Jean Kittson (Part 1): From Shy Kid to Comedy Icon - Accidents, ADHD & Independence

In Part 1 of this conversation, I sit down with one of Australia’s most loved comedians, Jean Kittson, to explore the unexpected path that shaped her life and career.

We start at the beginning, a shy child growing up in a family where her dad’s love of comedy, gags, and joke-shop tricks quietly set the tone for what was to come. Jean shares how she “fell” into drama almost by accident, thanks to a drama teacher at her high school.

From there, we dive into her early work teaching drama in disadvantaged schools and how those experiences shaped her perspective on people, confidence, and communication.

We also get into some of the bigger conversations, adult ADHD, menopause, sex education in schools, and what it means to carve out independence as a woman across different stages of life.

It’s thoughtful, funny, and full of moments that will make you reflect on how the smallest nudges can change the course of everything.

Part 2 drops next episode, where things get even more candid as we talk midlife, sex, and Jean meets Horace 🐾

Whether you are in perimenopause, approaching menopause, or simply trying to understand your hormones, I've got you.

Read more about this episode at Medication Clarity Clinic, Kate's own medication education and telehealth consulting site: https://medicationclarity.com.au

Follow Kate for more no-nonsense health education at @prescribeorpass on Instagram, Tiktok and Facebook. 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_03 0:02

Why are we bothering it?

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Well, because of the pressure for us to look younger, you know, the youth the youth fanaticism that we have. The ageism we have, the fact that we can't look at ourselves and think that it's nice. Well, when I decided to go grey, I have a friend who's a barrister and she's 80 now and she's got this black bob, and she said, Oh jean, you know, don't go grey, because you you'll have a real trouble getting employment in the gig economy. Because I mean the gig economy, so is she. She's a freelance, you know, barrister. I suppose that's a gig economy. But um, and and I said, Why? And she said, Well, um, all the research shows that if you get if a woman is grey, she gets fewer jobs, and young men don't like to they don't mind working with older women as long as they're not grey. I'm going, Where'd you get this research? And then all I thought was, fuck this, I'm gonna go gray. And it was like the one thing that has pushed me over here. Yeah, thank you for validating. Yeah, so I just thought, fuck it. I how can't I can't believe that there is this prejudice, whereas men can go grey. So it's like another frontier that we have to fight for just to be ourselves and be accepted, however we look, you know, it's just and then you get yeah, you get Merrill Street, grey, sure, but not a line on her face.

SPEAKER_04 1:21

She's looking amazing, and then you go, You're listening to On the Moons, where we have conversations about hormones, midlife, and the moments that make us wonder is it just me? I'm Kate, I'm a 48-year-old pharmacist and newly minted perimenopausal oversharer. This is where we talk openly about the changes we aren't prepared for, so we never have to feel alone in them again. I acknowledge the Camaragle people of the Iora Nation, the traditional custodians of the land which I am recording today. I pay my respects to elders past and present, and I extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land. If you're my age or older, my guest today really needs no introduction. In fact, you probably recognized her straight away from that unmistakable accent. She is one of Australia's most loved comedians. You'll know her from the Big Gig, Good Newsweek, and more recently alongside her great friend Denise Scott in the new series of Mother and Son. Beyond comedy, she's also a powerful advocate, speaking openly about losing her elderly parents and the crucial role of good palliative care. It's a genuine honor to welcome Jean Kitsen. Hello, Jean Kitsen. Hello, Caish. Thank you for having me on your podcast. Thank you for coming. It's very exciting. It's very exciting to see you. I thought we might start. So I was dying to know what sort of a child were you. So were you the were you the quiet observer or were you the class clown?

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Well, well, funny you should ask that because I once said in a magazine interview that I was the class clown in my you know high school years, and I got a phone call from a very old friend, and this was when I was in my 30s, and I said, I'd be in the class clown, then I get this phone call. Oh, hi, it's um, you know, my it's I'll call her Mary from we went to school, yeah. Mary, my gosh, I haven't talked to you for 20 years. She said, Oh, I've just been reading about you in the magazine, have you? Yeah. She said it said you were the class clown, and I said, Oh, right. And she said, I don't remember you ever being funny. Oh, okay. So I really learned never to call myself the class clown. Yeah, I must have thought I was really hilarious. But yeah, but she one of my closest, she was one of my closest friends for the first four years of high school. She didn't think I was funny. So, but and when I was very young though, big and I I like to say this because a lot of people feel um in you know shy and and they might be intimidated by life or different challenges, but I was a really scared kid, lots of fear. And I remember I just had to go to a ballet concert and I was just an icicle up the back, you know, all I had to do was wave this bit of silver paper up and down, nothing, nothing in the front of the stage or anything, just almost invisible up the back. And the day of the performance, I just, you know, I just couldn't do it, and I completely uh had almost I was just sobbing. I was about maybe seven or eight, sobbing under the kitchen table, holding on to the leg of the table like this one here, holding on in my mother couldn't even prize me off it, and then I never went because I was panicking so much. I don't and and but it taught me I a lesson because I felt worse after not going and letting everyone down. And so one of my big things is being to overcome like fears, you know. I was a fearful child. Yeah, so not a natural former.

SPEAKER_04 5:09

No. So then did you have lots of comedy in the house or around the dinner tables? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Yeah, my parents were always telling funny stories and my dad was a bit of a you know, he loved the old open the matchbox and there's his severed thumb in there, you know, like pranks. He would go to the magic shop in Melbourne when we'd visit. We didn't live in Melbourne, but when we went to Melbourne, the magic shop was one of the places he'd go and so he could prank us. And that's so cool. Yeah, it's really cute. And my parents, no matter what happened, which lots have happened, you know, like terrible things happen, but it would always end up a funny story. So I was I was surrounded by people who had a great sense of humor, loved to laugh, and would always be able to find the funny side of something. Even black humour, which you would appreciate.

SPEAKER_04 5:59

So then how did you decide that a career in comedy was going to be for you?

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Oh well, it I was never a decision. I didn't even know comedy was a thing, really. You know, I used to watch we watched Buster Keaton and the Three Stooges and Benny Hill and whatever was around in the 60s growing up and the 70s, but I never thought of that as a career. We well, I didn't think of the arts as a career. We didn't have the arts weren't, you know, like aspiring to be an actor was like aspiring to be taller or French or you know, like it was just out of the question. We just aspired to, you know, finish school and go to uni, as our m as mum really wanted us to do it, and then get a real job. But so the arts weren't part of it, but so but I ended up in it because I guess I did like writing. I had a drama teacher at Rosebud High in year seven who arrived out of the blue. We'd never had drama before, and he wanted us all to put on a play. It was pretty rough school in those days, really rough, and most people just teased him. And but I thought, oh, that sounds interesting. And anyway, I wrote a play because and I found that I could write it. I mean, I couldn't write a play now, but I could then, you know, I didn't know what it really what a play was. I don't think I'd ever seen a play. No. You know, we'd never been to the theatre or anything or the ballet or anything like that. We just had a pretty ordinary childhood in the in a beach town, away from no near the city, and not no none of the sort of higher arts. But then just doing that, I realized I really enjoyed um writing, and I think that just stuck with me. And then I went to uni and was doing economics and politics and things that I thought I could get a really well-paid job for, and I dropped out after about six months. And then I got a then I thought, um, well, I have to get a degree doing something, and there was a um a drama school that did drama, it was for teachers. It was a teachers' college, but it did drama, media, and dance. And at the time I'd had, after dropping out of uni, I was working at a commercial art studio as a secretary, answering phones, and there were artists who worked there. There were photographers, illustrators, graphic designers, and um I loved what they were doing, and they were getting paid. I'm going, actually, you can get paid for doing something arty. You know, it was an eye-opener. So then I applied for this teachers college, and I ended up getting in. And in Teachers College, we put on lots of plays, we made movies, you know, and so it gave me this. Then I taught for a year. You really want to hear all this? I do, I do. All right, well, I tried to I applied to the schools commission to take the arts because I realized for someone like me, who just didn't really didn't like to, I couldn't concentrate on what I needed. I when I could look, I hate to say it, but I'm I would now they'd probably call me ADHD. Most people would, but I don't see it like that. I just see that I have to be engaged with something I really like to do, and then I can do well at it. So suddenly I was, so I knew I could write from from you know high school, and I knew that if I was left alone I liked to draw, you know, I was drawn to those sort of things. So I applied for the schools commission to take the arts to disadvantaged areas in the Mali and Northwest Victoria, which is quite an isolated area, weak country. And they were certainly dis disadvantaged after I'd been there for a year, because I had no idea what I was doing with these poor kids trying to teach them drama. Drama wasn't even on the syllabus. So we ended up just doing lots of role-playing and having fun, which was good, but I don't I don't think, yeah, which might have been good for one or two people who, yeah, you know, liked to found that that was it triggered something for them. Anyway, I don't even know why I mentioned ADHD because this is a big do you sort of get do you find that controversial?

SPEAKER_04 10:27

Uh an adult diagnosis of ADHD. Yeah, uh, I think the statistic is something like the prescriptions of ADHD medications. I'm going to, I'm gonna now be that person that makes up their own statistic, but it is something like it has increased by 8,000% over the past 10 years or something like that. So I don't know that anybody, I mean, if if you actually know the correct statistic, feel free to write in and let me know. I got that wrong. But it's something like that. And it's an interesting conversation because everyone's on a statin. We can test for high cholesterol, we've got a great awareness of what high cholesterol can do, and we've got a really safe treatment for it, so it's really widely prescribed. And I wonder if ADHD isn't a bit like that. So it was something that we didn't have a great understanding about. We're starting to get more of an understanding about it. All of these, um, especially women, especially perimenopausal women, are going through this journey with their children and then see the questions and think, oh gosh, that sounds just like me. That sounds just like me when I was at school, that sounds just like me. And then even though they're completely functioning, yeah, absolutely. But um one of my very dear friends has a an adult diagnosis of ADHD, and she just finds it so validating because she, I think, has really tried and tried and tried and tried her own time, she's very, very clever, so had all that masking, was able to, you know, was able to pull everything together at the last minute because she was really clever, so did really well at school. You know, all of that has a great job. All of that. Yeah. But I think she just thinks, oh, I I feel like I've struggled more than perhaps other people have, and now thank you, somebody's validated me for feeling like that. I don't think it's controversial. Um, I mean, I work in a I work in a shop pharmacy, loads, loads of loads of prescriptions for ADHD.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Are there? Yeah, yeah. And do they like them? I'm sorry, I'm asking you, I haven't haven't taken you off topic or anything.

SPEAKER_04 12:29

No, no, so do they like them? I mean, I think my my friend who started them, I think she thinks she's like, oh yeah, like perhaps it helps me concentrate a bit more, but I'm you know, she's still late. She's still she still has a huge deep dive into something, you know. If she's if she's concentrating on something, it's a you know, it it physically hurts her to to wrench her concentration away. Hasn't changed that, hasn't changed her personality. I mean, I don't, it's not, it certainly hasn't been a magic fix for her, but I think um yeah, and I think there must be so many different degrees of it too. There must be, and and also I I mean I do wonder a little bit if everybody wouldn't do a little bit better on a stimulant, you know. I I might do better on a stimulant. I mean I can hear, I mean um my daughter is upstairs, but um m I can just hear my family going, oh good lord, nobody nobody give her a stimulant, it would be intolerable. Um but I do think, you know, probably we all do a bit better because we're all on that spectrum somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

So that's right, we're all a bit neurospicy when you look at it.

SPEAKER_04 13:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:38

So I don't think it's um I don't think it's contradiction.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

I remember my daughter told me that I well, it's the same thing that's happening now that I feel. That's why I hesitated. It was a pushback when I got menopause, a pushback against HRT. And it's just all these sort of rumbling rumors and people going, no, you can't do that, you can't do that, and none of it's you know, you try try to get down to the facts. What are the facts? What's the data about um what are the true clinical trials about HRT rather than just what you read in the media and all that? So I find it really interesting to dig deeper into what's going on and so I guess one thing we don't have is we we don't have adults now who have been children who have been prescribed ADHD medications.

SPEAKER_04 14:30

We have adults now who have started taking them, but we don't have those those children haven't grown up yet to be adults. So I guess we don't have that information, but but I think there's a lot of people out there who think, oh, you know, you it's prescription speed. It's not. I mean the the stimulants they use are pretty mild. Yeah. Really. I mean, you know, we're talking a step to the side of pseudoephedrine, which you get for your cold. So you know, it's not you know, it's it's not like prescription strength speed, it you gets a bit dramatized, I think. Yes, the whole the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Well, I'll never forget when a friend of mine, uh, when I was sort of talking to her about because I know that um my kid one of my kids in particular who works who did psychology and works is a speech pathologist, she would love me to try and take something for it and see if it'd just help me, you know, focus. And I'm supposed to be writing a book, like, and it always takes me five years to write a book. And then in the end I have to pull down all the blinds, get up at four in the morning, and shut the door and just not come out, and then I'm right in it and I love it, and I can finish. But before that, I've put off the deadline and put off the deadline and put off the deadline and put off and just you know get distracted very easily. But a friend of mine she said to me, her grandson, who was prescribed it, who's a great kid, um maybe 12, I think, and he said when he got medication for his ADHD, it was like suddenly all these blocks in his brain all became patterns, and they were all neat, and he could just finally, you know, focus on them. He he said it made a huge difference to him, and it was this wonderful image he gave of these, you know, scrambling blocks everywhere, trying to grab this and grab that idea and grab that, and then them all becoming ordered, and he could do his homework so easily, and he could, you know, stay with what was happening in the class, and I thought that's miraculous. I mean, we have got this these incredible treatments to so people don't suffer unnecessarily with whatever it is, or even if you don't want to take treatments, just understanding. Like when I went through menopause, I didn't think anyone talked about it, but I'm sure the generation before me talked about it, but I just wasn't listening because it was didn't have anything to do with me. Yes, and that's what I find now. I find women who are starting to go through menopause go, why isn't anyone talking about this? Well, we were you weren't listening. You that it wasn't relevant to you, but I think the most and I've heard it in a panel um on menopause with uh you know, proper experts um say, Oh, you young women needn't worry about it, it's not gonna happen to you yet. We need to know our full cycle, we need to know our full fertility, how our bodies work, how our hormones work, how because when things go wrong or change, we need to be in tune. Definitely. And we need to know what to expect. When so if we're getting flooding at 60, or we still got our period at 60, and and a woman said to me, I'm still getting my period, like I'm still a young, fertile woman. Um, I don't think so. You better go and check that out. Like doesn't sound good. That's not great for you. No. No, no, and unless we know what what our bodies are meant to be doing, then we don't know when things are going wrong. That's such a strange brag.

SPEAKER_04 18:03

I'm still getting my period.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Oh good Lord.

SPEAKER_04 18:06

Oh good Lord, I know.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Oh, okay. But see, this is the brag is because women, when they hit menopause, often think they're past their use by date. Their purpose as a to, you know, uh perpetuate the species, their, you know, their biological urge is no longer there. So what is their purpose? And they feel that they will be sidelined. Professional women fe feel they'll be sidelined at work for leadership positions. So um it's a stra it's a strange, it's a strange thing that a lot of women can feel about that it ages them, basically.

SPEAKER_04 18:43

It's a it's a very so I was trying to think back to what education we were given at school because I thought, oh, maybe, I don't know, maybe, maybe they did they do tell you about these things, and as you say, it's just so far in the future you couldn't fathom that that would ever happen to you. But I don't think when they're telling you about puberty in year nine science, that they're then talking about the rest of the cycle. And for lots of people, the only science they get is what they get at school, you know, possibly even up until year eleven when you can drop science if that's not your thing. That's a long time to remember half a sentence that was said if it was said when you.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Definitely. We only had one one sex-ed lesson at school where we were given and shown an illness. We weren't told anything about how our bodies worked, we weren't told about safe sex, we weren't told told about pregnancy, we weren't told about ovulation, we weren't told about um, you know, how you knew when your period was coming, like when you were ovular. We weren't told and it won't we weren't even told how to wash blood out of your school uniform when you missed, you know, the telltale signs, you know. We weren't told anything. I don't I think we were just given this brochure with this fancy, you know, gorgeous, like a Grace Kelly, like a Kate Blanchette in a white ball gown. Something like that. I think we were given a brochure like that and it show and was talking about how we were going to grow up and become mature women, and I don't remember one fact in it.

SPEAKER_04 20:12

Not one. I don't think I'm just trying to think. I went to an old girls' school.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Oh, that might have been better.

SPEAKER_04 20:18

Uh I don't think it was though, but I I suspect it's better now. I should ask. So um Audrey went to North Sydney Girls and they're very pro women, pro learning pro, you know, they're very pro. And I wonder if she had a lot of people. Oh, they they do my good. You probably know that.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Well, I went to sex, I don't know, maybe they asked the parents. I went to sex education classes at their school, and they were comprehensive. And it was about gay sex and everything. Right. So they were really, they they were really open. We hid all we hid our tampons, no one could see when we were we were our getting in our period was a complete secret and it was humiliating and it was embarrassing, and you know, when you know we felt ashamed, and whereas my girls were taught to have brightly coloured packs of emergency, you know, yes, pads and tambons. They were they're right on top of it. Yeah, they are, no, they are. And they were encouraged to talk to their partners about what was going on and whatnot was not going on for the next few days. You know, they're really open.

SPEAKER_04 21:21

No, they that so I was very uh pleasantly surprised when um Audrey was at school. She'd be very openly sitting at the dinner table with her brother who is three years older, go into lots of detail that and I thought, oh I mean I mean her father as well, her father is a doctor, so um that's you know, but her poor brother, I think, just sat there and went, huh. But I also thought, well, you should know. Why should you not know?

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Oh god, yeah. I think gosh, yeah. Um, I think having a boyfriend who's got an older sister must be should be the you know number one priority when you're looking for a That's it for a PubMate. Have you got an order to do that?

SPEAKER_04 22:02

Do you have a sister? Do you have a sister who is an oversharer? Brilliant. Excellent. You will make a uh you will make a good partner. Yeah, well, they certainly know a lot more about m perimenopause and vaginas than I think either of them ever thought.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

Well now my my kids. My kids know a lot about end of life now if you're doing work. Yeah, yeah. And they yours would too, probably.

SPEAKER_04 22:23

Yes, mine do. Yeah, mine do I guess they hear they hear stories. They haven't they haven't experienced it quite like yours. They um their granddad died, but they weren't there. Um yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

That's that's I think I think it I meant um when I first started doing some work in the palliative sphere and then learning about end of life plans and what you know, I would come home and make everyone fill them out. Yes, yes. Well no at the dinner table. Yeah, exactly. Have you thought about where you want to be when you why do we have to think about it?

SPEAKER_04 22:56

Your advanced care directive, it needs to go on the fridge. Yeah, yeah. On not your art. Yeah, yeah. Your advanced care directive.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Forget the finger painting.

SPEAKER_04 23:04

No, nobody's interested in that. Yeah, yeah. No, it's it's very it was a question I was gonna ask you. Um, I was going to get around to asking you about um your experience with palliative care because you've spoken really openly about it. Then so I actually had about I've I've got all this.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Sorry, that's me jumping on. No, and no, and I and I and I love that.

SPEAKER_04 23:22

But there uh there was actually there was one thing that I had to, I had asking for a friend. My beautiful 21-year-old son. He so this is getting back to how did you get into comedy and and and all of that. But he had said to me when he was two years old, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? And he said, I want to be Steve Baxhall. Do you know who Steve Baxhall is? No. Oh, he's a wildlife guy. So he's he's a wildlife guy and he goes into the Amazon and he lives off. Oh, yeah, I want to be Steve too. Anaconda we or something, you know, like whatever. Um, but he's got a TV show called Deadly 60, and he's really cool. And we've been watching Steve Baxhull since he was two. Anyway, he's he did his first undergraduate degree and he's having a year off because he's trying to work out what he wants to do when he grows up. Poor little thing. And um, I said to him yesterday, so you know, continuing this conversation, he said, Oh, I just I still want to be Steve Baxhall. And I was like, Oh, okay, Darwin. So that sounds fine. Do you think we could have also a proper job?

SPEAKER_01 24:20

And I was just thinking about what your parents must have thought when when you well, I got a degree, so I knew I couldn't just go off and to meet some Victoria College of the Arts or NIDA or something like that. Not that I thought I would ever have got into those places, but I had to have a degree. So I have doing a Bachelor of Education. So I always had a de, you know, because that's a whole thing, you've got a degree to fall back on. Yeah, the details are a little bit vague, but you know, they were there. I think they probably were more horrified when I gave up teaching after a year because I realized I wasn't very good teacher, but I went into theatre and education. So you can start, you can blend it all together, bring it all together. You I I think we all need to be really mindful of how we're going to support ourselves. I was brought up by a mother who said the worst day of my life was when I had to put my hand out to your father for two dollars for a pair of pantyhos, so she used to say to my sister and I always have your own money, always have your job. And so that I've I've grown up with that, and that's how I live, and that's uh stood me in very good stead. So I've always been independent and I've been as secure as possible in the uh in the arts, but I knew that to support whatever fanciful ideas I had, I had to have a way of making money.

SPEAKER_04 25:43

Yes, good.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

So I can tell him that Gene Kittson said Yeah, freedom is having your own money. What happened for me during with a lot of feminism is that they uh were very disparaging of women who stayed at home and they became the women that were um they were uneducated, they were uninformed, they w didn't have any power, and that's not necessarily true. And I think if women have made that decision to stay at home, and maybe their husband earns more than them, because that's the decision a lot of and if the wife were earns more now, then the husband often stays at home. So you're making a financial decision. But to for a while there in the um 70s and 80s, women who stayed at home were considered like with um just unsuccessful, weak, not um not understanding their rights put upon by men, whereas they might have made an informed decision about that, and that may have been the only decision they could make. And or they might have decided that they just wanted to be with their kids and do all that.

SPEAKER_04 26:53

And so I think that there is still a lot. I haven't been at the schoolgate for a long time, but I imagine at the school gate there's probably still a reasonable amount of judgment by women who can't be at the schoolgate because they're working full-time on the women who have chosen to be able to do that. I I don't know that for sure because I um like I said, I'm I'm stood at a schoolgate for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

Well, I'm having that um discussion with my daughter. So I've got a w a first grandchild who's 14 months and adorable. Yes. And she's thinking she's said she needs to go back to work and put him in childcare. And I who've worked all through my kids' lives and thought I was doing the right thing because I was told we women could have everything. We could be a super mom, we could be a domestic goddess, we could be a CEO, CEO, we could be a sex goddess, you know, everybody happy, husband happy, children happy, bonuses rolling in. And then you have a I was told that having a baby would not change my life at all. That's what we were told in the in the 80s. That that's that a baby just fitted in with your life, and a baby changes everything. So I'm having these discussions as a grandparent now, having lived my life the way I thought it was, and and it was a nightmare, trying to juggle everything. A real, but luckily I had work that I could pivot, I could change the way I worked. So I stopped doing theatre because that was six nights a week. I stopped doing television because that was 15-hour days, and I went into more corporate work and event work and MCing, where I'd be just away a couple of nights a week of that. So that's how I manage it because I could manage my work. But if you're working, you know, nine to five or you're working where you've got 12 hour days if you're working for banks or finance companies or whatever, that you know, where they then you don't necessarily have the choice of that. I'm looking at my daughter going, if I had my time over, I'd be at home rolling on the grass with you, like till you were about three. Until you're about twenty. Yeah, until you're about twenty. That's right. And I don't know whether that's realistic or I'm just being nostalgic or I'm being like if I'm over-sentimentalizing it, but I really feel that I was stressed a lot of their time when they were really little. Yeah, I think consequently they're stressed. You know, like they have to deal with their air. Not consequently, but I don't know whether it's a consequence or it's just genetic.

SPEAKER_04 29:34

But I think you just you're surviving, aren't you? Uh I feel like looking back at that time, it you you know got half a nostril above the water edge, you know, but the water line, trying to take in little gasps of oxygen because you're really just drowning. You're really just drowning in in everything. I I I don't know. I like to blame the um I mean it's easy to blame living in Sydney because everything's really expensive and you need 28 incomes to be able to afford, you know, a house. I don't I wonder if it's is it any more relaxed if you live in the country? I don't I don't know. But I think that um I definitely so for me, I I definitely had to go back to work because there was only so much rolling around on the grass I wanted to do.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Yeah, fair enough.

SPEAKER_04 30:20

And then that's right, and then I needed to be able to go and do something else so that I was better at than rolling around in the grass. I know that there are um there are lots of people who are really good at playing. I was never good at playing. I would always sit down, I would sit down and say, Here's probably a diagnosis. I would sit down and we'd sit down with our Lego and we'd go, Okay, let's make this thing. And I go, Okay, I'm just gonna go and put the washing on. And then I'd do that, and I'd come and sit back down and I'd say, Okay, okay, well, you put that yellow one there. I'm just gonna go and hang the washing out. So I was never ever very good at playing, so I probably needed to go back to work.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Yeah, well, that's right. I think I've got the luxury of I mean, or I a lot of grandparents think like me because suddenly we're looking back on what we would have done differently. And that's not to say we should dismiss what um what the m our generation are thinking now. Um, but we and we could take it on board, but we also have the luxury of you know saying, oh, this is you know, this is you'll miss it, you won't do, you know. But of course I know my daughter really wants to get back into work. She's frustrated professionally, but she loves she loves playing, she's good at playing. I'm good at playing. I mean, I did a really good game with my 14-month author. I bought him one of those plastic swings, you know.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

Hopefully it stays up. But anyway, and where um I realised just how important clowning is, so um to kids and because he's only he can't speak it except to say ball and dog, which is apparently my name, either dog or ball, yeah. And then you push the swing and then you turn, then he has he he comes forward, grabs a small kick cat, which he doesn't, I'm not allowed to give it to him, but I just happen to have it in my hand. He grabs it out of my hand and he swings back and then he throws it on the ground, and then he swings back, and I bend down to pick it up, and then he kicks me in the bum, and he laughs and laughs, and I go, that is what we used to laugh at at circus. You know, like it never changes those sort of slapstick. Anyway, that's just a tip for all those grandmothers who want to get kicked in the bum.

SPEAKER_04 32:46

And I'm going to pause us there because this conversation with Gene Kitsen is just too good to rush.

SPEAKER_03 32:54

In the next episode, we go even deeper into midlife. Yes, we're talking sex, relationships, and all the things we're apparently not supposed to talk about. Which obviously means we absolutely will. And very importantly, Gene meets Horace. Which honestly might just be the highlight of the entire series. So make sure you come back for part two. I'll see you next time we get on the moans. Bye bye.