Category Archives: Helvi Oosterman

Of Boys and Pull-Ups

30 Wednesday Jun 2010

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By Helvi Oosterman

The other day Susan Maushart lamented her teenage daughter’s lack of know-how or how-to with fitted sheets. In my youth we would have been so lucky to have sheets resembling huge shower caps. Our mums made sure that we became a deft hand with hospital corners; every girl but NO boy learnt this art of tight, nice and snug cornering.

Boys escape many lessons and it starts as early as potty training time; girls being clean and neat by nature move from nappies to panties in a couple of easy sittings, boys move semi permanently into pull-ups. They are too busy with their war games to worry about potties, and take to this comfort clothing with gusto. There is something magical down there, silicon maybe that keeps you dry even you have just wet yourself, or even worse.

For some blokes the pull-ups will return later on in life, but that’s another story…

Shoes are a must, but shoelaces for some reason are too hard for most males, and so we make life easier for them by inventing shoes with Velcro fastenings or with elasticized side panels.  Summertime the ugly and dangerous Crocs come in handy and later on you’ll graduate to thongs and by then you are also usually more than willing to learn to walk the thong-walk.

The toddler boys can just about manage to put their head through the biggest hole in the t-shirt, the hands and arms have to be guided by patient mums. Nothing tight or woollen or itchy or scratchy is to be pulled over any boy’s head; the tickets and tags at the back have to be removed. Later on that will make life difficult; how do you know what’s the front and what is back.

You have to be a girl to know how to find the right button holes for your buttons; the boys will have zippers or nothing at all. The zippers are no cinch either, the silly fabric gets caught in them and they are made of something hard that feels a bit cold on little male’s extra sensitive skin… So, pull-overs it is, not those old-fashioned knitted things (pullovers) made of sheep wool or something scratchy; let’s keep it soft and simple like Polar fleece. Hoodies are heavenly but not after mum has removed the tag and you end up with the pouch at the front. Please, mum, don’t dare to laugh…

Pockets are the favourite part of any boy’s attire, the more the merrier: one for the coins another for rocks, frogs and iceblock wrappers and other related rubble.

Toddlers, even of the male variety turn to teens one day, and aren’t they lucky to do it now when the shops are bulging with all the brilliantly coloured rescue wear, waiting there just for you to pull it on and find a girl or two in need of being saved from wolves or bushfires depending on where you happen to live.

The female teens are now wearing bras, leggings and flimsy tops and sadly not at all interested in boys dressed in workman’s gear. They are dreaming of older and more ‘mature’ boys who at least have learnt to tie their shoelaces and zip their pipe jeans up, and when needed, down as well.

Of course there are always girls, who are nice and wise, and who instinctively know it’s you boys who need rescuing, and when that happens, we know that the real dressing up starts, maybe a bit of dressing down as well.

Lost and Found in Transit

20 Sunday Jun 2010

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Helvi Oosterman

Moving from a big place to a smaller home is not easy. You are attached to your life-long collection of things; to your furniture’, books, paintings, to your “sendogu”, Japanese for beautiful but not necessary objects. We were given only five weeks to decide what to keep and what not. We came to the clever idea of renting something two weeks earlier than we had to, and decided to pack in a hurry and unpack slowly. This way we were giving away things at both ends; tipping and burning on the farm, and taking to charity shops discarded items from the new place.

The most delightful loss of all was the shedding of three kilos of my weight, through stress and hard physical work. The second best was ‘accidently’ misplacing hubby’s humble underwear collection into the new recycling bin. May I explain here that I gave up buying his underwear years ago. This was my way of keeping abreast with any possible extra marital happenings; you know what they say about men suddenly shopping for Calvin Kleins…

Being busy and too tired to cook we got into a habit of grabbing some take away food; Mc Donald’s, Korean noodles, Italian style fettuccine (is there any other kind), soggy fish and chips, and more horrors.  Opening the white box of noodles made me puke, and even Milo refused to touch my hamburger left-over’s. The tasteless pasta was swimming in tomato sauce, Italian Style is not the expression to use here. I always thought that take-out makes you fat, the reverse was happening with me. Better lose the urge to shop for convenience food, rather than lose the will to live.

I also gained useful skills these last few weeks. For example how to get in and out Kennard’s rental truck; you put your left foot on some pedestal and swing the right one inside the cabin whilst hanging onto some kind of railing inside. The nice manager, Richard, had cleaned the truck just for me. All very nice but the seat was so slippery I was afraid of sliding out. Some fat lady has sat there before and the seat kind of sloped towards the door …As husband was struggling with the multitude of gears and other truck paraphernalia, I kept quiet and gained some of my usual calmness by Buddhist meditations. All the Christian prayers ,learnt at Sunday school, came in handy when the driver accidently reversed instead of going forward at a busy intersection…

Now to the gains: no more muck for lunch, but quick shop for sourdough bread and some nice cheese, and after unpacking the car, the trailer or the truck, it was to our newly found  real pub and fantastic twelve dollar steak for dinner. The usual Shiraz was not quite right here, so a big schooner of beer it was. We haven’t been to a pub for years, nor have drunk beer anywhere. Steak and beer was a good combo and we have now become regulars at the Bowral Royal. The nice barman, Hugh comes to chat to us and we even have our pub-loyalty-cards.

Among the plusses is the safely moved Persian Delight; Milo did not crush it at the back of the car. My Kalanchoe was not so lucky.

The books are stacked in the garage in their milk crates; I left some out even there wasn’t much time for reading. I had saved all John Updike’s books when packing. I’m now so pleased to re-read  his wonderful early memoir ‘Self-Consciousness’, and I love it.

This is what Guardian says about it on the back page: ‘If he (Updike) has an unmelting splinter of ice at the heart, that is our good fortune. Who wants words as good as these with water?’

Mother’s Day

07 Friday May 2010

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Mother’s Day

Helvi Oosterman

This Sunday is Mother’s Day, but I feel it ought also be a celebratory day for Grandmothers, and let’s be generous and include the Pops, Diddas, Opas, Grandpas and Grands-peres, Abuelos and Isoisa too.

When grandson Jak was in six or seven, he supplied the following excellent reports of his maternal grandparents. They are of course about us:

Grandma is fun to play with.

Really good to me.

Always loving to me.

Never really angry to me.

Darling grandma.

Mostly always fun.

Always caring to me.

Grandpa is fun to play chess with.

Really nice to me.

Always loving to me.

Never angry at me.

Darling grandpa.

Perfect all the time.

Always caring to me.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you, and have a nice lunch with your extended families as well!

 

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

25 Sunday Apr 2010

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Helvi Oosterman

Last year I was in the bookshop in Newtown wanting to buy something with my mother’s day book voucher. Being keen on Scandinavian crime writers like Henning Mankell, I was looking for something by him. Of course, I normally only buy crime stories in second hand book shops or at markets; I tend to keep my money for more serious literature…

As I was in a hurry I ended up accidently buying the second one of the Stieg Larsson’s trilogy.  Only a few weeks ago I managed to get the first one of the series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

To my great delight the movie of the same title was showing in our neck of the woods, in Bowral. We decided the best time to see it would be 6.30 pm as people would be most likely getting ready to cook or to at least start planning their dinners. We had a nice early pub dinner and were ready at the cinema a few minutes of the movie starting.

To our horror the queue was very long and by the time it was our turn to buy the tickets the boy behind the counter announced that only ten tickets were available, and that he would return to us as soon as he had settled the masses. I of course pleaded that I could sit anywhere, on my own, no need to find a two-seater for us. The ten of us ended up sitting in the front row; it was the only way…

Now, I had not had time to finish the book, so I did not know who the killer was, anymore than how this book would end, so seeing the film was going to seriously affect my pleasure of finishing the story. The movie lasted two and half hours but it was not one minute too long for us.

The film is tighter than the book.  I thought all actors were good, and of course the actress playing the girl with the tattoos, Lisbeth Salander, was excellent. I also do not agree with Margaret from the Movie Show that Michael Nyquist wasn’t well cast in the  leading male role, he can bring me flowers anytime…

For me the movie was also a trip home or at least a visit in the neighbourhood; I loved the snow filled winter landscapes, the pine and birch forests, the old summer huts on the lakes, the carrying in the firewood, the endless coffee drinking, even the Swedish formality, the pressed field flowers, whose Latin names I still remember, after all, I had to do at least fifty of them during my lower high school summers.

For Gez and me it’s a must-see. Don’t take my word for it, see it yourself!

Belly Dancing and other related Activities

19 Friday Mar 2010

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By Helvi Oosterman

Our little cottage, or maybe I should call it a shack, is usually let to the nicest possible people. They rent it because they like the idea of staying  in somewhere old and charming; somewhat sloping floors, aged newspaper/wallpaper  still visible here and there and of course the slow combustion fire place and stacks of books and CD’s on the shelves …

Now all the lettings are done through internet, via e-mails rather than telephone.  At times those calls made it very hard to stay civil and to agree that the customer is always right. There was this loud and opiniated American woman who demanded to know how old the bed linen was. I patiently explained that we had only been in operation about two weeks, so sheets and towels were only fourteen days old. Next she wanted to find out the standard of the general cleanliness in the cottage. I don’t know what she expected me to say; maybe she was eager to know what time I had vacuumed the place, and what cleaning products I used in the bathroom.

“Your question is rather ambiguous as my standards of cleanliness might be a lot higher than yours”, I replied and quickly added that I didn’t like her style of questioning and that I was not going send any requested pamphlets to her either.  Huh, I got out that in one piece, thank god; she most likely would have sued us if she found a dog hair on the veranda cushions!

Another interesting call came from a young mum of twins; she enquired after possible horse riding places nearby.  At time the insurance costs for that kind of activity had sky-rocketed; many horse owners had also stopped the practice. I passed the news to her and she seemed most disappointed and that made me ask her how old her twins were.  “They will be two next month.” I did not say anything after that.

Still, horse riding is something that people like to do in the country; it was just the age of the boys that threw me. I can relate to this eagerness to get the kids into activities as it is what these modern mums do. I was flabbergasted when another lady asked me what was there to do for her husband who was supposedly easily bored. I felt like saying; “Join the club; I have one of those as well. I usually do a spot of belly dancing at nine after the kids have gone to bed.” 

Instead I sweetly rattled on about cycling, hill climbing, and swimming, boule playing or maybe just reading in front of the fire…

The next enquire came from this very nice Chinese girl who wanted to know what kind of animals we had on the farm.  I proudly listed the alpacas and their cute off spring, then the chickens, ducks, peacocks and what the kids seem to like best:  our three toddler friendly dogs. “What about sheep”, she asked. “Next door neighbour has thousands of them, just behind the nearest fence”, was my curt reply. 

She rang at least two more times, still asking about the sheep. Finally I couldn’t help it any longer and I had to ask:”Lee, what is it that you want do with those sheep, practice some shearing or what? “

She couldn’t stop laughing and when she came with her kids, all they wanted to do was to play with our lovely dogs…

What Not To Wear (for men)

23 Saturday Jan 2010

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By Helvi Oosterman

When popping into Pigs Arms for my daily pink drink, I have been alarmed by the gear you blokes wear at this watering hole. Room for improvement?  Yes, yes…

First of all you should know that the wearing of narrow-legged beige shorts with sandals and the knee socks is only permissible for very old blokes residing in Queensland. As we know it’s no use trying to change old dogs’ habits…none of you here of course do fit into this ‘too-old-category’.

Thongs should be flung out, not only for the aesthetic reasons but also because they give their wearer a funny walk. Whilst you are trying to keep them on, you have to carefully throw your legs about without bending your knees…not a good look!

Coloured shirts with white collars make you look like a nursing sister, even if you obviously aren’t. We gently leave Mr Turnbull to wearing his shirts, he’s suffered enough already. Most likely we have Lucy to blame here.

If you happen to covet a navy blazer adorned with ‘gold’ buttons, stop coveting!  Only dapper Italian males can wear them with panache. They have enough nous to pair them with grey flannelette trousers, and to throw a pale blue Armani shirt and a subtle silk tie by Hermes into the mix.

Tapered- down- wide-at-the-waist tough denim from a discount store is best left to elderly carpenters and country plumbers. Clearly to be avoided after hours…

Now we all know that President Bush had a knack of wearing cowboy boots with flair; he has the bandy long legs and the right kind of Texan gait the boots demand. Still, any shortie trying to add height by stepping into them should be stopped immediately.

Head-to-toe R M Williams gear is not making you look like a wealthy land owner, rather it gives you away as a city slicker who has recently purchased a minor hobby farm and who has not yet had time to dirty his hands on a hard-to-start tractor or on an obstinate generator.

Fluoro work wear is designed for folk in hazardous occupations, not for idle Telstra blokes heating their billy cans for morning tea break on the roadside. Nor is it meant for unemployed youth hanging around shopping malls.

Teaming trackie pants with black dress shoes is also verboten, and very long and very pointy shoes can only be worn by rebellious teenagers in black pipe jeans. I’m personally very tolerant and give my blessing when it comes to eccentric Finnish groups like the ‘Leningrad Cowboys’…

Red woollen jumpers, so loved by English gentlemen and by our own Curry Colonel, usually matched by equally ruddy faces, are best replaced by other colours; say navy, camel or even forest green. They are more complimentary to too-much-Shiraz affected gobs (sorry about the bad choice of words, I did not want too much repetition).

White shiny suits are a must, but only if you are an Albanian pop singer taking part in the Eurovision song contest. Long wavy black hair and white shoes are allowed to compliment the outfit. For everyone else, even for Bob Hawke white shoes are an absolute no-no, no matter what Blanche says.

White, black and sand coloured canvas loafers are highly recommended though, for young and old as suitable summer footwear.

Shortish navy or khaki elastized waist, drill shorts, worn by likes of Paul Hogan and Steve Irving are only passable on young well  built swimming pool maintenance workers. It also helps if they have short blond hair and a wide smile and if they wear acid/bleach damaged Blundstones to boot!

 

Mika Hakkinen and Matchsticks…

18 Friday Dec 2009

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By Helvi Oosterman

Feminism is not our major concerns these days; women’s liberation is something that smells of grannies; did you really burn your bras in them olden days asks many a confident granddaughter whilst giving a fleeting glance to check if going without support caused any sagging…

The daughters and granddaughters have more in their pay packet and they know whom to call when the boss pinches their bottom. Wishful thinking from their part if you ask me; I believe the once hurt male finds it safer to hang out with mates, rather than enter the bitchy world of females. It’s back to “like it was in granddad’s days “for boys.  They now watch the bullying blondes from the distance…

This all brings me to my first uplifting experience of sisterhood, the power of girls not spitting at each other but naturally becoming the shelter of each other. It was a long time ago; I was seven and in the first year of primary school. In those days it was thought as useful to teach knitting for both girls and for boys, something to do with dexterity, preparing the fingers for writing.

I was sitting on one of those two seater all-wood school desks, next to Mikko who had taken to knitting like a duck to water, and who was laughing at my somewhat loose stitches. The teacher was busy helping another student and I was struggling with tears and shame for so lacking in this most female art form.

To my and to the teacher’s great astonishment we all heard this loud and clear statement from the back of the class: “Helvi can knit better with match sticks than you Mikko with proper needles!” It was my second best friend Maija. It might have been a strategic call from her, hoping to be elevated to the first place in friendship stakes. Now, that’s the older and more cynical me thinking. Back then it dried my tears, it warmed my heart and soul; it made me happy. After the class had been settled and returned to previous calm, I remember thinking how my friend came to the idea of knitting with match sticks…

Mika Hakkinen

Well, Maija always was a creative girl and later on she became a writer of some fame and Mikko, if I’m to believe my sister’s Finnish newspaper clippings: a knitwear designer! He changed his name to more international Mika, riding on Mika Hakkinen’s fame, no doubt. I am being jealous now, I think.

Kisses and French Dressing

28 Saturday Nov 2009

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My remaining five  mysteries

By Helvi Oosterman

As you have all been waiting, with bated breath no doubt, for my remaining five mysterious things; no more suspense, here they are. To please dear Asty, I’ll start with something ‘sublime’ and leave the more mundane mysteries last:

6. Why are so many men cagey about shaking hands with females, whilst at the same time happy to pump their mates’ arms almost to a breaking point? Here I stand with my extended hand only  to be conveniently ignored. Are we girls a lower caste, or are the men afraid to appear too intimate with us. After all the French men hug you and plant not one but four kisses on one’s cheeks without fear of retribution. Swearing when there are females  present is another baffler. Don’t tell me the old story about ‘ladies’; we only have them in England, and they go together with the Lords…

7. I also like to know who ever came up with this unforgivable term, a ‘naughty’ or it’s brother ‘nookie’ when referring to making love. He wasn’t a Frenchman, that’s for sure.

8. We had lunch with some newish friends; the quiche was very good and the desert was divine. There was a salad to go with the main, but it wasn’t dressed, the vinaigrette was missing; what to do? Follow the hostess and sprinkle some oil from one bottle and a few drops of vinegar from another. But this is not the same as having a real vinaigrette made to proper quantities of oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, French mustard, pinch of sugar, some fresh herbs and even garlic if you so prefer. Is this two-bottle custom from middle ages?

9. While we are talking food I have to ask what is this calling some cheeses ‘tasty’? Are the other cheeses tasteless, perhaps? I have a husband who sometimes still buys those packets of pre-sliced processed ‘cheeses’, these slices are individually wrapped and at times very hard to get to. I suggest that he eat them with wrapping and all; they both taste the same more or less.

10. Now we are coming to the one mystery which I actually hate, really the only thing I hate, the flies. Why are there so many flies in the Australian bush? My dreams of picnics on the river were killed by millions of flies as soon as we took the tucker out. One Christmas I decked the table on the veranda with my best linen and tableware; as soon as the prawns arrived we all had to run inside as the flies swarmed from nowhere to attack the food. On my dad’s farm in Finland we did everything outside during summers, we had our coffee breaks, lunches and at times even dinners al fresco. We were not bothered by flies. I know the northern part of my fatherland is made inhabitable in summertime by mosquitoes , but that is a story for another time. I remember visting Bali when it was still pretty dirty and when the food scraps and other rubbish littered the place, and of course plenty of unclean water for flies to breed in, yet hardly any about…

I hope you can show some light into my little mysteries; be truthful or inventive, all explanations thankfully accepted!

Ten Mostly Mysterious Things to Me

21 Saturday Nov 2009

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By Helvi Oosterman

We make lists of our ten favourite books or movies frequently.  At dinner parties we have light hearted discussions about which ten items we would rescue from a burning house or what ten things we would need to comfort us if we had to spend a month alone on a lonely island.

There are things that have puzzled me in the past, some of these have been explained to me; most of them are utterly trivial, some irritating, and all of them just a source of amusement to me. Here they are, not in an order of importance as most of them are not overly important at all.

  1. Why do we dress baby boys in blue and girls in pink? Is it because we are shy about asking baby’s gender, or  that we don’t really feel like offering to change baby’s nappy to find out the sneaky way…
  2. Driving through lush green valleys of South Coast, I see a sign indicating that I have entered the City of Shoalhaven. Where , where…?  Not a house, nor a shop anywhere, plenty of cows, farmers on their tractors, but churches or city squares, no. Same in the city of Sydney, you arrive in a suburb of Campsie and I’m told in smaller writing: City of Canterbury. Maybe you have a town , thus named in England, but this is just another suburb and the only city here is Sydney.
  3. I’m in somewhere, in someone’s office to sign some transaction or other; I’m well equipped with my driver’s licence, my passport, my rates’ notice, my husband with all his papers. This is not good enough; you have to go and sign this in front of a justice of peace, there’s a dentist on the second floor, madam. No way am I going to interrupt a busy tooth doctor at work, he doesn’t know me any better than this lousy clerk. Time to throw a little tantrum and time to ask his name and to call the boss. The boss wants me out and signing happens without any dental surgeons at present.
  4. I’m a member of a local club and showing my card, any card really will do as I sometimes accidentally show healthcare card, and yet the girl at the desk waves me in. If you are not a member you are forced to sign some papers, put your address in, just to have a chance to eat a bowl   of pasta with a glass of white.
  5. I still sometimes enter a chemist shop, where the chemist himself, the mixer of potions, stands on something elevated, on a kind of podium. Why? Is he better than the newsagent bloke next door, humbly standing there at the level of his customers? Is the chemist keeping a sharp eye on shop lifters; you can spot them better from his lofty position?

Now, folks, I need a rest and a coffee break; these baffling things take a lot out of you. On your permission, I’ll stop now, and if you absolutely demand, I’ll reveal the remaining five…

What not to Wear.

09 Monday Nov 2009

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Just to get you boys here.

By Helvi Oosterman

You older folk here might remember the times, when anything Indian was all the rage; long cotton caftans for the girls and rough hewn grandpa shirts for the boys. Those were the days when your tie-dyed, floor length wrap-around skirts, not only kept your legs warm but at the same time swept the streets or maybe just the foot paths clean…

The council workers whistled at you, not because they admired your legs, but because you were doing their job for them. I remember wearing a long caftan when six months pregnant, looking rather majestic, almost a cross between Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland, Brunnhilde from Wagner’s Ring comes to mind. Hubby too suffered for his latest acquisition, sandals made from old car tyres with some brass buckles tagged on them that gave his feet bad rashes.

Many years later  the tights arrived on the fashion scene; welcomed by all comfort loving females, mums, daughters and grannies. They were taken up by skinny girls, fat sheilas, old and young, tall and short. My slightly underweight girlfriend gave me a backhanded compliment: “Helvi, you look good in them because you got big legs, I look like a starved baby bird in those”. Ah well, who needs enemies when your friends tell the truth about your short  comings. These tights, as you all know, were usually teamed up with oversized t-shirts or large tops  with huge shoulder pads. These pads were not sewn but usually Velcroed to shoulder seams and easily removed. On long train trips they could double up as pillows, after all some were almost bigger than average size Tontine.

Not all that long ago the fashionistas got inspired by India again; the bright colours were in and black was out. Tired of looking like Sicilian widows, we now took to rainbow colours, glitter and sequins like ducks to water. Many of us suburban mums   of course even looked like ducks, waddling in our tiered skirts and heavily sequined tops weighing us down. All those vivid colours that so flatter darker skinned slim Indian girls, made us look like stumpy Christmas trees.

Oops, almost forgot about those hipster jeans, maybe it is because I really want to forget about them; all those tummies and bottoms bared, and in country towns still bravely exposed, even  when the city girls have moved to the” waist highs” a long ago.

This morning I had to go to town early for an appointment. Popping in to buy a newspaper at the mall, I noticed a group of young girls still in their nighties hanging around. I assumed they had had some kind of sleep out or a pyjama party and were on their way home. The polyester swishing could be heard as they walked past. Later on I came to realise they were not nighties,but this season’s new look: floor-length summer dresses that reminded me of those caftans. Only the caftans were cotton and pleasant to wear, these long  poly dresses must be as hot as a visit to a sauna.

I feel like a cooling swim is needed right now!