One sleep to go

'You know how some trousers have small pockets?' asked my mother this morning. 'Well... these don't.' And she plunged her hands in her pockets halfway to her elbows and beamed at me. I don't know. It made me laugh. And she'll be able to keep a lot of tissues in them, so everyone's happy.

Yesterday I read a suggestion that interesting effects could be obtained by taking a photo with the camera looking through the view finder of another camera, as a way of putting old cameras to use now we no longer buy film for them. So here is a photo of a plant in my garden this morning, taken with my digital camera:


( And here's one I prepared earlier )

Tomorrow (Saturday) is election day. I love election day. Even when I was little, I used to like going with my mother to the Purnim Primary School to watch her vote, although that was partly because I went to the town's Catholic primary school and enjoyed the chance to see how the other side lived. They didn't have a tennis court, but they did have a slide and a giant Rainbow Snake painted on their shelter shed wall, which seemed to even things out. (Incidentally, tabouli, I'm from Purnim. You're thinking of Panmure, a nearby but quite different place.)

Last election day I voted and then went a baptism followed by a celebratory barbecue, during which the child's mother said she felt personally affronted that the election was called for the same day as the baptism because it was Such An Effort to find fifteen minutes to go and vote during this busy, busy day, and the people near her agreed that, yes, voting is such a burden. And I looked around and thought, why am I friends with these people again? I was glad to get home and turn the election coverage on. (I was no fan of the then-Prime Minister, John Howard, but even I couldn't blame him for not taking into account my friends' baby's baptism when planning the election date).

The City by the Sea is in what used to be the third-safest seat in the country, in favour of the Liberal (that's our conservative party) Party (the electorate is Wannon, if my Australian f-listers want a personal connection while you're watching the call of the board - and do tell me your seat too). For my entire childhood, our local member was also the Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser. I met him and his wife on a school trip to look at seaweed once; they lived nearby and were just walking on the beach and stopped to chat with us. Best school trip ever! Since he retired the seat has been held by the world's beigest man, who has steadily been losing support, so Wannon is now only a middle-range safe seat. He's retiring this election, and while it's likely his personally picked replacement will get in, there is a chance to at least make the seat marginal, ensuring we get more attention. The electorate next to us, Corangamite, is one of the most marginal in the country, and we have watched, dismayed, as every major politician from the Prime Minister down has visited Corangamite this campaign and promised them all sorts of funding, completely ignoring us. Even senior members of the local Liberal party have written letters to today's paper urging people not to vote Liberal as part of the local Make Wannon Marginal campaign. Which is fine with me, because I wasn't going to vote for them anyway. My natural inclination is to vote for the Greens (and they will get my Senate vote), but the local Greens representative is vague and unimpressive, so I have decided to vote for one of the independent candidates. Big decision.