All about the Dress

I've been doing housewifey things this morning. Darren's new job means he can occasionally drop Ella at nursery, leaving me free to slope about the flat in pyjamas watching daytime telly over the ironing board until lunchtime; my life is like a dream.

Anyway, I love watching daytime telly in Australia. Firstly, the morning programme on channel 7 (which is Australia's least intellectual channel) comes from a studio in Martin Place in the city centre. The backdrop is a huge plate glass window and as you can probably imagine, this attracts a fair number of tourists and moronic Sydneysiders into turning up and waving and sometimes even carrying banners, which all reminds me of the good old days when Richard and Judy broadcast from the Albert Dock rather than the south bank and the scousers used to stand outside peering in.

Secondly, there's the liberal use of the word "amazing" in relation to the morning's stories, as in after the break we'll tell you the amazing story of how these newly-weds escaped a burning car on the Princes Highway and here's an amazing story of a newsreader in the UK who managed to read the evening bulletin despite the fact he had food poisoning. If you ever watched The Fast Show on the BBC, you might remember the supposedly Australian character who fronted a TV show called "That's Amazing". Now I know where they got the inspiration.

And then there's the stuff you learn about Australian attitudes. At the gym last week I saw the results of a survey indicating that only 67% of Australians thought it was acceptable to breastfeed in public, which I think is incredible, no, hang on, amazing.

This morning they were testing out artifical grass on channel 7, you know, because they're having trouble growing the real stuff since they buggered up their water systems and turned Australia into the world's biggest barbeque (which is the tag line for Victoria Bitter's current commerical). And then they bring on this crisis counsellor who's going to help a bride-to-be because she's having some wedding-related trauma and her bridesmaid has written into the show.

So the bride-to-be in sitting there in her jeans and white tee-shirt and the make-up girls have done a half-arsed job on her face, which makes her look kind of daggy but has the benefit of making the crisis counsellor look twice as organised and glamorous and three times as patronising, in the style of someone I used to work with, the kind of woman who crossed her legs in staff meetings, seemingly unaware she was flashing her underwear at the room (to the point it was almost necessary to wear sunglasses).

Anyway, she tells us this story about how she saw her dream wedding dress in a shop in Sydney, you know, the sort she'd dreamed about when she was a little girl growing up with nothing but Skippy the Bush Kangaroo to give her hope she'd make it out of the backwater country town she'd lived in. But she couldn't afford the dress, it was out of her price range (a term Jackie keeps using in relation to houses on the north shore and if I hear it again I'll punch her). So she'd had this idea about having the dress made up as a copy by some dress-makers in Bangkok because she was going on holiday there (at which point I wondered why she hadn't spent the holiday money on the dress if she was really so bothered about it, but there you go).

So she goes to Bangkok (and they flash the photos up on the screen to add to the story) and they measure her up and choose the fabric but when the dress-maker sends her a photograph of the dress half-finished it's not what she had in mind at all and she starts referring to it as the lollipop dress because it makes her look like a lollipop, though we can't actually see photos of this because she's due to get married in a fortnight and wants to keep the lollipop under wraps so her fiance doesn't see it.

"You'll be lucky if he goes through with it now he knows you'll be walking up the aisle dressed as a bloody lolliop" I said aloud to the telly, the hard-luck story unfolding being one of those stories that makes you shout advice and good common sense at the screen (or is that just me?).

Well it's obvious how all this is going to turn out and sure enough the presenter comes over even more patronising than the would-be knicker-flasher and says

"Okay Darl, well you know your good friend and bridesmaid Kerry-Anne wrote into the show and told us all the story about the drama with the dress"

The bride-to-be nodded.

"Well she also told us what a lovely girl you are and how you're always doing things for other people and you never ask anything in return"

The bride-to-be is beaming now. She know's what's going to happen.

"That dress is in the bag sister!" I shout at the telly, putting the iron down so I can concentrate on her reaction when they bring it out.

"Well, we've got a surprise for you! We've teamed up with the Peppers Resort and Spa in the Blue Mountains and we're sending you and your fiance for three nights accomodation, all meals included. The Peppers Resort and Spa is a five star property, recently renovated, offering deluxe romatic get-aways, spa treatments from world-trained beauty therapists and first class cuisine, all nestled in the heart of the stunning Blue Mountains National Park".

She might well have been reading direct from the brochure because the screen filled with the hotel's promotional slideshow, images of couples in the romantic jacuzzi and the romantic gardens and warming their backsides on the romantic open fires. And then they cut back to the bride, who was wearing a frozen smile and whispering something through gritted teeth about Kerry-Anne being dead when she got out of this half-arsed make-up.

"She wanted the dress" I shouted at the telly. "Where's the bloody dress?".

I don't like GMTV and I don't like Fiona Phillips but Fiona Phillips would have given her the dress.