Salt and corrosion

I have a sad addiction I rarely mention, and that is cheesy soap opera comic strips. Mary Worth, Mark Trail, Apartment 3G... all hilarious and oddly compelling. None more so than today's Mary Worth, in which Doctor Cory invites his philandering son to join him and Mary "for dinner at the Bum Boat". I have no idea why an American restaurant would call itself that, but in my version of the language that's just... wrong.

I know that the idea of equinoctial gales has been discredited in some meteorological circles, but I think it's worth noting that part of House-Across-The-Road-And-Down-A-Bit's roof just blew off.

One of my work colleagues had a sick day this week. Nothing remarkable about that at all... except that it was due to crashing his own plane. That's a more interesting reason for not going to work than a head cold. (Plane and pilot were both all right, by the way.)

Anyway, I had dinner with my mother tonight and we were talking about this accident and she told me about her own Flight Of Fear. We lived in central Australia for a few years when I was little, flying in and out of Alice Springs airport in a small plane with twenty-odd seats. So one day she got on the plane first and picked her favourite seat, the removable one near the cargo hold that had the most leg room. She was sitting there very pleased with the world, when she was overcome with the feeling that something wasn't quite right. "I couldn't explain it. I just thought, I can't sit here, something's wrong. It's dangerous."

Now, I know what you're thinking, because it's what I was thinking: she got off the plane and it crashed and there were no survivors. Well... no.

What did happen was this: she moved a couple of rows away; another woman got the good seat, and when the plane took off, the seat collapsed and the woman fell head first into the aisle.

"Was she hurt?"

"Oh, no. But we all laughed, and she was very embarrassed. And it could have been me." Manic laughter.

I often feel that my career as an astronomer has been cruelly thwarted by the fact that I live somewhere that is so frequently cloudy. My space watch newsletter has been full of excitement about Comet McNaught, spectacularly visible to all in the southern hemisphere except those of us in the City by Sea. We can't even see the sky, let alone any celestial bodies swanning about in it. Galileo may have had cloudy horizons, what with the trouble with the Church and all that, but at least he had clear skies.

On a completely different note, I went for a walk yesterday evening and stopped to talk to a friend who was weeding her front garden. As we stood and chatted, the three boys who live next door came out to play a game of cricket in their driveway, which they blocked off at the entrance by standing their trampoline on its side. With the batsman standing in front of it, the trampoline thus acted as both wicket and wicketkeeper, and also prevented the tennis ball they were using from going out onto the road.

So, first ball: the bowler started his run near the garage end and bowled a rather wild delivery that hit a tuft of grass on the driveway and bounced high over the batsman before rebounding from the trampoline onto the batsman's head. His two brothers were much amused.

Second ball: a faster delivery than the first, this one bounced off the trampoline and back onto the bowler. His two brothers were much amused.

Third ball: defeated by the trampoline, they changed ends and batted in front of the garage instead. All spectators were much amused.

My mushroom box has sprouted mushrooms! Well... it has tiny white balls of fungus that I assume will be mushrooms at some point in the future. Or I could cook them now and have the world's smallest mushroom omelette.

*****
A few years ago, a family of magpies lived in the back garden. By magpies, I mean Australian magpies, which aren't related to the birds called magpies elsewhere. These are about the same size as crows (they're members of the crow family), with a glorious carolling warble. Lots of people feed magpies because they're personable, characterful (and rather bossy) birds. In this case the two baby birds were the most entertaining: they would run up close and catch crusts of bread thrown to them, swing upside-down on the hanging baskets, dance in the sprinklers and try to steal food from the cats (poor Mopsy-Next-Door had his tail pulled once!). They were rather naughty though. Tapping on the window to be fed wasn't so bad, but strolling in the back door and flying about the house was a bit much.

So I was sad and relieved in equal measures when they moved on. They were replaced by three of their cousins - the crow family, whom I adore. Baby crow is just as entertaining as the baby magpies, and while the parents are shyer, they're also smarter than the magpies. The magpies, for example, will just peck at a piece of hard, dry bread; the crows will take it to the birdbath and soak it. In fact, they sometimes fly to the birdbath with food from somewhere else, so soft, wet bread must be a crow delicacy. All in all, we've been happy together, the crows and I.

On Saturday, there was an enormous racket in the garden, so I went to have a look. There was one crow staring down nine magpies. The crow eventually backed down and flew off (he was back later, and they seem to have reached a cautious truce), and the magpies have been strutting about the garden ever since. The first time I went out, the biggest female magpie ran straight up to me. I had an idea: I threw her a crust of bread... and she caught it. One of the babies is back, and she's brought her family with her. I'm really quite touched.

*****
My mother told me earlier about something she saw in a bookshop yesterday. Underneath a large sign that said "Ideal Gifts for Mum!", she was appalled to see one of the suggestions was a housekeeping book called Spotless. Appalled, that is, until she realised that one of the other suggestions was something called Sins of the Mothers: A memoir of abandonment, and decided that the household hints book wasn't so bad after all.

*****
( Things that happen at the same time as other things )

Walking to work, I have to pass a supermarket, which takes up half a block and is ringed with a garden of sorts, a border of hard-to-kill, olive-brown, strap-leaved grasses. Sitting on top of these plants this morning, evenly spaced, were four pairs of men's trousers - jeans, tracksuit pants and heavy-wearing work gear - not neatly folded, but crumpled and half-inside-out, as though they'd been pulled off. Further along, in the little rock garden in front of the chemist, was another pair. Nowhere in sight, however, was the set of ornamental drums that normally sits out the front of the drumming school.

What can it all mean?

I've linked to Threadbared before, but, gosh, I'm going to do it again. I visited during my lunch hour and couldn't decide my favourite. Marvel at:

• A man and his Afghan


• A man and his mittens


• A man and his ENORMOUS HEAD

Creepy expressions, ahoy!

My boss was busy this morning writing a fan email to Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott, just to support him for doing such a super job. I find that extraordinary. Who writes fan letters to politicians? My own thoughts on Tony Abbott and his (un)worthiness of getting fan mail aside, my boss was touchingly excited to get an automatic response confirming receipt. "He's reading it right now!"

Thanks to cuteoverload, I have a mad, egg-related earworm. Go, click I Love Egg and listen to the Egg Song. See egg ninjas and eggs in speedboats!

You know you want to.



ETA: Ooh, it downloads a trojan. Be careful!

So I was all set for a quiet Sunday afternoon reading my book and watching the tennis when I turned on the TV and was distracted by Rex Harrison dressed as an Arab and referred to by a Robin Hood-type character as a "heathen fakir". Just as I was thinking that entertainment doesn't come any better than that, Rex the Fakir picked up a zither and began to croon. Rex turned out to be Saladin in disguise, while the film also featured a blonde woman saying, "War, war - that's all you think of, Dick Plantagenet!" to King Richard III, Christians and Saracens alike speaking with clipped English accents and wearing matching pointy goatees, and several battles fought with rubber swords.

They don't make films like that anymore.

Oh, the Wildean bon mots and scintillating conversation at a Daisy family dinner!

John: Have you heard of the racing driver, Stirling Moss?
Me: Yes.
John: Well, that's not his real name.
Me: What is it?
John: I don't know.

So I'm slightly better informed that I was, but not much.

And a question for those of you who used to receive gifts from Santa Claus/Father Christmas/etc: did you also receive presents from your parents too? I always did - the stuff from Santa was at the foot of my bed when I woke on Christmas morning, and then I had presents from my family at the main gift-giving after lunch. But someone at work today said that was luxury - luxury! - and it was only ever presents from Santa in their house. How extraordinary. I would have wondered why my mother didn't get me anything. Then again, I was an only child in a relatively well-off family, so perhaps I was just a little bit spoiled.

This amuses me no end: Lucius Malfoy's entry and profile in Forbes' Top Fictional Fifteen Rich List. Apparently, "[t]he ivory-haired devil's fortune increased nearly 30% over the last year." The stocks are probably too US-centric to be accurate, but it's funny nonetheless. (The full list is here - all the entries are pretty funny. Link shamelessly stolen from Bookish.)

In other news, my right Achilles tendon has developed a small, tight and rather tender lump, which is fine when I'm walking around, but seizes up when I'm still. It causes me to hobble in a most amusing (to other people) way when I stand up.