Cat Devinie has certainly lived a life. I've never met anyone as open and sure of herself as dev She blazes her own trail unapologetically, which is a very exciting energy to be around. Time with Cath feels dangerous and full. Creativity is her life force. And she wears so many hats she could probably use a.
Few more heads.
Writer, comedian, mother, lover, bipolar, dyslexic ADHD, cat lover, feminist, entrepreneur, cyclist, marriage avoid atheist.
The list goes on.
Chrissy, casters, meet the irrepressible and unforgettable Cath, Devinie, and hot and hot. I was going to say any more labels that I may may have forgotten.
Actually, the most important label that I identify as I am Hoburg's fifth most popular milk. Now I had to pause for a seconds. Now I'm just going to again I am Coburg's fifth most popular milf, because I have heard rumors that I have just jumped up to fourth. But I don't want to get ahead of myself.
Who's number one, two, three, And you know Claire.
Bot It she's number one, right, of course, there's three other people who you won't know Melouise Walker, Genevieve Costigan and Bridget Costello, and that has me as fifth. But I'm always trying to eat my way up.
Does Bridget Costello know that? Oh you may have usurped her in for number four?
Well, who knows who it is? But I have heard that I'm on the way up with a bullet. But you know who knows?
Yes, Clementine Ford live in Koburg.
She has, but she doesn't now. Oh, okay, I was sixth. Then Jay got it, she's got it. Yeah, she's eaten her way like off that off that page of the Melways, there was a point where your melway's Yeah. I didn't know that that was a Melbourne word. I just thought all street directories were called melways. They're not, they're not.
And all there's a UbD, there's a great grease.
All flavored milk was called big em. Anywhere in the world you could just walk in and get a chocolate breagam. I mean, we just these kind of things. Have you seen those maps in Australia that show a lot of our terms and how they changed depending on where you are on the wold? Yes, well, in the world meaning Australia, so bathers. Yes, hogs swimmers Cozzi so bathers is one of the words that changes potato cake potato cake. Some
people call them like your potato scallop. I know, it's like potato fritter.
Yes, you knew that, Yes I did know that.
How have you not told people?
Because potato cakes slash scallops slash fritters. Wherever you were listening from is my favorite food of all time? Oh yeah, my absolute favorite, hands down. I turned fifty recently and work organized a birthday cake for me, which was just a pile of three hundred potato cakes.
I mean, that's love.
It is depending on how good they are.
That were excellent, but there is a huge.
Spectrum of quality of potato cakes. I agree that there's not just one potato cake.
The great thing about a potato cake is often they do this miraculous thing where they multiply without you asking.
Oh I love.
I think I love that the most about them, apart from the salty crispiness. I love that if you order two, you're getting three, and you never not get three.
No, no, no, that's right.
Always. It's like an unspoken rule.
It's a kind of a generosity, love language. Yes, so potato cakes bathers the middy schooner pot situation. But another one that might blow your mind, but you can't. You're across everything, Chris is one you are, You're quite the devil.
No, you might direct trick me here.
So if you go to Bunnings and you are hungry, what do you buy there?
With sausage in bread?
Right? But in other parts of Australia that's not what you call it.
No, they call it a sausage sandwich.
They also call it a sausage sizzle. Like they call that not like we are going to a sausage sizzle and we are going to have a sausage bread. They will call that going. Do you want a sausage sizzle?
No, that's wrong though. The sausage sizzle is the destination.
God. If you think that's wrong, way till what I'm gonna say next? Aha, you here already someplace in Australia call it a hot dog?
What boiled? It's a frank in a roll.
Do you know what I think you should tell those people? I think we get in a car, we charter a plane, and we get and we tell them how wrong they.
Are I feel like we're really isolating a lot of people right now.
People get We said, hey.
Before I came on here, I said, is there anything I can't say? But I didn't know. I went through some things that have gotten journalists sacked recently, broadcasters canceled. She said anything anything, say whatever you want.
I didn't know that you were going to go into sausages and bread. Okay, now you said recently. I follow your Instagram religiously. I love you on it, and please follow kath Devinie on Instagram.
She's a genius. And I want to talk to you about this Panatona situation.
Of course you do.
Have you been banned from your local supermarket over crimes to Panatona?
It's unclear, and I have written to head off as to find out, because there was a quite an unhinged manager who kind of was saying, if you video again, it's trespassing the cops in your band. And also I kept asking questions, asked responding to him saying, do you know how many phone calls we've got? I've said know how many? So I'm not entirely sure, but I think we need to back up and explain to people. I agree in a nutshell.
Catherine noticed at her local IgA that even after Christmas, the panatona had not been discounted.
Right now, there's some background to this. So firstly, panatona is shit, and anyone who says it's not is lying.
I love panatona. I love it.
Do you eat it all year? No?
I eat it just for Christmas?
If you loved it, wouldn't you do it a little bit more?
You can't get it all year. It's like saying I like hot cross buns all the time. I would, but you can't get them in Bruntwick.
You can because there's always regifting to be done. So I am anti panaton because I think it's overrated. It doesn't know whether it's like a cake or a bread. It's a stale past of confusion. Should be right up your alley or embraced. Yeah, it's like, I'm pretty progressive, chrissy. I think that that is well known and that's how people see me. But I'm sorry, panatony. Make up your mind and anything that can last in a tin for like twenty four forty eight months and look exactly the same,
I'm sorry. I'm not doing it. That is unusual. I respect my body too much. We've all seen that stuff with like the Macas living. Yes, I love Maccas as much as the next person, but Macas are not pretending to be anything other than what they are, whereas Panatony is wrapped up. It's gotta fucking sell a phane and a tin and a bow.
It's a celebratory bread.
I think I've got a bit more right to talk about this than you because my children are half Sicilian, so I am sexually transmitted Italian. But what you're doing is racism towards me, and I am triggered and I'm going to have to go to my safe space. And you are canceled, all right, But because I've signed a contract, we will continue. Thank you for your time, Catherine. Everything Panatwani sucks, right, but my local IgA does not suck. And my local ij in Brunswick is really well known
for reading the room, really well known. It pivots its swerves. It's got the fair trade, the African food, the gluten free, the vegan, it's got everything you want. And they just they because the area is a melting pot and it's constantly melting and swirling and it just changes you hear about things. Yeah, you hear about things and suddenly it's there.
It's like I see something on Instagram, but it's almost like IJ goes into my brain and goes, oh, yeah, there's that cookie dough that comes from that little Adelaid bakery and there it is, there, it is. So I was quite surprised. I mean also considering the cost of living. Right, So the cost of living is binding everyone, including wealthy people, which I am not, but you are right, and everybody seems to be very aware of it. And I am
anti Christmas. I'm a conscientious objector of Christmas. Right, But I was in my local IgA on Christmas Eve and I saw this wall of panatona right that Elon Musk could see from however far up his ass he lives, right, and there were Dolce and Gabbana Panatoni for ninety five dollars. Yeah right now, that is that's not the vibe of the Brunswick IgM not. And this is the thing. But if you cannot wait to hear you what the fuck you're going to say to phinished.
Tins, Just say so, you've walked in, you've seen that, and that's your immediate reaction. Me as a Panatoni lover also walks into the supermarket. I see that and I think it's Christmas Eve. Never pay retail that's going to be at least half price in two days. My desire for panatono, which is great, can wait forty eight hours and save fifty dollars.
And so I was, I thought, I can't wait to pop in on Boxing Day and see how much peez fifty ten dollars a ten you know, so it's in a good changer banatin which a lot of people love if you're into that kind of thing. And it was ninety five dollars for five hundred grams. Okay, so go with me, people. Numbers not my big skill, not great on mass, but even I know that makes it that Panatony one hundred and ninety dollars a kilo. Yes, now you like Panatonic, you would still have to come on
board with the idea that is expensive. That is outrageous. Exactly, it's a crime. It's I shouldn't be banned from the IDA. Those fucking Panatonis should be banned because that's the crime. So you we are the victims.
You've been going back to the supermarket religiously.
And I just like it, just keep staying there. There were some other ones too that were very expensive, and I thought, this is so interesting that they are making this choice. Front of guy. Ja is very famous for its manager specials, very famous, like you just go, how can they even?
Yeah?
So I on Boxing day went and they were still hot, they were not marked down, and I just made this little Instagram thing which started with look, I know I really should get alive, right, But I started to follow this and I started to go in and count and take footage, see how many counting these platonics about whether yeah there's one gone today? And then there was like a couple of days after Christmas and people were going,
oh they just they're hanging out for Orthodox Christmas. Oh they're just hanging on to them for EASTA And it's like no, no, no, no, no, look around, look around at the managers specials. Here. All of the Christmas stuff is marked down, but not those planetonics.
When was the last time you checked and nobody had bought any? And what was the total that you saw?
Last time? Was two days ago? I wasn't in there. Somebody sent me a photograph because I'm waiting for clarification, I have great respect and deep respect for my IgA, of course not. I don't believe in any other rules. So I don't wear a helmet when I ride a bike, which is frequently, and I dry clean only can suck whatever, Yes, that can suck any part of me that they like. Sure, but I was sent a message said they're still six.
You know what they did at one point, because they knew I was videoing, they moved them into half half, like the western side of the Delhi counter and the eastern side to make me think, I go, oh my god, three have gone. There's only three left. And then I spied through the bread there was on the other So all over the world was following this panatonous right, So we had people in the UK, Canada, Tokyo recordings from Paris, from Switzerland, the most expensive food haul in the world
had marked them all down. My favorites were someone in ol Salvador sent me some video and there was a woman saying, there's a bloke in a New South Wales lockup who is following this and passing on all of these updates to fifty inmates. They eat a lot of shit. But even they agreed that panatoni sucks. So they are still there and now it's a game on and at
last count there were six. Six hasn't and it hasn't changed for over if they're still like that now eight days now, I am not saying that the panatonos at our ijas stale. I'm saying all panatonos are stale, and that is why some people love them.
Cath Devine, Oh my god, I'm nose tending. Oh my god, I present to you.
A panatoni from at the IgA. There are only five there.
Now.
You went there. I went there.
You never did, and I have purchased one at full price, still not not I discounted what a ninety five dollar panetona?
Now?
How do you feel with it in your hands? Do you feel like this is somehow a wrinkle in time? Do you feel like it's changed the course of how things should have been?
I just feel I feel like one of those people on Instagram that gets a puppy. I just want to that they start crying. But I just like, I suddenly feel I understand why people buy it.
Do you want to crack it open and have a bit and see if it's How can we not?
I think we must. Okay, all right, I feel like we must.
You went there? You went there? Were you afraid you might see me? Can I tell you?
And I filmed it, Kath and the woman saw me buying this and saw me filming, and she said, this has gone too far? Yes, And I was frightened.
Oh were you?
I was? I thought I was just doing a funny gag, Chrissy.
Can you imagine if you and I walked into that? I gap, I get the slow motion, the yeah, dark glasses. It's just like everyone would just be like, oh, I mean it would be fair.
I've taken the lid off the tin, and I have to say, at first sights very disappointed with the size of the punatona inside the big tin.
As again, I told you that is five hundred grams. That is two cups. That doesn't seem right. But you know, oh mate, do you love PLANATONI or not? Make up your mind? Mate, Make I do your mind?
I do if I can bloody open it? How okay, I've been doing it wrong.
So there's there's a ribbon and there's a tin.
This is why it's still fresh for two years.
Hey, do you know what you want to look? Closer, because I'll tell you what I have. I don't even have to look at this to know. I can tell you what that date says without looking thirty first of March twenty twenty four.
I know we better get cracking on this. So people said they might be holding out.
First time I get it open, it'll be June. They said they might be holding out for Easter. But Easter is the thirty first of March twenty twenty four. Who would gift You can't even regift a punaton if you give it to somebody on Easter Sunday. God, it smells so good.
It doesn't mean normally it comes with a little sachet of icing sugar, doesn't You would have thought that nearly one hundred dollars would have got your thatsh.
But look look at the instructions. How much that no sashet pilet but like a diy at.
The Oh my god, it's really soft. I'm salivating. Are you going to eat some of this? Or are you really like anti?
I'm looking in the back and I'm looking for like, you know, hacks, workarounds, instructions. Oh my god, Okay, can we just I'm gonna have I will eat some right, Okay, but can you just I'd like it on the go, okay, as a PANATONI lover, because you are comparing to other things, whereas I'm just preferring I am comparing it with I think this is shit. Okay.
It is moist, Okay, it is moister than usual. It is moist than the fruit is of a much better quality than usual.
Well, enjoy it because it's fifteen bucks a mouthful. Anyway, kept going.
It is dense and yet still light, and it's the best panatona I've ever had.
I'm I'm going to get.
You a really here that hush listeners like there was from me, a sharp intake of breath. Oh, and.
I'm handing you a piece of panatona.
Now.
If you don't like men with you, okay, if you don't love this, you're even mental than I thought.
That would. That's that's quite a challenge, Okay, I do The only thing I do is honesty. So I will give you honesty. If I look at your eyes about to like pop out of your head and go in that tin.
I love panatona, and that is the best I've ever had.
Now that is a very moist light flavorsome, and normally in the Panotoni situation, often there is a feeling of kind of mashed insects. Yeah they're not there. No, this is absolutely dried, gently dried fruit and thought out. Not just like what have we got left from last year, let's just chuck that in so use the fuck they're gonna regift it anyway.
Exactly.
It's buttery and briosh like. It's good, isn't it, Dev? That is good.
If I was not a punt on a hater, I would like this, but I wouldn't pay full price for it.
Well, lucky for you, I paid full price for it, and you get to enjoy the spoils.
You know, if I've got this in my house, people will think I've won toxotto or I'm like Shag and Jeff Bezos or something going. Oh well, Dev, you know, we all went a bit crazy during lockdown, Like, you know, even people who thought, oh no, no, we were good because we didn't have little kids and we're pretty happy we've got a big house with No. I was not good. Everybody went a bit crazy during lockdown, of course, and
I want to ask about your crazy. But like a lot of people really missed their beauticians and their hairdressers because they had hair where they didn't want it. The hair that they had wasn't doing the right thing. The eyebrows weren't sitting the right way there, eyelacios weren't extended the way they liked to see themselves in a mirror, and go, I know that person. So when I say we all went a bit mad during lockdown, Chrissy Swan cough up the pope confess.
It was the hardest time of my life. Really out question. Yeah, I didn't cope with any element of it.
So what comes to mind when it all happened? What was it? Was it?
I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it for the first week. I thought, this is nice.
What part What did you enjoy the first week? Do you think?
I think the endless time and having nothing to do that was lovely because I'm a busy person and busy everyone around me is a busy person, So that was nice. And then it absolutely was not nice because I had to homeschool my kids, which.
And their cunts. Like if they were nice, if they were smart, if they were pleasant, that's one thing, but what they are?
All those things I am not a teacher.
I don't that really surprises me, because you're a communicator, you're imaginative.
I don't know people anything.
I don't know anything that I could pass on, apart from the important stuff like so you know how to have a laugh and how to cook and good egg and all that sort of stuff. I spent a fortunate office works with like you know, building blocks and kits and wipe off things.
And then I realized, I can't do this.
I've got to go to Bunnings or office works. Buddings is clothes, We're off your office work stationary power of stationery.
And I still couldn't do it.
And then my kids were feeling like they were stupid and I couldn't do it. And then I had to turn up every morning and broadcast on radio. And because I'm a feeler and I take on everyone's feeling my town Melo and which was the most suffering during in the.
World, actually, really it really was.
I felt the pain and distress of everybody in this city, and I had to be better than them when I was not better than them. And in terms of my spirit and my mood and my mental state, for all those hours a day, I had to pretend like everything was okay, and it was not okay at a wall and it just went on for so long and then it stopped and it started and there was no routine, and I really felt like I was losing my mind.
And that was when I started to walk.
So actually I'm grateful for lockdown because I had to get out of the house somehow and away from all my failings as a teacher and a mother and all of that. I had to get away from it, and so I started to walk, and that has changed my life. So it's been great in one way, but it was a very very bad time feel that.
In Melbourne at least there was the lockdown and the COVID stuff, and then after it was over, we were all just very gun shy and even going into groups of people and not wearing masks. And it took us a while to get back in and no one kind of talked about it, like those guys that come back
from the walk going up Pop never talked about. But then there was this point a few months later, maybe six months later, that I heard people say it was almost no one said it, and then within a week almost everybody just gave me this little could deal with a bloody lockdown around it. Yeah, because we got used to lockdown being part of like a weekend, you know, or full holidays or summer, and we missed it. But I've noticed recently that people are talking about that COVID
time in a real feeling that it's behind them. Yes, And I remember during lockdown, I did.
Cock lockdown cock lockdown.
No, there was something that I was involved in online where we were all putting up nudes on Instagram and we were seeing how long it took for the for the accounts to go down haha. And it was set up by this fantastic chiller and we were putting emojis on ourselves and it was a lot of fun. So there was a lot of fun going on. One of the things that I did during lockdown is I delivered these cute little sweets and people loved them. It was
just something fun that was in their letterbox. So I got someone to make them and I would go and pick them up and I would deliver them. So I was wearing my mask and I was on my bike and I would go and deliver these sweets and I dropped them with people's letterbox and they were just like a fun thing. Do you remember Loon Croissants were doing right? And next week we'll be delivering to Morabit on Tuesday and Clayton on Friday, and it'll be like, oh my god,
oh my god, my god. I became this thing. I only had two hundred at a time, and I dropped them with people's letter boxes. Two hundred, yeah, but fifty here, fifty that you know, you were allowed to exercise. I had my mask on and it was something I could do. It was a way to communicate with yeah, rather I get it. So I had got to some really good friends of mine's places and I got into a really good friend of mine's place, two people and I needed to go to the toilet because I'd been on the
bike for a while. And I went in. I said, look, I need to go to the toilet, like it was a necessary thing. We'd all been fully vaccinated. And I went in and I came out, and they said, just take the mask off, sit down and have a cup of tea, because you know, we've infected each other already with whatever we may or may not have. And it was so wonderful to be with people in the house and talking, and so my mate Tracy said to her partner Joanne, Joanne, tell dev Kelly's story that she told you.
So there's a woman called Kelly, and I think she lived in Thornberry. So she was in her house and her Jack Russell came in the back of the house through the dog flab with a dead white rabbit in its mouth, covered in and mud, shaking it the way dogs do. And she knew who the rabbit was. She lives in a single front of terrace. It's the people next door have a rabbit on there, you know, in the hush free range. So she gets the rabbit out of the dog's mouth and she shampoos it and addish
yes and conditions it. And I don't know whether she conditions it that could have been met. She shampoos it, she washes the rabbit, she dries it with her hair dry as oh, she's officially lost her mind. And she creeps out the front and over her fence and puts it in the hutch which is on the front veranda. So she goes back into the house and she's like and she's sitting there and remember how quiet was and she hears about forty five minutes later, the neighbor's coming
out screaming, screaming. So she comes out wrapping herself in a dressing gown with her mug, going, what's happened, what's happened? And they're like, oh my god, our rabbit died yesterday and we buried it in the backyard and now it's back in the hutch. You're joking, I am not, I am not, and she's ha ha ha, my god, Oh my god, are you sure, and then kind of recoils into the house.
Did she ever tell them?
No? But they probably might know. Now you are the worst for doing that, and I am the worst for telling my story because they are going to find out.
I want to talk to you about Heyday and rock Bottom. Yes, I have done your Gunner's masterclass and I loved it. And if you are thinking about writing something, try and get into a Gunner master classes.
I do retreats in Victoria and also in Parents Magical, But the one that I really love is it's the ninety minute online right here, right now, which is really great because you can do the zoom with us at the time, or you can keep them in your fold up because you get a recording and a lot of people just go yes. Sometimes I know I want to write and I need I just need some stimulus. So yes, Heyday and rock Bottom.
Heyday and rock Bottom are two of the greatest thought starters I've ever because I love to write and I want to write again, but I don't really have the mental real estate at the moment for it.
But I still dream. Are there any ideas? Are there things that just kind of like almost intrusive thoughts were going with that, They're knocking, going, hey, hang on.
They are, and then they get skittled by I've got to get to the IJA and buy devi panatone. So it's not my time at the moment. But speaking of Heyday and rock Bottom, have you you've obviously experienced a Heyday or maybe you're experiencing it now, And with regard to rock Bottom, have you experienced.
Yeah, yeah, I think And I've written about this in a lot of depth in my memoir Toue North, and I've always been very open about it. So I'm bipolar, but I've also I suffered a lot of trauma and kind of a byla ah. So bipolar is basically it.
Used to be called something else manic depression. Right, Okay, I've got a great psychiatrist. So all my life, I've thought I've had it, like my great grandmother had it. My cousin Kate died by suicide.
We were very close. There was only three months difference in age, and I've always thought I had it, and any mental health professional that I dealt with said, you can't have it. You're too productive. You've never been medicated, you've never been hospitalized, you've never missed a deadline, you've never canceled a gig. So this sum swings back into lockdown. After lockdown, it was like November, and I don't know whether you remember, but we had blue skies for weeks
and weeks. So suddenly I rode my bike where I used to almost all the cafes and all of the life in our area apart from the supermarkets and where you've got vaccinations. It kind of felt boarded up or almost like a veil over it, and it was like everything was just open.
You know a scene from those like West Side Story when everyone's throwing, And.
During that time, I thought I was just like really just everybody was so excited. We were out and about, we were going into nurseries and buying plants, and you know, just we were excited. And a lot of people have more money than usual because of job keeper, but also because they hadn't been spending money on travel and restaurants holidays. There was more money than usual. So so yeah, I was in a very heightened state. And I didn't realize I hadn't really been sleeping. But I've got a really
good psychologist who I've dealt with for three years. And it's only because she could she had been observing me for that long that she said, you have bipolar. And I was like, fucking as I have been saying so according to my very good psychiot. So at that point it was like, okay, well we need to have a psychiatrist diagnose you. And I know enough about it to talk to my GP, and I said, you know, in the meantime, can we try Sarah Kull, which is an
anti psychotic. It's a very basic. It's like the panadol of if you go, if you have too many if you have if you got a like a music festival, have too many disco biscuits and start going and having a few beers with Merlin, and if they have to put you in the short stay at a hospital. They'll give you Sarah call. Because it's an antipsychotic, so it will turn off anything that is a psychopharmaceutical response to LSD or any kind of PingER, so it means I'm
saying that I do. So it's just it's an imbalance in your emotions. So I always just assumed it was genetic. But my psychiatrist says that I love the way that he thinks. He says he thinks it's four different at least fo different reasons you can get it. It can be chemical, it can be brain structure, it can be genetic, and it can be a response to childhood forumaent abuse. So I don't know what mine is, but I do have a genetic component. But I am on two tiny
doses of two different drugs. Drugs or a drug called Seracle, which is an antipsychotic of tiny dose which helps me have a really good sleep, but over time it also works as a mood stabilizer as well, So it's tiny. But the other drug that I'm on, and we didn't try any other drugs. It took us a little while, but we decided these were the best ones. To go with is a drug called lamatrogene. It's also known as lamigdal, which is an anti epileptic drug. So we don't really
know how psychopharmaceuticals work. We just know that some of them work. So I think for me, so I haven't since I've been medicated, which is a couple of years, I haven't had really any swings out of what they call the window of tolerance. So the window of tolerance is where we like to we should be.
Living before you were medicated. What would a swing out of that window?
So bipolar depression is. It was unusual for me because I would say I've got depression, and it's just like we've got this idea of what depression is. But when you read into things, well not what we read into things, but when you read stuff about you know, bipolar depression is this absolute absence of any kind of dopamine or any kind of motivation. The best way I can describe what it's like living with bipolar and now I'm medicated, I don't have I live in the window of tolerance
most of the time. Occasion I can feel myself flicking out, and I'll up my medication to pull me back. It's living in a state of normality for not as much time as is ideal or even kind of functional, and you spend a lot of your time feeling like you are in love or heartbroken. So if you look at the chemical profile bipolar, that's exactly what it looks like.
So that makes so much sense.
Yeah, So it's difficult though, Like sometimes I go, maybe I'm not bipolar, but this is I'm ADHD and have a traumatic childhood And that's how it has presented itself because we can't do a blood test for things. No, of course not.
But I think it's interesting that there's a long process to get an official diagnosis. And most people I know that have been diagnosed recently with ADHD or bipolar or anything else, or having always known it themselves, yeah, or have known it recently because you know yourself, and so it's almost like a retrospective diagnosis. They're going to a professional saying, I need a diagnosis for ADHD.
I know I have it, How do I get on with my life?
But the thing is, when you're so used to just being you and never gating your world, and you know, people like you and I are really privileged. We've been able to set up our world to work for us because we're not strapped into a corporation or a religion or a bureaucracy or anything like that. So it's been easy for us. So if you are privileged like we are, we've been able to set up our lives so that we can adapt to our neurospiciness or whatever. So it's
harder to see. So if I was, you know, working as a teacher and having to turn up at certain times and do certain things and be emotionally capable to be able to step up, and if you have always coped because my coping mechanism I don't really drink or anything like that. My coping mechanism is coping, it becomes harder to spot. So it's not just having something like whether it's dyslexia or whether it's ADHD, or whether it's autism or whether it's bipolar. It's not it's the person
you are. It's the other personality traits that you have. It's the it's the advantages you have, it's the era you live in, Like look at the era that we live in.
And I think for you also, your own resourcefulness has helped you a lot because even just before we started this podcast, we were talking that in common we share an inability to tell left and right, even after nearly one hundred years on this planet together.
But we know up and down. But when up and down is fine.
But every time someone says to me, can you move a bit to the left, I automatically check my right hand because I've got a lump from writing. I'm right handed person, and I know that once I hit that, I know that the opposite is left. And I've done that every day of my life that I can remember. And I think that you consciously or subconsciously have always been creating frameworks within your power to get through life and work out ways that can work for you.
And that is exhausting, it is, And I mean, I feel like I'm sad for that young person who went through so much and had like I don't have any safety net now, but I'm a fifty five year old melf. But I didn't have any safety net then. And it's just like anything I wanted to, you know, wanted to go to the school camp in grade six, made macrime owls and saw them, you know, door to door, and you know, worked in a chemist every night after school
and three hours Saturday morning. From the age of twelve to fifteen.
Please read Catherine Devany's book True Author and Speech.
There's one part of me that is so thrilled and relieve that I have always been self reliant and never like the most terrifying thing for me. Like people think that I'm really brave because they see me as taking risks or whatever. The most terrifying thing for me would be to have to financially rely on someone. That's the
most terrifying thing for me. Or to be stuck in a job or a relationship that I couldn't get out of because I was trapped because of finances or the repercussions of social expectation, or.
Which brings us back to the discussion we had earlier about sort of buying into society's messages about superannuation and you've got to do this, and you've got to do that. I think that the financial security of knowing that you have somewhere to sleep at night, that is what means the most to me.
Oh, all of us is rubbish.
I mean, I would not agree.
I'm happy to buy black and Gold label frozen veggies whatever, eat an egg every three days. None of that bothers me. But the idea that I wouldn't have somewhere to sleep, that is my idea of hell.
I remember you went through. There was some you know, we're taking a different direction, firing, sacking, acting redundancy at one point, and I remember talking to you on the fire I'd sent you a message or something, or you'd called me, and all you were talking about like I could see there would be other opportunities for you, and if it was me, you would go, well, yeah, of course, you know Dev is dev and this will happen. And I knew how loved and skilled and how adaptable you were.
But all you spoke about on that phone call was your fear of losing the place that you slept. That was all you spoke about. I'm worried about losing I'm worried about losing the flat. Yea worried about And that was it. So I think it's outrageous what's happening with
housing now. If we in any part of the world, but let's just say Australia, if we believe that citizens should be born and that when you know people live here and they are citizens of the country at the very least everybody should get a two bedroom flat apartment that is theirs default when you're eighteen. There's your keys, toilet, bathroom, bit of a view, bit of a garden, somewhere you can keep your cat. No problem. Why we don't do that.
Don't underestimate the vested interests of people to have the have not so they can be the haves. Yes, so they can be so the unfortunate, so they can be the fortunate the disadvantage, so they can feel advantage. You know, I grew up in public housing, and I remember going why can't people who live in housing commissioned houses like us and everybody around us? Why can't we have pools? Why can't we have bedrooms of our own? Why am
I sharing with my sisters? Why do we just have like open fire in the nineteen eighties when people have ducted heatings eating and it's just like oh yeah, But then you know people wouldn't work hard. It's like you're working hard, Yes, you're working hard. If those kind of extras and privileges came to people working hard, every woman in Africa would have a ten bedroom house with a triple garage and a pool. So it's about privilege. It's about class. It's about this illusion on.
It's about believing the messages.
Working and that being busy is some kind of sign of goodness or quality. You know, people will often say, oh, how are you dev busy, busy, always busy. I go, I am not busy at all. No, no, And they try to convince me that I am, and I go, I am not. Put a video on me like put like there's a cat that's got a GoPro on them that I watch all the time, saying mate, I like. I have a lot of skills. One of them is I have a really big bladder, so I don't wake up at night and I can stay in bed until
eleven o'clock and not have to move. And the only reason that I move is because I'm hungry and I need to go and get sit down. The other reason I move in the morning is for coffee. It's just my I just I could sit there for everyone going. The stuff on Instagram and the books I write and all this stuff. This is not what I do around my job. I don't have a job. I have no boss. I have no job, I've no super I have no savings.
I do as I please, and people will go, oh, so, you know, you know, what are you doing, toy, I'm going to get a you know this or that? And I say, oh, treating yourself, you know, going to have a couple.
Hundred dollars pantin a.
It's like, no, I'm not treating myself. My life. He's about meaning, connection, pleasure, and life is so short.
I'll get there eventually. I want to do a round of celebrity.
Solutions with you. That is why I rode across. I cannot wait. My favorite sentence is I need your advice. I am here for it.
Fantastic.
I've got some letters here from podcasters.
This might go off because we are panatane fueled off our head.
We have to be quick here. All right, here we go. I'm just going to throw some in your direction. Shoot the breeze has said, my brother has decided to get married in Italy for absolutely no reason. I have three kids under four and no money. Should I go?
No?
Absolutely not. What I don't understand why do people need this stuff? Observed? Why they had to pretend they're the Kardashians. Why are they spending money that they don't have to buy things that they don't particularly want to impress people that they don't like. Absolutely not, I think say that again, buying things that they don't need with money they don't have to impress people that they don't like.
That's weddings.
That's it. That's it, and I'm anti marriage. But I wonder because I've been able to be the bell of the ball and the shiny st topic in the room as a writer in Onalian.
Every day of your goddamn life.
But I wonder whether if I hadn't, if I had gone a more conventional route, like i'd become a teacher, That's probably what I would have done. If I didn't do it, if I was more conservative outlook, maybe I would have wanted to have this planning day of being the princess for the day and just creating this thing for my friends and family. That is, as the Italians say, fucking bullshit. And I know because now I speak fluent Italian because I have eaten untina.
I love the hand motion that went with that. Yeah, I'm want to talk a little bit more about weddings.
There's been something that I've disagreed with my whole life, and that is the saying that pops up up with monotonous regularity, from women that say these words out of their mouth. Oh, every girl dreams of her wedding day. Not for one second have I ever dreamt of my wedding day. Not when I was five and playing with barbies, not when I was watching Knots Landing and saw Valley You and get married. It's never crossed my mind about what I would wear and what we would eat and what the.
Music would be. And I just want to know, am I strange woman?
No? No, I find them. I find weddings really creepy. There's a really forced notion. I find weddings creepy. There's a forced feeling of we all have to act a certain way and they are. There is a kind of theatrical notion to it. Yeah, and the day of a wedding has kind of nothing to do with the marriage or the relationship or what it's like. I would be kind of more interested in celebrating people who had not even been together for a long time, but people who
had of together and transformed. Maybe they're like, we've opened our relationship now and this is our third or we've gone through some ups and downs and we went to counseling to split up. Well, but we rediscovered parts of each other and we are making this amazing choice. I like the idea of people going got married really regret it, and if they say it to me, I say, why don't you get divorced? And they go, oh no, But I still love him and go no, no, stay together,
stay together. Never. I never ever dreamt about my wedding day, but I do think I would look at wedding dresses and think, if I was to get married, that's what I would wear. But I would also go if I was going to the prom in America, that's what I would wear.
What do you think of the idea of your father giving you away?
Vaulting? It's revolting.
The whole thing is revolting to me.
But I think it's so we are playing the ball, not the or the bride. Here, what we've got to realize is how is that still such a sticky concept? Because so many people who are doing this have left aside a lot of social conditioning and expectations happily doing different kinds of things. But that the idea of monogamy and fidelity and marriage and romance and happily ever after, looking like if I say to people monogamy and longevity is no sign of the quality of a relationship. So
many people just you see them get shocked. You know, it's the truth. If we lived to three hundred years old, we would not be fantasizing and glamorizing and worshiping the idea of the marriage is forever and love is forever. And though we would just go, well, that's just ridiculous. It's the same as we're in the same pair of gens your whole life, Like there's no choice. So I'm fifty five now and there's no choice that I would have made at twenty five that I would have been
that still would have been a good fit for now. Yeah. But one of the other things that I think that people really got to realize because they'll say, oh, that really smart person, that really smart woman, that really smart, And it's something about the women, Like men don't want to get married. Men like to own women or have the feeling that they own women. Men like looking masculine by having someone.
Who looks But men would also be buying into society's expectations, spectations you get you know, if you're a real man, then you have a woman.
Yes, but there's not. If you think about bridal magazines, there's not groom magazines, and there's not the kind of conversation around it. It would be. The performative proposals are just awful, so revolting, and it's talk about expectation, talk about pressure, talk about manipulation. I do find it quite fascinating how
sticky that is. And so when women, powerful women or women have options choose to do it, that actually makes it worse for you know, less advantage women, less privileged women, because they seen that as a sign of success, that that woman's got all the options in the world. But she's still choosing to do that, and she's still choosing to take her husband's name, be walked down the aisle by her father, and give her children the father's name.
Like that's one of the big conversations. That's an even bigger conversation, let alone proposals. Like it's something like ninety eight percent of both women and men feel in heterosexual relationships that the man should propose. Both the women and the men feel.
That they just I just don't understand the whole concept of a deva.
And I love that people are questioning this. I just think Social media has been so great to because once upon time, people are going, oh, you're just saying that because you're bitter and you yeah, fire ye body or something like that, No would want to marry you anyway, exactly. Yeah,
So it's so easy for people to minimize that. But there's a great nuanced discussion around the ideas of marriage, monogamy and zach Day, Father's Day, Mother's Day, Christmas, any of the Australia Day questions people that could thinking once upon a time, you'd just be dismissed as a wow, and you couldn't have the conversation, whereas people are going, oh, you know, there's so many ways that we can find a better path for ourselves that we live a more authentic,
genuine or even if you just think about it and come to the conclusion that you do agree with it and it sits well with you, the thinking about it is what I think is valuable. I think so too, and like people will just like they will kind of you know, arc up if that conversation comes up and I go, but hang on, I have the confidence of my contradictions. I am meat, oh wear leather, I use fossil fuels, Yes, I don't have any problem going. Oh no,
it's totally wrong, but I do it because I love bacon. Yes, I like to fly, and you know, I don't want to walk the whole way from here to a house down near the beach. I want to go in a car because I'm lazy and spoilt and that's what I like to do, or even just that's my choice.
You're allowed.
But as soon as marriage comes up, there are all of these. But the thing is, people make decisions emotionally and back them rationally. It is a clusterfuck of cognitive dissonance. But in all of the things that I do, and I know that some people consider them kind of a bit left to feel or progressive or radical whatever, I don't The thing that people have been most thrown by is me being a conscientious objector of Christmas. That is the most radical thing in a lot of people eyes
that I've ever said or done. Really, yeah, it's really interesting. It was, you know, like I've never married as well, who'd marry you? It's like, really, why't you marry? It's like I haven't found the right owner. But I just from the youngest age, I saw it as a trap. I just saw women, and it was the women that I was surrounded by. Did you tell your kids about? Did you do the whole Santa thing? Yeah? And I
regret it. It's the only thing I regret with my kids is the Santa thing, the only thing I regret.
I never really thought about it.
And then I had my first son and Christmas rolled around, and I believe so deeply in being honest with my children about everything because I didn't really have that. So that's my conscientious change to how I parent from how I was parented. And it just felt like the most terrible lie. I could not look. I did it. Of Course I did it, because you're an asshole if you don't.
But God when peg finally a couple of years ago, last year, we're walking home from a taco stand in Los Angeles and she said it was about two days before Christmas and she said to me, you're Santa, aren't you?
And she's my last one and I went yes, and I'm the truth Fairy and on the Easter buddy, and I'm Jesus Christ and I'm sorry, I'm saying food.
And I'm Elvis and I'm still alive.
Ha ha, cap Debnie, thank you so much for your time. I could talk to you for hours and hours and hours. You're an absolute gem.
So delighted that you asked me. I want to say one thing to you. Yes, I hope you know how loved you are. You are loved by so many. You make people feel connected, and you bring joy to people, and I have. I just don't think you have any idea how loved you are. And I want to thank you.
You are so kind, loved you for so long.
Oh, I love you too,