Dialogue: Lipstick alone is not enough

By ROANNE PARKER

I was thinking about how tricky it can be to decide on a nice gritty subject to write about. Because that's a fact, it can be tricky.

If I'm premenstrual, I'm the first to admit that I will either tend towards a nice warm soak in the jacuzzi of self-pity, or the whinge, whinge, whinge. I have to arrest my cynical little fingers sometimes as they whizz around my keyboard flinging nasty bits left, right and centre.

No one likes a whinger, do they? I've just read a great book by Nick Hornby which features a bloke who is a columnist for the local paper. His column is called "The Angriest Man in Littleton" (or some other place, but as I've lent the book to my sister I can't check).

As you would imagine, he is always angry, writing about how much he loathes travelling on transport with smelly children and how he detests all populist culture, things like that. Of course, I countered wittily to myself, he would be fine if he would just move to Auckland where we have no public transport or culture to speak of.

But no one wants to read about the same old thing all the time. I'm rather lucky that I have a life with a textbook case of multiple personality disorder on which to draw.

We have Roanne the mum, and Roanne the employee, the boss, the dreamer, the writer, the marketer, the girlfriend, the former wife, the sister, Roanne the daughter, the occasionally drunken best friend and just me, the very average woman who laughed until she snorted at Bridget Jones and who needs to lose 5kg and, very occasionally, a bad attitude.

So usually it's no problem for me to come up with a bit of grist for the mill. Still, I find myself sniffing around for inspiration all over the place.

I have always been a column reader. I think it's a bit like opera; you either do or you don't. But I find it inordinately unhelpful to read other columnists. Either they have such a great idea that I desperately want to plagiarise it, or they are miserably dull.

There are only so many lighter sides to a subject, and there seem to be a heck of a lot of columnists in the world.

I try to take notes as I sail through my days. I have lots of scraps of paper around my desk with little phrases on them. I jot things down when I think of them but I'm not organised enough to have a notebook, so they tend to be on receipts.

I have lots of those. But then I get stuck wondering what on earth I was thinking when I scrawled, "It's only a matter of time before I hear of ... " (pen runs dry).

A lot of my scrawls are observations about daily life, but many will never make it on their own.

For example, since I promise I will never write an entire column about lipstick, I must ask you (as per back of my Foodtown receipt from last weekend) why it isn't your favourite lipstick until it runs out, and why you forget what it's called when you are faced with Ms Pancake at the beauty counter and come home with Naked Blush No 2, which is so far from the Nude Flush No 22 you wanted that you feel like someone else entirely when you wear it.

Still, I love writing about all sorts of things, and I love your feedback even more than that. As my 8-year-old just said to me about another matter entirely, it's not a joke if nobody laughs.

Those of you committing these columns to memory (that's all of you, I'm sure) will recall that I was complaining that it had been a long, long time since I had received a real live letter.

Well in the ensuing weeks, I have had handmade envelopes, glittery writing, calligraphy from a calligraphy club, and a lovely letter from Denis, who has always loved writing letters and has been doing it since he courted his wife 50 years ago.

I had apologies from my no-good girlfriends in Melbourne who started all that angst, three pages from Mum and even a letter from my cousin, for goodness sake. How many people get letters from their cousins? They were all lovely and I thank you. My cup runneth over.

So that's it then. After a great deal of consideration I've decided that this week's column is about how it has been a long, long time since strangers sent me money. A long time. I can't even tell you how long.

No, forgive me, I'm just being a bit silly. Send a blanket to the City Mission instead.