

Peace

Expressing this can sometimes seem slightly self righteous. Maybe because we are not used to this state of mind being expressed, it can seem strange to some of us.  However peace can be as beautiful as love.

However we choose to express ourselves there is no right or wrong. We all have parts that we would rather conceal from the world. Expressing these hidden parts of ourselves is Art.