this little piggie went to market

a comfy cot, a sarong and this note were waiting for me

It’s a strange and amazing experience—planning a shotgun weekend away to a country you’ve never been to before, buying a plane ticket to an island you probably couldn’t point to on an unlabelled map, packing your backpack with little more than your swimsuit, magazines and a toothbrush, hitching a drunken ride to the airport Friday after work and nearly missing your flight, arriving at your destination without a visa, hoping to find some guy named ‘Ketuk’ waiting outside the airport with your name on a placard and a smile on his face, cruising away from the hustle and bustle at a snail’s pace into a suburb that has even Ketuk turned around, breathing in and trying to freeze-frame the unfamiliar sounds and smells and sights, suddenly seeing a familiar figure on the side of the main street with his arms outstretched, jumping out of the cab into the warm embrace of your friends—and feeling like you’ve come home.

YESS WE CAN!

update from the lovely market moles

Word up friends of the Happy Yess! Market (located at DVAA)

Rain Rain Go Away

If the sun is shining, the Happy Yess! Market ... now located at DVAA 56 Wood St, is on THIS SUNDAY 3 April 2011. 2-6pm. BAM!

Even if it's torrentially raining, we're still having a market this Sunday.  Bring your gumboots and emergency ponchos and get involved. Monsoonal squall, you don’t scare me!

If there is a Cyclone over Darwin we may be forced to postpone.  Everyone start doing your anti-cyclone weather dance right now.

If you’re not sure, contact a Mole;

·         happyyessmarket@gmail.com

·         Clara: 042210324

·         Frances: 0431811969

·         Bry: 0414919302

Fun things that you should know for Sunday

We have about 20 really interesting stalls for you this weekend.  Selling all sorts of neat stuff and showing off the talents of Territorians.  On Sunday you should bring your;

·        Cashola.  There are no ATM facilities.  Plus I’m sure the stallholders will love you infinitely if you could break your pineapple before you arrive.

·        Treadly.  Tim might teach you how to fix it/ do it for you if you look hopelessly at him.

·        Sense of adventure. We have Hoola Hoop classes and filming of 60 second dance pieces for Fist Full of Films.

·        Picnic blanket and appetite.  This market there will be cake and home made dips.  Find yourself a possie on the lawn and picnic w your mates.

·        Fashionista friends.  Once again we’ll have second hand couture plus a mob of talented artists selling you their handmade jewls.

·        Eye for a bargain.  Everything is a bargain at the Happy Yess! Market. Art, craft, jewellery, fun activities and treats for a pinch.

·        Art critic moleskin notebook and beret.  The studios of DVAA will be open so you can see what the local artists of Darwin have been up to. The exhibition called “Butterscotch Clouds” will be showing.

·        Gumboots and emergency ponchos.  See above re weather.

·        Maraca’s and guitars.  We might still have a few spots for buskers.  Got talent?  Show me! Find a mole when you arrive and we’ll sort you out with a time to play.

·        Family.  Because we love your family and are a kid friendly event.

Please Please Please

Spam this message on to all of your friends.  The Happy Yess! Market is going large.

Email us at happyyessmarket@gmail.com if you want to have a stall at the next market (1 May 2011)

Have FUN!

--

The Happy Yess Market Moles

Bry, Clara and Frances 

x 

jokes on me

for almost 20 years i have been telling the same lame but highly amusing joke. it is a great joke. the best. so good in fact that in 1995 keith faulkner wrote a children's pop up book about it. it is called... the wide - mouthed frog

i remember when i first heard it... lord mayor’s summer camp, mornington peninsular, the year was 1990, I was 10 years old and suffering from a colossal sized crush on a camp leader.

his name was fynn. he had curly blonde hair, green eyes, and a dreamboat smile that made your heart flutter. i was a scraggle berry tom boy, freckled (sunscreen was just coming in) and rosy cheeked with a huge gap in my front teeth. it wasnt just our age difference that kept us apart.

we were all gathered around the fire one night, roasting marshmellow and some of the leaders were telling scary stories. suddenly it was fynn’s turn to tell a tale. the croud went silent. all eyes mesmorised by his angelic face glowing in the amber light of the fire. i lent across to get closer to him and singed my arm hair in the heat. i didn't care.

the story began...

'there once was a wide mouth frog who lived all the way at the bottom of a paddock in a quiet little pond. the wide mouth frog hadnt spoken to anyone else in years. one day he decided to venture out.

 

soon after he hopped from his home he ran into a platypus and said "ello i'm the wide mouth frog what do you do?" to which the platypus replied "well I live on land and in the water, and i am very clever". "oh that's nice" then he hopped along.

soon he came upon a fluffy looking bird  to who he introduced himself to immediately. 'ello i'm the wide mouth frog, what do you do?'.

'hmmmm' said the bird 'well i use my wings to fly through the sky' 

'well what do you know' scoffed the wide mouth frog as he jumped away.  


as he was hopping along the wide mouth frog ran into a friendly looking field mouse. 'oh hello there, i'm the wide mouth frog, what do you do?'

'i eat cheese' exclaimed the happy mouse.

'that's very good' nodded the frog.

'i eat cheese' said the mouse again for good measure. the frog hopped away after that but i dont think the mouse noticed.

all over the land the wide mouth frogged jumped and hopped and bounced and tranced. he was having the best time.

on his journey home the wide mouth frog came across a menancing looking crocodile. he didnt have time to introduce himself properly as he was eating a fly so all that came out was 'ello there, what do you do?'

'i'm in charge of eating all the wide mouthed frogs in this area'

'you dont see many of them round these days do you?'

funny. right! i had to change the joke up a little to match the pictures but you get it! right!

we should all be children in deep crushes for ever.

 The End.

 

if only it was this easy...

its okay if stubby holders are your friends

good ol stubbie holders eh. who knew you could get so much enjoyment from a cheap piece of screen printed wetsuit sewed together?

i come from a long line of beer drinkers. real beer drinkers that is. none of this imported, cant pronounce it properly, i'm only having 1, designer bottle, low carb, low alcohol, light bubbles with a twist of lime bullshit. twist of lime! we're not in mexico anymore toto.

there is only one way to say beer in my family and that's 'VB'. those tasty hand grenades are unbeatable. but its not just about the beer. its about the culture of drinking beer. that fair dinkum sit down feet up kind of relaxation after a hard half day's work.

beer isn't beer unless it almost frozen. that's why, in our family, beer had it's own fridge. those kind of temperatures don't go down too well with bowling ball bogan lettuce and its distant cousin celery. uh uh.

if we were having a party the beer was moved out of the fridge and into iced packed eskies. as we all know, especially living in darwin, nothin tastes crisper than a cold one fresh off the ice. whoa oh oh its magic.

so you got your beer and its not only ice cold, its covered with small chunks of ice like a polar bear waking up from its chilly slumber. problem... how in jack frost's name do you hold this?

you could set it down on the table and watch it sweat an olympic size pool of water moistening elbows and shirt sleeves in its slippery wake. wait. hang about. why dont ya chuck some of this spare bit of wetsuit round its belly and keep ya hand from losing all circulation and put a bit underneath, catch some of that dripstone cliffs? great idea mate. you bloody beauty.

my dad got an old bit of piping, sealed off one end, cut a stubbie holder sized hole above the seal, nailed it to the wall. its stubbie holder dispenser. it fits like 10 regulation sized holders. ripper.

our humble little household they mean more, so much more. when my better half and i did a road trip from melbourne to darwin i took one photo a 1/2 hour in. then the camera went flat. we had no cord to recharge. dang.

oh i know. at every roadhouse, road stop, pub, club, hotel, motel, gift store, op shop, tip shop, tire repair shop (my fault) we would buy a stubbie holder to remember fondly (except that last place) all the fine establishments we visited to eat, drink, sleep or bomb the dunny.

what a fine collection we had saved. some would call it a practical photo album.

what's the moral of this story?

drink cold beer. tastes so good, once it hits your lips.

peas and carrots

we are the lamps
born ready
to roll

marketeering nancies
crafty collection
purple pant

high fives
switcharoos
funny magoos

come with us
on a journey
to the land of imagination

dont worry be happy yess markets are baaaaaaaaack...

winning

after a long hiatus i'm out of hibernation and refreshed with innovative ideas and new stories to tell.  for example, last week i went on that trip to vietnam.

we ate dog.  we drank moonshine with marinating cockroaches inside.  we splashed out on a private tour guide, personal driver and an automobile (if you've been to vietnam you'll understand how the latter is perhaps the most indulgent luxury) and journeyed to a mountain-top lake in a national park of the far northern highlands.

we saw uncle ho's embalmed body.  you're not allowed to photograph it.  you'll just have to take my word for it; he's aging well.

we started drinking local beer by noon each day and kicked on until at least 10 pm (midnight darwin time.  very extreme).  we visited mediocre museums and feigned inquisitive interest (but we were drunk so we probably weren't as convincing as we thought). we sat on plastic stools that could have fit inside a dollhouse and ate pho at roadside vendors.  we drank at bia hois and met wine brokers and stock brokers and listened to stories about what its like to grow up in vietnam. 

we observed capitalism in its purest form and indulged in tailor-made goodies, wooden instruments and counterfeit dvds that don't play properly.  for the first time in my life, i treated myself to a stint in a five star french colonial hotel on the banks of a river including gourmet breakfast, room service dessert, lobby cocktails and four hours being pampered by three staff at the spa.

we woke up too early and couldn't sleep on the planes.  we drank water from the tap, had ice in our drinks, forgot to take our malaria tablets and didn't suffer too many consequences.  we didn't miss our phones or our regular internet access or facebook or even this blog.

we accidentally dropped our camera and bought a used [stolen] camera that had been fixed up [barely works] to document our trip and map out our blurry memories for years and decades and eons to come.

we had the time of our lives.  we spent more than one hour together, just the two of us, for the first time in a very, very long time.

we made ourselves tired and we were very pleased to arrive home.

home.