Salt and corrosion

Hello, f-list. My work's tender for our future has been submitted, so life is back to a normal level of busy-ness now. Or it will be. Not half an hour after the submit button was pushed, the network went down with some sort of virus. So, phew, hey. I don't know more about the virus because it happened about an hour before my home time, so I put some things away and did a bit of paperwork then went home half an hour early. Doubtless I will find out all about it on Monday.

Yesterday I went to the touring Craft Alive fair that was being held at the netball stadium. I didn't buy any craft supplies though. How strong! I did buy some handmade clotted cream fudge. Not so strong there.

Yesterday evening I went to see The Merger, which was a one-man play about a small town's effort to save its football team by recruiting refugees. It was really good. In the unlikely event its regional Australian tour comes to your town, I do recommend it. One thing I appreciated was that it was an accurate depiction of small town Australia. Most things set in small towns get the old-fashioned lack of sophistication part right, but miss the new generation, like the coach who farms alpacas. It also got local radio right, because the show kicked off with the in-show local radio's homemade ad for gastrointestinal worm treatment (for cattle, I should say). You don't get that in your big cities.

In other news, this is a bit of fun. I think he had a point about the mug shot photo.

I am spending my week of leave spring-cleaning. I did the wardrobe yesterday. I am always surprised to find things that I didn't throw out last time. One thing that went this time was my overcoat. It was a beautiful coat: a wool-cashmere blend, floor-length, soft grey in colour. I bought it from Stephen's, the City by the Sea's former department store. In fact, I bought it at Stephen's closing down sale, marked down from $435 to $90, nearly twenty years ago. I know the price, because it still had the tags on it. That's right: I have not worn the coat once in all that time. What I forgot, in my youthful excitement at seeing that bargain, was that City by the Sea is situated in a Mediterranean climate (Wikipedia tells me it is on the same latitude as Palermo, Sicily), with not many days that lend themselves to dressing like an extra out of Elton John's Nikita video clip. Not any days, in fact. Also, I am not very tall, and the coat is quite long. It looked like a dressing gown on me.

I also threw out the coat I was probably wearing when I bought the overcoat. Also a wool-cashmere blend, but hip-length, and black with a bold white check pattern. I tried it on and it was like wrapping myself in a big bowl of soup. It was lovely. I was tempted to keep it, and start wearing it again next winter. Coats are timeless, aren't they? No. Well, coats may be timeless, but shoulder pads aren't. In the mirror, I looked like I was just popping out to say hi to Melanie Griffith in Working Girl. I am surprised I could get through any doorways without turning sideways. So it has gone with the overcoat to the op shop, where, one hopes, they will find new, probably retro-loving, owners.

Today I tackled the craft cupboard. Why do I have so many balls of self-striping sock wool, f-list? And one skein of grey wool pre-hung with sequins. What was I planning to do with that? And four balls of luridly coloured cotton. 'What were they for?' asked my mother, who had come to visit. I remembered that, at least: I was going to knit dishcloths. 'That's a bit mad,' she said. 'Buy them like a normal person.' Happily, I was spared a lecture on what normal people do their dishes with, because something distracted her. 'Is that the swimming bag I made for you in primary school?'

Yes, that's what it was, tucked away at the back of the cupboard. It was a good swimming bag. She wasn't content with making a simple little drawstring swimming bags such as the other kids had, no. This one is shaped like a proper handbag, in a bright tropical flower print. You could carry it down the street today and get nothing but admiring glances. And I may do just that, as the bag has now been washed and revitalised. But what was in the bag when we pulled it out of the cupboard?

It was a cardigan I was knitting for myself. 'That's right,' I said. 'I never got round to finishing that.' I pulled the pieces out. The fronts had been sewn to the back. Do you know the only part I hadn't got round to finishing? Sewing in the sleeves. So close. What a cardigan it would have been, though. The pattern was still with it: I had pulled it out of a magazine dated 13/06/1992. It was cream. The front and back were solid, and quite short, with a tight waistband opening up to a sort of baggy blouson in the body. And the sleeves? Lacy crochet. It was the most nineties garment ever conceived. I was probably going to wear it with a black velvet choker.

They're all gone now. My mother took them round to her friend, Val, who runs a weekly craft session for the Anglican Ladies' Auxiliary. She called later. 'I told Val they could rip the cardigan out and use the wool,' she said, 'but Val said no, she'd sew the sleeves in and see if she can sell it at their fete.' So now I'm tempted to go and see what it sells for.

Incidentally, the reason my mother was visiting today was so that I could help her cut out pieces for a laptop bag she is going to make for me at her annual quilt camp this weekend. She's my bespoke bag maker. We had to go and get some supplies for this new bag today. Spotlight (a craft chain) had a big display of Christmas crafts you could make, including this pattern. I don't know if you can see it clearly, but the expression on the man in the elf costume made me laugh. He's not convinced by it, is he?

Finally, oh! A woman in Melbourne fell into a person-sized sinkhole while hanging out her washing. I love sinkholes.

Last week I reported that a half-tonne rock had been stolen from the National Rock Gallery, which would require a certain degree of dedication on the part of the robbers. Today I was going to report that Queensland's Big Mango has been stolen! Absconding with a ten-metre tall mango would also require organisation and planning by the thieves, and I was really taken with the idea that perhaps they were going to drive all the way along the Queensland coast stealing any Big Fruit they passed (there's a Big Banana and a Big Pineapple, I know; there's also a Big Orange, but I think that's in New South Wales). Perhaps they could take them all to a small town that doesn't have a Big Thing of its own, and make a Big Fruit Salad. Who wouldn't want to see that?

Sadly, that little fantasy isn't going to come true. The Big Mango has been found, cunningly camouflaged by blankets and branches, and it was all a publicity stunt by Nando's. Boo. My idea was better.

In other news, this weekend is the annual visit from the Detox Your Home mobile van, where you can take paint tins and batteries and suchlike for disposal. I don't have that many hazardous chemicals around the place, but I've been saving my batteries and compact fluorescent bulbs all year. So I went to their website and registered to drop my stuff off between 12 and 1 on Saturday afternoon, to which they sent a confirmation email listing all the things they accept. Please note, it said, we can no longer accept batteries and compact fluorescent bulbs. I checked their website, which said the same thing, adding that they could now be taken to one of their permanent disposals sites. I checked the list; the nearest one of them is two hours away. I'm not taking two light bulbs and a few batteries on a day-trip! Then I downloaded their PDF list of things you can take to the mobile van, which said you *can* take batteries and compact fluorescent bulbs. Mixed messages, what.

At this point, I handed matters to my mother, as we were going to take stuff from her house too, and she has ample free time during the day to ring businesses for clarification. She rang the Detox Your Home people and got a USELESS man (her word and emphasis). She told him about the contradictory advice on their website, and he said, no, you can't take batteries and bulbs, no indeed, you've got to take them to a permanent site. She explained that that was neither practical nor environmentally-friendly, and he didn't really have a solution. To be fair, what was he going to say? Oh, right, we'll open one in your town right away!

Then she rang the local council, who is responsible for bring the van down here, to say that we've always taken batteries and bulbs to the mobile van and now they're saying we can't and so she's going to have to put them in the bin and they'll go to landfill and the planet will die and it will be the council's fault, and the nice lady said, 'Oh, take them anyway, I'm taking mine.' So we're taking them.

This is the third time in about six months that my mother has rung the council. The first time was in winter, after I mentioned that I had slipped over on some grass clippings left on the footpath after the council had mown a nearby lawn. The second time was to ask them to remove a dead fox from the same footpath at the height of summer. Both times, the offending items were removed the following day. She's doing good work, but I think she needs a hobby.

Sometimes you see someone on TV and he seems like a normal-sized person, then you see someone else on TV, and he also seems like a normal-sized person, then you see them both together and realise, no, one is a giant or the other one is tiny. In other news, this year's Australian of the Year makes our Prime Minister look like a pixie.

Today is Australia Day and from the above you can tell that YET AGAIN I have been overlooked as Australian of the Year in favour of someone who is good at something. Boo. What's more, just between us, f-list, I think the window for me being Young Australian of the Year has passed. New plan: I will bide my time for twenty-five years and see if I can get Senior Australian of the Year. There will be a natural rate of attrition among my contemporaries that will leave me with fewer competitors.

Hello, f-list. I have a problem. But then, I fought a valiant battle with myself today and won, so maybe I don't have a problem. It's like this. I have lately begun playing a game called Happy Street. It is this street that little animals live on and you build houses for them and catch fish and make soup. Hours of fun. Well, no. I set them building before I go to work, then again when I get home. So half an hour of fun.

Anyway, there's a train that comes to the street and you have a certain amount of time to stock it with various goods. Yesterday morning I had all the goods but one in my inventory, so I loaded them. I had nine-and-a-half hours for the game to make the required item before the train left, but in real life I had to go to work and wouldn't be home for, ooh, nine-and-a-half hours. Cutting it fine!

I can't say I gave the matter any thought during the day, but on the way home, I seriously contemplated not doing my grocery shopping so I could get home more quickly and get my train loaded. Plenty of time for grocery shopping later! Then I had a little chat with myself about being ridiculous and did my grocery shopping, forced myself not to rush, and still made it home with ten minutes to spare. Phew.

Here is a sentence from a news article to contemplate at your leisure:

Emergency workers say they had to use olive oil to grease up and free a naked man who got stuck in a washing machine during a game of hide and seek.

It was a top-loader, in case you were wondering.

A peek into my mother's kitchen:



She seems to be building an army of strawberry Santas.

Today I tried some turkey ham for the first time ever. Perhaps I have led a sheltered life, because I have never heard of this before. It tastes like ham, but it's turkey! So it's twice as festive.

The fun article in this week's medical newspaper concerned some research published in the BMJ about nominative determinism in health care. Specifically, people surnamed Brady are treated for bradycardia more often than people not named Brady. So don't change your name to Will Amputate, because that's just asking for trouble.

I had an entry all planned, but it needed a photo, which I forgot to take. Tsk. So there's something to look forward to: my octopus embroidery. I'll have to find something else to witter about today.

I know! There was an article in the medical newspaper at work about a 22-year-old man who went fishing and caught a fish. A nice day out for him... until it wasn't. He said he was going to kiss the fish before throwing it back in, but somehow he managed to swallow it instead. There is a photo of the fish's head (spoiler: it didn't make it) next to a ruler, courtesy of the the hospital, and the head alone measures 5 cm/2 inches, so I can't quite picture how that worked: he's puckered up to kiss the fish when he suddenly opens his mouth so wide the fish leaps out of his hands and straight down his gullet? Okay.

It still had the hook and line attached, but the man and his friends couldn't pull it out, so they drove him to the nearest town, population 1,200, where he had an emergency cricothyrotomy to establish an airway. Then he was transferred to a larger hospital in another state (that makes it sound like a major trip, but I just looked up the towns and they're only about 25 km/15 miles apart, just on the other side of the border). There he had an 'extremely tricky' orotracheal intubation. Then he was transferred to a bigger hospital 130 km/80 miles away where they finally got the fish out by cutting off its tail and hollowing out its insides, then dragging the collapsed carcase out. The man then developed aspiration pneumonia and sepsis, but he's all right now. And he's probably never going to kiss another fish ever again.

Anyway, the whole point of me telling you all that is that the doctor talking to the journalist said, 'The important thing is we didn't flounder.' Well punned, sir.

A few months ago I was flipping through an old magazine in a waiting room. That's where I get all my beauty tips. It had an article about hair conditioner. It said that the creamy hair conditioner you leave on for three minutes then wash off is bad, very bad. Don't use it!, it said. Use a serum that you spritz on after towelling your hair dry instead, and your hair will be livelier and your life will be better and the sun will shine brighter. A serum, oh, just like that one pictured in the ad on the other side of the page. Hmm. So when I finished my bottle of conditioner last week, I thought I'd give this spritz-on serum conditioner a go (not necessarily the one the magazine suggested, because I couldn't remember what it was). And you know what? The magazine was right. Not about the sun shining brighter; that's because it's spring. And my life is not noticeably better, but then, it was already pretty cruisey. But my hair is definitely more lively, so well done, old magazine.

That may have been the same magazine that suggested that if you have a hunger for something that perhaps you feel you shouldn't have, like that last piece of cake, don't eat it. Draw it! That will stave off the pangs. Apparently. ( Let's see )

A headline today: Woman's death a warning on the dangers of squats, which I initially thought boded ill for people trying to tone their thighs. It turned out to be about housing, though.

April's books:

* The Manticore - Robertson Davies
* World of Wonders - Robertson Davies
* Dido and Pa - Joan Aiken
* Miss Buncle's Book - DE Stevenson
* Twelve Days of Christmas - Trisha Ashley
* Is - Joan Aiken
* Cold Shoulder Road - Joan Aiken
* The Little Book of Talent - Daniel Coyle

This month I read two completely unrelated books featuring main characters called Eisengrim. So that was special.

The first Eisengrim was one of the main characters in Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy, which I started last month with Fifth Business and completed this month with The Manticore and World of Wonders. I don't think I praised Fifth Business last month as much as I should have, because it was excellent. It stands alone as a complete story, but I'm not sure the other two would make any sense to anyone who hadn't read it first.

The trilogy is the story of three boys born in the same small Canadian town in the early 1900s, and revolves around the question 'who killed Boy Staunton?'. The first book tells the life story of Dunstan Ramsay, World War I veteran and history teacher; the second fills in the gaps about Dunstan's lifelong sort-of friend, Boy Staunton, a jaunty industrialist and friend of Edward VIII; the third completes the story with the life of a third boy, Magnus Eisengrim, master illusionist. Eisengrim was the last person to see Boy, so his story is supposed to be the definitive version of what happened, but, fittingly for a master illusionist, he's the most unreliable of the narrators, so it remains ambiguous. I didn't enjoy Eisengrim's tale as much as the other two; while Dunstan and Boy are believable characters, Eisengrim's awful childhood and adult success are a little over the top - but that's kind of fitting, since in the first book, Dunstan ghostwrites a fictional autobiography for Eisengrim, and there's a sense that the third book is Eisengrim writing another fictional autobiography. It's all very clever and meaty.

Anyway, I highly recommend Fifth Business, and if you like that, you'll probably like the others too. I did.

( The second Eisengrim of April, and boo, Christmas )

I always enjoy tales of workplace unhappiness. This is an excellent example. This man cracked his tooth on a workplace-supplied lolly/sweet/candy (depending on where you're from), resulting in them being banned from meetings and training sessions, and he's now putting in a claim for psychological trauma after his colleagues bullied him about it. "You f---ed it up for everyone at CDSCC," one co-worker is alleged to have told him. They take their lollies seriously, obviously. Mind you, he's since been fired for taking a work car to get McDonald's for lunch, so there might be more going on than meets the eye.

There was a cracking tale a few years ago of a woman who had to stay in a hotel on a work trip. While there, she invited an acquaintance back to her room for the night, where they engaged in behaviour that led to the light fitting above the bed falling on her head. Five years later, she was eligible for worker's compensation. And that led to a serious discussion in my workplace about whether we had to add that to our risk register as a potential hazard for employees travelling for business purposes. (Answer: Sort of, although it was worded to cover being injured in any way while on the road.)

There are so many questions about this. That family is quick off the mark, isn't it? Very keen to get him in the ground. If a body looking like me turns up, I hope my mother actually makes sure it's me before she buries it.

This week's random word:

24. Lunch

Lunch is short for luncheon, which was originally nuncheon. So that's quite interesting.

When I am at home, it is easy enough to scratch together lunch from whatever is in the fridge. More often, I am at work, which requires forethought. I usually make soup or a quiche or something for each week's lunches on Sunday. This makes me sound terrifically organised, but in reality I remember about ten o'clock on Sunday night. This week, I made a vegetable frittata. I always finish my work lunches with a piece of fruit: a mandarin in the cold months, a nectarine or plum in the summer.

The accounting firm where I started my working life was quite regimented. My lunch break was from one till two, with no variation. Well, I suppose I could have gone after one, but I had to be back by two, or the next person couldn't go to lunch, and all hell would break loose. My current workplace is much more relaxed, but I still go to lunch at one on the dot, much later than my colleagues. I quite like it, because it makes the afternoon seem shorter.

Next week: Queue