A thing or two about Mel*
Check out below for a long, incredibly drawn-out timeline for anyone who cares to read it. I gotta warn you though Mels got a memory like a freakin’ elephant. Perhaps you should pack a snack…

Mel is born two hours premature to a pair of freaked-out bearded circus owners called Big Rex and Tiny Tina. She spends her first few weeks of life being nursed by monkeys. They teach her how to eat a banana with her feet without squashing it. Mel carries this special knowledge on into adulthood but only shares it with the closest of friends.

Mel has used her early arrival in life as an excuse for eternal lateness from that point forward.

Mel continues to travel around Australia in a caravan and play with the monkeys. She dreams of one day running off to join a normal suburban family. She starts performing in the circus and after a stunt gone wrong has the dent in her head to prove it.

Mel develops a strange allergy to concrete – it makes her go do twosies behind the flowerpots. She blames the milk man when the nuggets are discovered. She is nearly two and addicted to eating garden snails and seaweed.

Mel loves yellow t-shirts, her sister and visiting her odd looking rellies in New Zealand. She discovers she has things called taste buds and spends the next hour eating salty play dough. Tiny Tina finds her passed out from dehydration on the back patio.

Mel is an anxious child. She is scared of crayfish and daddy-long-legs. The only thing that seems to calm her down is eating seaweed and fishing for sprats.

Mel starts home-schooling. She’s 5.

Mel draws a capital ‘E’ for Big Rex with about 15 crossbars. It looks like a comb. She doesn’t know when to stop.

Mel continues to eat seaweed with gusto. People are starting to comment on her asian looks.

Mel becomes a prolific reader. She is given her first book, ‘Little Women’ for her seventh birthday. After this she is unstoppable and goes through a book and a bag of apples a day.

Big Rex dies suddenly and Mel gets bitten by a redback spider hiding in her gumboot all in the same month. Its not really a good time for Mel.

Mel turns 8 and thinks that Michael Jackson is THE business.

Mel forgets the letter r in “shirt” on a spelling test. She is very embarrassed to discover that she has written a rude word by accident. She suddenly decides seaweed just isn’t her thing anymore.

Mel learns how to spell pistachio and it becomes her favorite word. She is in love with the guy from Magnum PI and starts a lifelong obsession with older guys with moes.

Mel turns 9 and discovers Tiny Tinas tweezers and plucks both eyebrows clean off. After quietly freaking out she decides to try and draw them back in with some brown crayon hoping nobody will notice. She looks a lot like Liza Minelli.

Mel turns ten and starts working for her uncle. The first day on the job she walks backwards without looking and falls breaking her arm. She decides painting rooves isn’t her thing either

Mel dyes her hair for the very first time at 12. The box says Foxy Brown. Tiny Tina tells her she looks like an extra from Planet of the Apes. She starts to develop body issues and thinks her feet are her best feature now that her sixth toes were removed.

Mel goes to a real school in rural New Zealand for three months. She wakes up one morning with boobs. It’s quite a surprise to her.

Mel realizes that she is the only child wearing homemade undies and hides in the toilet when she has to change for sports. Tiny Tina makes her steak and liver pasties for lunch – they make her gag. She doesn’t want to hurt Tiny Tinas feelings so goes hungry for some months. The teacher find her passed out on the trampoline at recess.

At 14 Mel develops a serious crush on someone called Bryan. She thinks it must be love because he’s very ugly and there’s no way you could be infatuated with ugly people. When he breaks her heart she swears to never love again – not unless she meets Tom Selleck.

Mel leaves home at 15 to start her own life. She lives in a little gypsy caravan with faded floral curtains and brown velour cushions.

Mel mistakes a bout of bad of indigestion for love. Luckily she has some Alka Seltzer on hand and narrowly escapes disaster with a burp.

Mel lives on dim sims and marble cake for three weeks. She develops a passion for organic gardening until her entire tomato crop is wiped out overnight by a plague of super-bugs.

Mel moves to an ex-migrant detention centre converted into student residences in Brisbane’s western suburbs. She gets both her divers and drivers license in the same month and thinks she’s pretty cool.

Mel lives on barbecue shapes and a refrigerator full of Hoo-Hoo’s. She’s addicted to vodka and cheerios. She has recently spent her entire savings on a sporty white Celica. Mel now thinks SHE is the business.

Mel moves to Mooloolaba at 17 and works in a bakery. She gains five kilos and gets a short haircut. It is a low point in her life. She loves surfing, cinnamon donuts and Nescafe instant coffee.

Mel heads to London to try and forget her carnie roots. She discovers that warm beer really is a comfort in a cold country and gains another five kilos. She’s 18 and homeless.

Mel travels Turkey and smokes her first hookah. She decides being a backpacker isn’t so glamorous after all after a serious attack from bed bugs leaves her looking scabby.

She goes snorkeling in Gallipoli Bay and paragliding over the Blue Lagoon. Its a high point in her life.

Mel loves everything, especially other peoples left-overs at midnight, lemon butter on toast and drip coffee.

Mel visits South Africa with her friend and officially reaches the ‘medically obese’ stage. Despite this Mel still gets numerous marriage proposals – even though she is already engaged.

Mel moves to Melbourne. It is a low point in her life. She’s 19 and homeless.

Mel is back on instant coffee  and wonders what the purpose of her life is.

Mel moves to Sydney. She is homeless and considering becoming a masseuse. She meets someone who takes pity on her and lets her rent their amazing apartment on the water at Bondi Beach. Mel thinks her life is perfect! She works in a bakery and loves swimming in the ocean and eating meat pies afterwards. Unfortunately she reads  ‘Into The Wild’ one day and decides it’s time to hit the road again.

Mel moves back to London and lives with three Jews. She cooks them a hearty breakfast of bacon and scrambled eggs with cheese. Mel is clueless.

Mel travels Europe. She falls in love in Paris but decides its way too clichéd and doesn’t stay. After a period of time in Amsterdam the rest of her travels are a blur. It’s a high point in her life.

Mel wonders what she should do with her life. She thinks about becoming a podiatrist – until she touches someone’s feet and throws up a little in her mouth.

Mel knows that the meaning of life exists because she discovered it at approximately 5.30 a.m. on New Year’s Day 2000. Unfortunately, moments after the cogs turned and the universe promptly fell in place, Mel forgot what this meaning of life was, so went back to making prank phone calls to her friends.

Mel bumbles her way into the illustrious subterranean world of blogging while she is bored at work one day.

Mel quickly becomes hooked on peering into other people’s lives and leaving inane comments. Several months later starts her own blog. She pretends to be a normal person pretending to be a midget carnie pretending to be a normal person. She is in fact just a midget carnie.

Mel moves back to Brisbane for some sunshine. She starts the New Year chasing penguins in New Zealand and buying some land on the snowy lower slopes of a still active volcano.

Mel becomes a personal trainer and is surprised to wake up one morning with abs.

Mel gets bored easily. Keen for a new life again she decides to cycle around France hoping for the answer in pain au chocolat. She knew it wasn’t there but she kept eating them a lot just incase. So she starts living in London again.

Mel goes sailing in Portugal to try and help get over her fear of water and confined spaces. She gets her Day Skipper license and thinks about traveling the world delivering yachts until she realizes she has Thalassophobia.

Mel gets bored with London and decides to go live in Fiji. Mel realizes there are no good coffee shops in the Pacific so she dives for five weeks, gets narked and nearly dies, feasts on fresh coconuts and leaves.

Mel is still homeless. She has no idea what to do with her life but thinks snowboarding looks fun. After learning how to snowboard in Jackson Hole she decides to become a Ski Patroller so moves to New Zealand to study avalanche management.

After realizing she would have to use a F.U.D. if she worked as a patroller Mel thinks the toilet breaks you get as a snowboard instructor suit her better.

Mel moves to a small town in Colorado and starts teaching snowboarding. She has never seen snow like this before and quickly realizes that she prefers riding on it to teaching others how to ride on it. She becomes addicted to the color green and allergic to Jaegermeister.

Mel road trips up to Whistler in summer to ride mtn bikes even though the last bike she rode was a unicycle in the circus when she was 5. She hits big jumps on a small rickety single crown Kona Stinky. She crashes really badly and has the scars to prove it. She thinks she is unbreakable.

Mel spends differing amounts of time being homeless and taking care of small children and teaching snowboarding and traveling to Canada and Australia as well as drinking triple tall vanilla whole milk lattes.

Mel decides to follow her long held passion for photography. She buys a better mountain bike and a dirt bike and falls madly in love.

Mel starts racing and wins nationals. Mel thinks she is the business. She gets too cocky and crashes twice very badly nearly breaking both her legs and her back respectively.

Mel realizes she is breakable.

Mels photography is getting noticed by people who seem to love it. She is puzzled by this but hopes it continues.

Mel continues to live in Colorado and be addicted to coffee. Occasional surges of circus gypsy blood make her itchy and long for the road again. But she is usually happy as long as she is accomplishing something positive or endangering her life somewhat.

Mel thinks that if you see her on the street you should buy her a coffee. Mel will be an appreciative and loyal friend for life.

* The name ‘Mel’ is Copyrighted and can not be used without consent from her.