Weaker sex fantasy: Another reason why women love Twilight

Fantasy is not my favourite literary genre. It was a struggle, I admit, for me to read The Hobbit, not to mention Harry Potter; and I didn’t even go near The Chronicles of Narnia. So when I heard about the next fantasy-series craze that was sinking its teeth into millions of readers around the world (of course, the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer), I was about as excited as a vampire in a vege patch. But then I began to hear whispers that they weren’t your ordinary fantasy novels, and that what had Meyer’s mostly female readership hooked wasn’t spells and sorcerers, but the sexual tension between the main characters: the fact that they resist the urge throughout the entire circa 2000-page story to have ravenous vampiric sex.

Abstinence… exciting? My interest piqued, I decided it was time – two years after the book’s release – to break my ‘fantasy’ abstinence and find out what it was that made Meyer’s writing tick, or tickle, the fancy of millions of women readers.

You can’t shoot a fire

This is what I remember: solid twisters of smoke moving down the hill towards our house like giant stone statues; mum and dad running down the driveway in t-shirts and thongs carrying buckets and wet Hessian bags, telling me to stay inside… and then the wait.

I could see flames from the kitchen window.

I called my friend who lived three houses down. She was alone too.
What if the fire came into our backyards? she asked.
Duh… we would run.
But wouldn’t our mums want us to defend the house?
No – surely they would prefer us to live more than their kitchens. Mum doesn’t even like her dishwasher anyway.
So what things will you get before you run? What are your top three favourite things you would save?
Easy: my Dinky Diary, some jewellery out of Mum’s bedside drawer, and maybe the gun in the laundry.
You have a gun in your laundry?
Yeah, an old one Dad got from the army.
What do you need a gun for?
To defend us, of course.
… But you can’t shoot a fire, Jodie.

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ROBBED! The hidden cost of going to the movies

Everyone knows how to be stingy at the moment. You choose Coles brand over fancy labels, collect shop-a-dockets as though they were their own currency, and you buy that E10 eco fuel, which I’m convinced is designed to get the car only as far as the next petrol station. When it comes to entertainment, you rent DVDs on Tuesdays only, and on Saturday night you play Solitaire in the kitchen by candle light.

In the olden days (ie: the ’90s) going to the movies was the cheapskate’s night out of choice. ‘Movie’ could even be coupled with ‘dinner’ – to form the definitive date night concept ‘Dinner and a Movie’. But in modern times, the D&M idea is out, because – quite simply – you can’t afford it. The price of a movie ticket on its own is enough to make one wince, let alone the additional necessary expense of a choc top and a coke, which can easily come to a total of around $25.

But there is another price to pay for going to the modern day cinema that no amount of buying of Coles brand items can offset – and this money-sapper is called GETTING ROBBED.