I miss Paul Keating

I spent four and half years in Australia. It was, if you'll forgive my Dickensian description, the best and worst of times: a beautiful country where I couldn't get a job, a romantic place where my husband became my ex.

At least I can still go back in time and remember the ex-Prime Minister, Paul Keating. He was no less than genius with insults. They've been archived here at the Paul Keating Insults Archive.

Here are a few quotes to whet your appetite.

On now-deceased Labour politician, Jim McClelland (over the phone):

"That you Jim? Paul Keating here. Just because you swallowed a fucking dictionary when you were about 15 doesn't give you the right to pour a bucket of shit over the rest of us."

On Prime Minister John Howard (insults traded before Howard was elected PM):

"What we have got is a dead carcass, swinging in the breeze, but nobody will cut it down to replace him."

"...the brain-damaged Leader of the Opposition..."

"I do not want to hear any mealymouthed talk from the Member for Benelong."

Odd dreams

Last night, I had a dream with John Savelle making his usual frustrating appearance. I hadn't dreamed about him in quite a while. I guess I was due.

In this dream, I'm in the rural UK with the husband. I've told him bluntly that I want to find John and say hello, and he's okay with this. I track John down; he's playing football with some other men. When he sees me, he is not happy and backs away. I retreat to a small house, only to find my husband cutting his hair in a most unattractive way. I take the shaver away from him before he totally ruins his hair and try to comb it back into an acceptable style.

Later we leave, only to see John's wife arriving. There's a polite exchange of greetings - I can't remember what was said except that I was assuming that his wife would be relieved to see me with a husband in tow. But I was unhappy that John had not been civil to me during the visit.

As usual, I'm not sure what this dream meant. But it reinforces one of the few facts of life I'm totally, 101% certain about: we don't choose who we love.

Marriage vs romance

During my 40+ years, I've been married twice. The first marriage was to someone over 20 years my senior; he was very English in his outlook and unfortunately unwavering. His inability to apologise for anything, combined with his habit of blaming our problems on my depressive episodes (instead of his own confessed alcoholism), played a large role in our breakup.

Husband Two is quite the opposite of Husband One. He apologises too much and blames himself for the most minor problems. He has odd ideas about money. But he still has qualities that keep me married to him - at least for the time being.

So I think we can safely say that my husbands are very different. They don't even look the same - the first was tall and thin, the second is an inch shorter than me and verging towards what he calls "chunky". But the same symptom still arose after a couple of years. I wasn't really interested in matrimonial sex anymore.

After looking at my own relationships, plus those of a lot of other women (esp. those who, like me, don't have children), I feel that my suspicion that marriage extinguishes passion, and while familiarity may not breed contempt, it certainly breeds boredom.

So why are so many of us dying to get married, even if we've already been there once or twice before? And why are so many men as desperate to be married as women?

My guess is that the wedding event is perceived as the ultimate romantic gesture, and a lot of us are - either secretly or publicly - romantic people. I have no qualms admitting to a deep romantic streak. But while the wedding is a romantic event, the marriage isn't. The feeling of discovery, that rush of emotion that initially drew us to our partners, eventually fades. It was fun to wear an expensive white dress and a veil, and to be the center of attention, but now you're at home wishing your spouse would quit losing the TV remote, or leaving empty soda bottles all over the kitchen, or elbowing you in the middle of the night.

Married people also tend to let themselves go. Perhaps not physically, but in other ways. Women quit cooking, men quit opening car doors.

Can someone tell me what's wrong with me?