Challenge Accepted!: 253 Steps to Becoming an Anti-It Girl. Celeste Barber

But what the bartender didn’t realise is the grasshopper had his own unique name.

      Us: DAD! FUCK.

      Jackpot!

      Neville 1, the Barber daughters 0.

       3. He’s Always Ready First – ALWAYS

      When we were kids, if Mum said we were leaving the house at 6pm, at 5.45pm Dad would be sitting on the couch with the car reversed out of the driveway, air conditioning running, cooler bag of lemon, lime and bitters^* and a nice bottle of white wine for Mum. He would wait patiently for her as she figured out what perfume to wear from the collection he had bought her over the years, and for Olivia and me, who were fighting over whose acid-wash drop-waisted skirt was whose.

      When we paraded down the stairs at 6.05pm Dad would always greet us with a compliment. ‘You look lovely, dear,’ he would say to Mum. ‘You look lovely, girls,’ he would say, continuing the compliment. Then we were in the perfect-temperature car and off!

      My dad is solid like a rock, always there for anyone and always happy to tell you a dumb joke that you will roll your eyes at then excuse yourself from the conversation to go to the toilet and record in your phone so you can recite it to your friends later at the pub.

      He was an only child, and lived in the same house from the day he was born to the day when he and Mum moved in together. Dad lived on a dairy farm near Tweed Heads and when the local milk carrier would come by at 7am to pick up the milk, he would also pick up Dad and take him to school. The school was so small that on a number of occasions the principal would call Nana Rita to make sure Dad was going to school that day, as no one had turned up and they needed him there to keep the school open. He was four.

      As Dad got a bit older he would ride his bike to and from school along a dirt track every day. Once he got home from school on a Friday afternoon, he wouldn’t see anyone apart from his mum and dad until he was back at school on Monday morning. If a car went past, the family would go onto the balcony to watch the big display. He kept himself busy, no dramas, no complaints.

      His dad, Harold, was a tough man, old school, he didn’t show any emotion. Nana Rita and Dad were a team. And when Dad met Mum, Nana took her in as the daughter she’d always wanted.

      Dad was super-close to his mum. Rita had wanted more kids but Harold wasn’t into it, so in those days that was that. I reckon my dad would have LOVED a sibling or 10, but he will never tell you that, because that would be complaining, and that’s something Neville William Barber doesn’t do. He’s grateful for his life and is more than happy just to go with the flow. He’s a master at keeping busy and not imposing his time on anyone for any reason.

      My dad works as the maintenance guy at a private hospital on the Gold Coast, a job that started as a one-week job in 1996, and because he’s so excellent to have around and good at what he does the hospital just keeps creating work for him.

      He’s so loved that when he was in hospital for the second time in his life (the first was the time he was born), the staff put him up in the presidential suite and there were nurses who weren’t rostered on that day visiting him to make sure everything was OK. (He had tightness in his chest, which freaked everyone out. Turns out it was gas. Classic Neville.) My mum, who has been in and out of hospital her whole life due to dodgy lungs, is lucky to get a bunch of flowers on her hospital visits these days, whereas Dad gets a full-blown fanfare if he gets so much as a blood test.

      When I moved out of home at 17, my dad wrote me notes of encouragement on the backs of business cards. Every time I would go backs home, or he and Mum would visit me, he would have a fresh business card with a fresh note of love and encouragement. The business cards have been replaced with official and professional texts.

       Celeste

       Just looked at e mail from the copy editor

       Just another one of your talents

       You never stop surprising us all

       Just more acknowledgment for the great person you are

       Love Dad xxxx

      Neville William Barber and former child dancer Celeste Barber.

      My wedding day, Bali, 2013.

      5,6,7,8

      @cynthiav_beauty

      (Top photograph by Melika Dez)

The One Where I Danced a Lot

      I DANCED WHEN I WAS A KID, and when I say ‘danced’ I mean danced (tilts head with an over-the-top click of the fingers). I danced at eisteddfods, at shopping centres, at school fairs, the Ekka (the Royal Queensland Show), conferences, football grand finals, in my nana’s shower, in my shower, and given the chance I’d dance in your shower too.

      I was a self-proclaimed unique triple threat: I could Dance, Dance and DANCE. And I loved it.

      My mum said that I could dance even before I could walk, but as I have said one billion times, my mum exaggerates a bit. This didn’t stop me from telling anyone who would listen, especially my fellow dance enthusiasts. You know those conversations you have with like-minded 12-year-olds about how you were born to do this and no one has the experience or dedication that you do?

      ‘I know all the dance moves to EVERY one of the Spice Girls’ songs, even “Viva Forever”,’ Julie would say over Macca’s while we sat in the splits.

      Elissa would chip in, ‘Well, my big sister has taught me all the steps to all the senior dances, and she said that if any of the senior girls can’t do the end-of-year concert then I can totally step in because I’m so good at learning all the steps.’

      I looked at these girls, knowing full well that what I was about to share with them would stop them dead in their flexible tracks. ‘Well, I could dance before I could even walk.’

      Pause. Silence. Nothing.

      ‘Aaand my uncle’s a firefighter.’

      They smiled. BAM! I knew it would floor them.

      I danced at the Johnny Young Talent School (JYTS) on the Gold Coast. When I started there, it was the Colleen Fitzgerald Dance School. Then Miss Colleen married Mr Lance from JYTS and they merged the dance schools.

      Look, I won’t lie, it was hard at first to accept the merger, but when the job opportunities came rolling in thick and fast to dance at Jupiters Casino on the Gold Coast because we were now known as part of THE JOHNNY YOUNG TALENT SCHOOL DANCERS (this must be sung, never just spoken, using jazz hands), we got over our loyalty pretty quickly.

      I was 15 when I went on my first interstate trip to Darwin for two weeks and performed in shopping centres. There was a group of us that went, some as dancers, some as show comperes and some as suit operators. (You know those larger-than-life characters that walk around shopping centres during school holidays, scaring the piss out of all the kids? Well, there’s an actual person inside them, not just fear and misery.) In Darwin, I was lucky enough to be the suit operator of Sonic the Hedgehog, a rabbit and one of The Simpsons – I want to say Marge but I think it was Maggie. Given it was the September school holidays in Darwin, and the average heat at 8am was 37 degrees Celsius, I managed to halve my body weight in a week while still eating two-minute noodles 45 times a day. We all stayed in hotel rooms with balconies and would sun ourselves first thing in the morning as ‘morning sun