I will never:
1. Bungee, shouting yolo
2. Use the acronym yolo, except in this poem
3. Scuba at sea (it feels like choking even in the swimming pool)
4. Have a dress made in Paris
5. Be thin enough to have a dress made in Paris
6. Be rich enough to have…well you know by now
7. Crunch ortolan with teeth of prey
8. Tango in Buenos Aeries wearing orange tango shoes
9. Tango
10. Waltz like that sweeping scene in War and Peace that prefigured the last glorious flyover (in the film)
11. Forget that I visited Tolstoy’s estate and donned slippers fluffy as guinea pigs to shine the wooden floors
12. Waltz like Cinderella dropping a shoe like a solitary glassy dandruff
13. Open for Australia in cricket
14. Play for Australia in any sport whatsoever (though croquet is not yet kicked into touch)
15. (Censored)
16. Fly in a fighter plane
17. Set foot on the moon
18. Set anything on Mars
19. Escape the surly bonds of earth, or the merry ones, for that matter
10. Skydive screaming yolo (see bungee above)
11. Appear on the cover of any magazine, with the possible exception of Poets ‘R Us
12. Have another child
13. Be a defender put on Buddy Franklin
14. Be an attacker trying to evade Cyril Rioli
15. Play AFL at all
16. (Censored)
17. Climb a mountain higher than Mount Kosciusko (Mount in Australia means hill elsewhere)
18. Own a gun
19. Shoot a gun
20. Hold a gun
21. Wear sunglasses like Tom Cruise in Top Gun
22. Jump (I can’t let both feet leave the ground at once which arguably ties in with my inability to mark Buddy Franklin)
23. Start a blog comment or a post with ‘Speaking as a Mum’
24. Play a musical instrument competently
25. Enjoy a ten-volume fantasy series
26. Write a ten-volume fantasy series
27. Reread À la recherche du temps perdus (I perdued enough temps doing it once)
28. Mistake Jonathon Franzen for Tolstoy
29. Mistake Richard Dawkins for Reason
30. Confuse faith with certainty
31. Eat dog
32. Eat cat
33. Eat durian (brain set in Anglo too early)
34. Forget what it is to be depressed
35. Suicide (that is a prayer)
36. Give up alcohol
37. Understand fatalism like a Russian
38. Write a poem about feelings which includes the word ‘weep’
39. Attach a sticker to my car that says ‘I grew here. You flew here’
40. Whinge about school fees (although you should see the last bill)
41. Forget what it is to miscarry.
42. Forget what it is not to miscarry.
43. Write a book called Carrie (I think it’s been done)
44. Judge a book by its genre
45. Sell the film-rights to anything I write
46. (Censored)
47. Forget how luck has lifted me like a player to a mark (compare and contrast with 22)
48. Remember my anniversary easily
49. Regret the final time I menstruate
50. Forgive those who (censored)
51. Write a really long poem (longer than this one)
52. Lift as much as the young men in the gym, even those with execrable form
53. Become obese again (also a prayer)
54. Drive a fast lap at Mount Panorama in Holden or Ford (or even Peugeot)
55. Think that owning a European car is a sign of sophistication
56. Give up wanting a Citroën DS
57. Engage in lively debate about computer software
58. Lose my interest in sex
59. (Censored) (Sorry that was predictable as the shearing of narrative sheep)
60. Vote National
61. Start a sentence with ‘I’m not a racist, but…’
62. Ignore cruelty
63. Be brave
64. See a cockatoo without smiling like a crest
65. Surf
66. Learn to listen without nodding or frowning or making little noises (I can be annoying)
67. Remember names
68. Speak fluent French
69. Read À la Recherche du temps perdus in French (It keeps rearing up though and recapturing me)
70. Read Tolstoy in Russian
71. Forget the liberation of escaping school and starting university
72. Use the word ‘undergraduate’ as an insult
73. Listen to music as avidly as when I huddled under my blankets with a transistor
74. Tell young people that they don’t know how lucky they are
75. Direct a film
76. Star in a film
77. Watch an entire Academy Awards ceremony
78. Try cocaine
79. Recite Monty Python at parties
80. Memorise all the characters in Game of Thrones (for they have names)
81. Throw myself into any social situation without a little bit of me sitting on my shoulder, half parrot and half albatross, warning and criticising
82. Write a perfect sonnet (limerick is quite likely)
83. Become a mindless gatekeeper at the Estate of Poesie (aka Downtown Abbey)
84. Write a poem without a single hint of pun
85. Cook a really good meal
86. Sell as many copies of a book as the worst-selling cookbook in the land, the land being Kyrgyzstan
87. Visit Kyrgyzstan, though I have been to Uzbekistan (boasty boasty cheese on toasty)
88. Eat bacon
88. Have maple syrup on that bacon
89. Write a cookbook called Pigging Out or Snout and Proud
90. Become a knitter
91. Wear a homemade beanie on the front of my bacon cookbook
92. Forget the taste of sausages unpolluted by tofu
93. Finish this poem before lunch
94. Include the word ‘weep’ in this poem
95. Include a recipe in this poem, except in as much as it is a recipe
96. Pass this recipe on as an heirloom
97. Worry too much about my appropriateness or market or sales
98. Lose my love of words (another prayer)
99. (Censored)
100. End this poem with a wise saw or a blunt one
So, to sum up:
Yolo. Yolo. Yolo.
(B
u
n
g
e
e
!)
P.S. Cottier is a hologram currently perched on top of a Christmas tree. She is cheaper than an angel and closer than a star.