Salt and corrosion

Is 'Everybody Hurts' really the most appropriate song they could think of as something to sing for Haiti? Chin up, Haiti, everybody hurts sometimes. Well done, Simon Cowell! (Of course, my feelings could be tainted because I'm not all that keen on the REM original. And by 'not all that keen on', I mean I hate it.)

Today I read an academic journal article that used the word 'quadrilemma'. As in, a four-pronged dilemma. That is beautiful and I am going to attempt to work increasing -lemmas into my conversation. 'I just don't know what to do, I have such a heptilemma.'

A few weeks back, I was scoffing at the contestants on Masterchef Australia for their inability and unwillingness to do desserts. Well, they've since had that well and truly beaten out of them (when they were forced to make the ugliest cake ever witnessed by humanity), and because Masterchef is rating its socks off, their dessert-making has led to unexpected (even unprecedented) demand for what would otherwise be obscure, specialist products. A lot of Australians now own croquembouche cones, apparently, although I can't imagine them getting a lot of use. And, similarly, tonka bean sales have experienced a sharp upturn, as viewers attempt to whip up their own tonka bean pannacotta.

I haven't been sucked in that far, but I have, sheep-like, made a recipe from the Masterchef collection. For dinner with my mother and John last night, I whipped up some chocolate cigars just like theirs. Well... I didn't use ghee. And I used almonds instead of peanuts and orange-infused chocolate instead of whatever they said. And I didn't make the sabayon, or sit the cigar on a martini glass. But other than that it was exactly the same.

My mother and John came straight from an unexpected doctor's appointment. John had a biopsy of a thing on his head a few days ago and his doctor summoned him in to tell him the results in person. That's never a good sign. He has a stage two melanoma and is going to see a surgeon next week. John is matter-of-fact about it: he'll go, he'll have it cut out, he'll do whatever he has to do and then he'll be better. He's probably right: in the last fifteen years, he's had a heart attack, lymphoma (requiring chemo and radiation) and peritonitis, and recovered from them all, so I think he may well be indestructible. My mother's slightly more anxious about it, probably because she's a palliative care nurse; the doctor knows this and made a point of telling her to remember that she only sees the people who don't get well. But then, my mother has also had a skin cancer removed (not a melanoma) and my grandfather had several, so she knows the odds are good.

Today I went to the hairdresser. There is a salon at the end of the street where I work, which I like for convenience and don't like because (a) they're all so very young and make me feel so very old and (b) they once forgot to put my appointment in the book. Convenience won out and so today I made a return visit. Despite not having been there for two years, they are all still, inexplicably, as young as they were two years ago. A different girl, Jess, cut my hair this time (and I think she cut every single hair individually, such was her attention to detail) and she beamed when she saw me. 'I know you!' she said. 'You walk past the window every lunch time.' It's true, I do - even if I don't have anything to do down the street, I like to stretch my legs - but it surprised me. I'm so used to watching things unobserved that it's slightly unsettling to be noticed myself.

The music in the salon was some sort of 'quiet songs of the sixties' compilation and when the Velvet Underground's 'Sunday Morning' came on the hairdressers all started giggling. Jess tried to explain why, but it's hard to explain inside jokes. Essentially, it seemed that after multiple listenings the girls find 'that singer guy's voice' very funny. 'I wonder if he looks funny too,' said one of them, 'but I don't know who he is to be able to look for him.' Lou Reed does look kind of funny, I suppose, but I already felt ancient enough in there without explaining I know who he is.

A few years ago someone gave me one of those birthday cards that has a CD of songs from your birth year attached. It's great, all glam and glitter: T.Rex, Suzi Quatro, Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, and, erm, Slade. However, I can't help but think it's slightly misleading. We were playing with this at work today: what was the US number one song on the day you were born? Mine was 'Sunshine on my Shoulders' by John Denver. It could have been worse. A month earlier and it would have been 'Seasons in the Sun'. Not much glam or glitter to be had there. (If I'd been born in 1899, the number one would have been that old toe-tapper, 'I Guess I'll Have To Telegraph My Baby' by Arthur Collins. Hasn't that lived on?)

In Australia on the same date, it was 'My Coo Ca Choo' by Alvin Stardust and in the UK it was 'Billy, Don't Be A Hero' by Paper Lace. What a wonderful musical world I was born into. How about you?

I've just seen a poster advertising a band called the Potbelleez. That's a terrible name, isn't it?

Does where you live have a name? Not the actual name, I mean, but a name for the region used only by tourism adverts. The City by the Sea, for example, finds itself in the Shipwreck Coast, so named because of the many and pointy rocks that our ocean is so liberally littered with.

But! Our tourism authority has recently decided that the Shipwreck Coast just isn't doing it for the tourists any longer. The name will be changed to the Apostle Coast, in honour of the Twelve Apostles*, a collection of the most famous of pointy rocks in the region. Personally, I think the Shipwreck Coast sounds more exciting, but I'm not much exercised either way (unlike the Letters to the Editor crazies in the local paper, who have gone beserk). What do you think: which coast would be more likely to tempt you for a holiday?



* Reading that website, I've just discovered that our ocean also contains kelp forests. Forests of kelp. What a delightful concept.

This is adorable:



I want them at my wedding, private party and bar mitzvah!

Both the supermarket and Target were both playing Billy Joel songs went I went in today. He hasn't died, has he?

At the risk of offering Too Much Information for readers with delicate sensibilities, I bought some new underwear* at Target last week, from their organic cotton range. This proved to be so delightfully soft and comfortable that I've spent the past week saying to women of my (close) acquaintance, "Feel my knickers!" (One of those women had just subjected me to a detailed description of her treatment for bowel polyps, so I felt talking about my underwear could only improve the conversation.) Anyway, today I went back and bought more, one pair in every colour available, because I've learnt my lesson from the Myer Red Spotted Stocking Sock Disappointment of 2006 (in which I realised how much I liked said socks, but dilly-dallied and ultimately left it too late to buy a second pair).



* I shouldn't need to specify "new", should I? I would hardly be buying old underwear. *shudders*

On Christmas Eve, 1974, Cyclone Tracy hit the northern Australian city of Darwin. The city was almost completely destroyed and the population (about 44,000 people) was evacuated, though not before 71 people had died (49 on land, 22 at sea).

This, of course, motivated the rest of the country to band together and support the good citizens of Darwin with a charity single. What better way to show you care?* Despite its silly name, "Santa Never Made It Into Darwin" by then-popular duo Bill & Boyd was a huge hit, and lo! the city was rebuilt. (Although I shouldn't be so flippant. It took ten years for the population to get back to pre-Tracy levels; that it is now over 100,000 is a huge achievement.)

Perhaps not surprisingly, I couldn't find the music to this anywhere online. If you really want to know what it sounds like, I'll come to your house and sing it to you. :-) Actually, tree knows it too; we could do a tour.

( Santa Never Made It Into Darwin )




* My least favourite charity single is a song called "Sixty-Five Roses", an appalling country ballad about a young boy who can't understand why his family is upset about his cousin having sixty-five roses. Well done to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation for that gem. At the Evil Accounting Firm, we had a radio station filtered through our phones; I didn't listen to it, but I could hear it from other desks. They played "Sixty-Five Roses" every day for six weeks. It was a most cruel and unusual punishment.

It's funny how different things set different people on edge, isn't it? We play the radio through our phones at work; it's set to ABC radio, which is a mix of genteel talkback and music. I actually don't listen to it, preferring to stream lastfm or ABC Classic (as in Beethoven-classic, not, you know, Steely Dan), because I can't listen to talkback radio at all, no matter how polite and mild the participants are. There's just something about hearing the same conversation over and over again that gradually eats away at my soul.

Anyway, I heard a short scream of frustration from the reception area this morning, and went out to find Leeanne listening to the radio, which was celebrating some sort of jazz festival in Melbourne by playing what seemed to be an uninterrupted hour of random notes of quiet, plinky piano interspersed with loud, crashy piano. "I can't take any more of this," she said, jabbing wildly at the phone to turn it off.

I agreed; I can't be having with noodly jazz instrumentals much myself. Angela, though, said, "Oh, it's beautiful", and went back to her office to listen, no doubt nodding appreciatively every now and then, and perhaps wishing she'd worn a beret.

A bit later on, we got to talking about a new film called "Australia", which is currently in production. Directed by Baz Luhrmann, it will star Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, and it sounds awful (although, reading that wikipedia entry stating that Russell Crowe was originally involved, not as awful as it could have been). I'm cringing just thinking about it. Partly it's the title; imagine having the arrogance to call a film "Luxembourg" or "Argentina", as if one film can capture a whole country. Partly it's the story, which is a laughable, irksome and tired cliché (well-off, widowed, English-speaking foreigner, left to fend for herself on a remote farm, eventually finds love and truth*). But mostly it's Nicole Kidman, who is right up there with talkback radio and noodly jazz as far as I'm concerned; I don't find her convincing as a human being, let alone as a different character in each film.

You know, this entry didn't really end up where I thought it would. Hmm.



* I recall seeing a 1980s miniseries starring Linda Evans that had the exact same plot as "Australia", memorable largely because of a scene in which one of Linda's sheep gave birth to a stillborn lamb that was revived by Linda's love interest grabbing it by the tail and swinging it round his head. Oh, how my family laughed. Laughed and laughed and laughed.