RACHEL'S COLUMNS

These articles appeared in Rachel's column every Friday in the A3 section of The Age

Month of making bad decisions
28th January 2005

I overheard two mums talking at the entrance to my local supermarket yesterday, one said miserably to the other, "I got the Sunbeam, but I didn't get the shot of steam." That pretty much sums up the month of January for me. My morale tumbled on Christmas Day when I accidentally poured hot gravy into a friend's elderly uncles' crotch. After that episode, I adopted a policy of watchful waiting in an attempt to prevent any further misery. I've never formed a healthy relationship with the month of January. It's a month that's ripe with the potential menace of catching up with mundane chores and old friends you haven't seen all year. But after days of feeding on sugar in all its alluring manifestations, how can you feel anything except your arteries sticking together like superglue. This is no position from which to decide which item of the junkheap in the garage needs to go to the tip or, which friend for that matter.

I reckon what happens is that we start feeling relaxed and cozy in our new fat bodies and get all Oprah about everything. We spend too much time in the Self-Help and Recovery sections of bookshops and begin to re-assess our lives, usually incorrectly. How can you not screw up when bookshelves are littered with titles such as, The Idiots Guide To Self-Esteem – yeah right, that should help with my self-loathing. All this sugar and introspection makes for an overload of bile that builds up and up and inevitably splashes over someone when they least expect it. It may be a prune-faced, cantankerous relative you've always loathed but politely obliged – until now. Or, an old friend who you decide finally needs to know what really happened between you and their boyfriend that night in the hot tub. Wrong way go back! "That way madness lies."

We get nostalgic and sentimental about the year that's just passed and anxious about the year ahead and suddenly we're starring in our own crass tabloid television series, This Is Your Life Or What's Left Of It, Loser! January is that month where you think to yourself, I'll give Susan or Bruce or Barry and Janet a call, it's been ages since we really spent some quality time together. Wrong! At first, everyone is nodding with agreement and delighted at the opportunity to be talking about anything and everything. But after roughly thirty minutes Susan, who's engulfed a slab of Frittata the size of Philip Island gets cranky with the waitress because there's no sachets of sugar-substitute available! She's eaten everything on her plate and then like a giant rodent starts picking scraps off mine. As she eats and dominates the conversation, I am reminded of exactly why I've kept away from her. Earlier on, Susan said she'd feared that she was losing my friendship when we hadn't spoken for so long. I take the opportunity to re-assure her that that wasn't the case – until today!

Bruce decided because I'd cooked so many meals for him in the past, that he'd cook for me – gorgeous. Regrettably, all I remember after a blur of Barnumesque stories about his many and varied sexual encounters, is Bruce snoring on the couch and me stroking his hand willing him to wake up because he'd stupidly dead-locked his doors and I couldn't leave. Finally, in desperation I slid some ice-cubes down the front of his shirt and revived him for long enough to find out where his keys were. He called me the next day and left a message saying that he thought it was very rude of me to leave without bothering to say good-bye!

In the first month of the sixth year of the third millennium I'm not feeling cheery about how far Homo sapiens have come. Did cave folk huddle over a feast of mammoth and bark-juice to squabble over Brad and Jen's break-up? And did they also resolve to be nicer to each other? "Look Honey, I made fire", the male gloated. "Whatever," the female responded, rolling her eyes and crushing a handful of insects. Everything is relative, I'm told. To Cain and Abel overpopulation was four..