Salt and corrosion

A Christmas story:

At my secondary school, it was an annual tradition for the Year 10 (I think) Home Economic class to make a heavy fruit cake and decorate it with almond icing and sugar work as a year-end project. All the finished cakes were put on display and younger students were encouraged to go and look. So we did, my friends and I, in Year 7. Given the time of year, a lot of the students had decorated their cakes for Christmas, but some obviously had a special occasion in mind and had decorated accordingly. Anniversary cakes, a wedding cake, a couple of birthday cakes with the person's name written in icing on top: Diane, Noel, Julie, Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel. Noel sure was getting a lot of cakes. "Who's Noel?" I asked my friend, but before she could point out what an idiot I was, the older girls behind us laughed at me and, just like that, I had a sudden moment of clarity that Noel was meant to be Noël and his cakes were part of the Christmas section. Can I suggest this festive season, we should all stop and ask "Who's Noel?"

My mother and I had a quiet Christmas at home this year. The past few years we have spent the day on the ancestral family farm, where my mother's 99-year-old aunt lives, to have lunch with extended family among the koalas. Which is nice, but several of the cousins have very different political views to us and like to say so, loudly, which does tend to cast a pall. "You know they'll think covid is a hoax," said my mother, "and I couldn't stand hearing that over lunch. Let's stay home." When her cousin called to invite us, she apparently started, unprompted, on an anti-mask rant, which my mother said made saying "thanks but no" much easier.

This year, I made a bûche de Noël (another one for good old Noel!), using a recipe from my mother's 1989 copy of Australian Women's Weekly French Cookery Made Easy. It was a roaring success; we shouldn't have waited thirty-one years to make it. This is it after frosting, but before the dusting of icing sugar snow and assorted greenery to pretty the plate up.



And now I have a week off, with no plans except reading two books to make it to fifty for the year.

Merry Christmas if you're celebrating it, f-list.

It's Christmas evening here. The day started with a walk on the beach. The foreshore camping ground and caravan park is full, so the beach path was packed with holiday makers, and a few fellow regulars who normally just nod as we cross paths but who this morning offered a cheery "Merry Christmas" as they passed. The adventure playground was holding a special Christmas morning Park Run, which was wrapping up. Lots of runners in Santa hats.

My mother and I had lunch on her grandparents' old farm, now owned by her aunt, aged 98, who invites her orphaned nephews and nieces for Christmas. You can see the sea from the back porch (but you can't reach it, unless you abseil down the cliffs. There was a wild rabbit snoozing under the garden hedge. The meal was interrupted by the most dreadful growling; we looked later and found a koala had climbed up a tree near the house. (An example of what they sound like.)

Our contribution to the meal was the pavlova. This year I made Bill Granger's brown sugar version, which was a lovely caramel colour. Not as sickly sweet as a traditional pav, but also not as beautifully crisp.

The joke in my bonbon (or cracker):
Q: How do you hire a horse??
( Answer )

Something I learnt today: Cadbury's have changed the contents of their Roses box! No more hazelnut whirls. Boo.

Finally: some vintage Christmas card photos.

Last year my work's end of year party (actually a sit-down lunch) featured a lucky dip Kris Kringle/Secret Santa. That is, everyone who wanted to participate put their little gift on the table and took one at random. The price limit was five dollars, and the range of people included school leavers on unemployment placements, truck drivers, counsellors, retirees who volunteer as shop assistants, and me. That was a high degree of difficulty, finding something that fit those parameters.

This year, the warehouse supervisor, who is organising the lunch, said, "It's just nice to all sit down together, let's not have the hassle of Kris Kringle." Which is nice, I think.

But there is also a tiny part of me that is disappointed, because I have spent all year looking at small things and weighing up their potential as Kris Kringle gifts. All that effort gone to waste. I mean, it was probably half an hour all up, but it was also a whole year. Hmph.

Now we will never know which I would have chosen: one $5 budgerigar-shaped tin of tiny biscuits or two $2 novelty ice cube trays plus a $1 chocolate.

It is Christmas Eve, and I have the day off, so what better thing to do than a meme?

1. Egg nog or hot chocolate?
I've never had egg nog, so hot chocolate by default. Not really the weather for it, though.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Sadly, Santa no longer visits, but when I was little, Santa wrapped his presents and put them in a special Christmas sack at the end of my bed overnight, to be opened first thing in the morning. Presents from other people were wrapped and put under the tree to be opened after lunch.

3. Coloured or white lights?
This year I have a string of tiny, solar-powered coloured LED lights hung about the back verandah. They're not really for Christmas, though, just a summer decoration.

4. Do you hang a mistletoe?
No. I've never known anyone actually do that.

( And more like that )

We don't usually decorate for Christmas so early. Christmas Eve is usually the day. Boxing Day is usually the day for taking them down. (Or Christmas afternoon, as suggested my mother one memorable year when she was bored after lunch.) It's not that we're not festive, you understand. Just low-key. But because we had people round for dinner last week, we've put them up early this year. (My mother did suggest taking them down the next day and putting them back up on Christmas Eve, but eventually agreed that would be a bit silly.)

On the tree is a bauble that that John's relatives in England sent my mother. It was while he was still alive, so at least three Christmases ago. It's a clear plastic bauble with interlocking shiny snowflakes inside. Very pretty, quite sturdy, just the thing to roll at a stripey cat. Alistair batted it around for a while, then I went to hang it back on the tree. It was the first time I'd looked at it all that closely, and I saw something unexpected.

"Did you know," I said to my mother, "that there is a pair of pearl earrings in this bauble?"

She did not. She thought they'd sent her a pretty bauble, so she has been decorating her tree with pearl earrings for years. How swanky.

Merry Christmas if that is your bag, f-list, and I hope you are having a lovely day if it is not. We have just had Christmas lunch, and are having a quiet moment before tackling the pavlova.

Here is the joke from my bonbon (or what you may call a cracker):

What do you call an angry kangaroo?
( Read more... )

There is no knitting photo this week, so instead here is a selection from today. I thought last night I should take the camera on my morning walk on the beach to give you all some festive sunshine and glitter, but it turns out we had ( a white Christmas )

I forgot to say that I went to the launch of the local theatre's 2017 subscriber season last week. I had tickets to the 2016 launch this time last year, but I forgot to go. I really wasn't in a good way this time last year, was I? Anyway, I remembered to go this year, and I got a free glass of orange juice. So that was worth leaving the house.

When I was little, my mother used to make chocolate spiders out of Chang's Original Fried Noodles for Christmas nibbles. I haven't seen Chang's Original Fried Noodles for years, but they always seem to me to be festive because of that. My mother went to visit a friend a couple of weeks ago, and came back with the recipe for the salad they ate at lunch. It involved Chang's Original Fried Noodles. She made this salad the next day. She loves this salad. I don't like this salad, because I find the dressing too sweet. But I am outvoted on the matter. She took this salad to her sewing day, and her other friends liked it so much they're all making it. And I went to the supermarket this morning and right next to the deli counter is a three-tier basket of Chang's Original Fried Noodles, so I am guessing that everyone in the City by the Sea has gone mad for Chang's Original Fried Noodles. They're all the rage.

Speaking of rage, I always thought it would be terrible to live near one of those neighbours that go overboard on Christmas lights. No sleep for all of December while the light show goes on. And then I saw these and... they have SOUND. What fresh hell is this? I've been reading Christmas-themed murder mysteries this month, and I think I've come up with a good motive.

The fashion spread in today's newspaper supplement was for men's fashion, and featured not one but TWO blazer-and-formal-shorts combinations. That's following the one they suggested a month or so back. No. It's still not happening, Sunday supplement.

Back in spring I planted some seeds in my seedling tray. All sorts of things. Most sprouted, except the eggplants. Only one sad little eggplant seedling popped up. So I tended it and nurtured it and soon it was big enough to be planted out into the garden, where it grew. And grew and grew and grew. It's big. So big. I mean, you could climb this eggplant and find a giant at the top, that's how big it is. It's the biggest eggplant plant I've ever seen.

Today I was looking at it and noticed that it had buds and... they didn't look like eggplants. If anything, they looked a lot like the plants that had been in the next row of the seedling tray. That's right. My eggplant is a sunflower.

My computer's auto-correct has lately taken to auto-correcting my email address from alician to Galician (in fact, I let it do the work just then) when I have to fill in a form. It's very hard to fix, because I will reject the change, so it suggests it again, and I reject it, and then it will change it anyway, just to spite me. Which is irritating.

I have been put in charge of making the non-pudding Christmas dessert this year. Most years I make pavlova, but I thought this year I might do something different. Since outsourcing my Kris Kringle decision worked so well, let's try that again. The two options are:

1. Pistachio and Turkish delight ice cream pudding



2. Brown sugar pavlova with strawberries (or whatever other fruit looked nice) and cream



They're both health foods, obviously.

[Poll #2031285]

Perhaps in 2016 I could make all my major life decisions this way. Then I could write one of those "I did X for a year and this is what I learnt" books about it.

Of course, half an hour after I said there was no word about my work's contract, word turned up. We have definitely got the job. That's the end of seventeen months of uncertainty. Now I'll have to complain about turning one company and three half-companies into one giant company. So there's something for everyone to look forward to.

So, Christmas with Innovations. You may think, as I did, that the good people at Innovations devote their lives to selling bizarrely appealing tat, but no! There is far more to them than that. They are also working at the cutting edge of physics. This year they have cracked the law of gravity. You can stay indoors on your Reclining Zero Gravity Chair, or you can go outside and sit on your Anti-Gravity Garden Recliner (with optional adjustable canopy for shade). How do you go about nominating people for Nobel Prizes? Because they are due.

Also: Shoes they describe as "Probably the most comfortable shoes ever!" Although they also claim these shoes fit like a glove, which would mean they have very long toes?

Arm sleeves, which (a) have a redundant name and (b) are a body-shaping shrug. Spanx for your arms only.

A rolling bag holder. "Just add your own bag", it suggests helpfully.

The Corkcicle, which is an icicle-shaped piece of glass with a cork on top, which you freeze, then stick in a bottle of wine to chill it from inside.

A mosquito trap that "pretends to be human". Look at it, pretending to be human. Indistinguishable from a person! I looked at that picture and thought it was George Clooney.

Anyway, Innovations has never met a piece of tat it can't sell with an exclamation, so here's a game. At left is a list of products, at right is a description. Can you match them?

Product	Description!
A. Touch-open Kitchen Bin	1.Pump the wine directly into your glass!
B. Microfibre Robe & Slippers	2. Use chalk to label your cheese!
C. Donut Ring Lounger	3. Light comes on when you move!
D. Electric Wine Dispenser	4. Keeps leaves out of the gutter!
E. Hedge and Edge Trimmer	5. Never miss any action!
F. Cheese Board Serving Set	6. Just touch to open!
G. Orchid Wall Art	7. Fun lounger looks just like a donut!
H. Brush Gutter Guards	8. Trim the hedges!
I. Motion Activated Light	9. Perfect gift for Her!
J. Waterproof Pocket Monocular	10. Life-like 61cm in height!

Didn't I have this title before? [checks] No, I read The Chieftain Without A Heart. But he also found love. That's where I got confused.

I am currently watching Arachnophobia. I had forgotten all about this film. I went to see it in the cinema when it first came out, way back in the dark ages. As I type, two spiders are in close-up, having a conference and drumming their front legs thoughtfully, like, hmmm, what shall we do now? Because that's how spiders operate. Never mind the spiders, though. Julian Sands is playing a world-famous spiderologist. He is dressed like Indiana Jones with Lucius Malfoy's hair. It is amazing.

Life is not particularly like a bowl of cherries chez Daisy just now. Not many cherries at all. You can always tell when things are going well for me, I find: that's when I find plenty of nonsense to witter on about. And then the glooms descend and I can't write anything. Anyway. I will try to buck myself up. What shall I say?

We had our Christmas lunch at work yesterday, even though we have one-and-a-half days to work next week. We did a Kris Kringle. I like to try and guess who gave what present. I spend quite a lot of time thinking about that. I drew our boss' name, which made it the easiest Kris Kringle gift I have ever had to buy. I am not sure if I have mentioned this before, but his horrible former boss is married to a man who is suspected of murdering his previous two wives. A journalist has written a true crime short story about this, which is only available as an e-book. 'How can I read that?' my boss asked me earlier in the year. I explained about iBooks on his iPad, or downloading the free Kindle app on whatever device he wanted, then whatever app he was using, he just buys the book and reads it to his heart's content. 'I'm not paying two dollars thirty-six for it!' he said, and went off the idea. So I bought the Kindle version and (shhh) removed the DRM so I could turn it into a Word document and print it out for him. It cost me $2.36 plus whatever it costs for toner, thirteen sheets of paper and a staple. That would be nowhere near our ten dollar limit, so I threw in a jar of bacon and onion jam from a batch I made last weekend. He seemed pleased with both. (He guessed they came from me.)

(Julian Sands is no longer dressed like Indiana Jones. He is now wearing a pale suit with a particularly wide-legged pant, which would seem like an ill-advised costume for someone hunting a rogue spider. Not that it mattered, as the spider jumped on his neck to bite him, that being far more dramatic than running up his trouser leg.)

I did well out of the Kris Kringle myself. I think my giver was the office manager, and she gave me a set of mugs:



I like owls, which she knows. What she couldn't know is that only last week, the fourth and final of my one set of matching mugs broke. So that was a timely gift.

The office manager is very sweet-natured. The gift she received was the most ghastly figurine you can imagine. It was about 30cm high, an extremely detailed hamster wearing a blue Hawaiian shirt and a sombrero, and playing a wooden guitar. Hideous. The office manager is so nice, she smiled and said what a lovely surprise, and actually sounded sincere. Then she opened the card and read the note inside, which said that her giver had ordered something nice but it hadn't arrived in time, so please accept this hamster as a placeholder. And the office manager, bless her, said, 'Oh my goodness, I get two presents!' (I believe Jane the Researcher to be behind this.)

(I have to say, top marks to the music score of Arachnophobia. It sounds very dramatic and thrilling. It is doing some very heavy lifting in this scene in which Jeff Daniels is trapped underneath a lightweight wooden wine rack, throwing bottles at a rubber spider half a room away.)

I sat next to New Angela, whom I cannot get used to calling Jenny in these pages. For all her many fine qualities, she is not a woman given to whimsy. Her Kris Kringle gift was a pop pop boat, which is a little tin boat that you stick a candle in to make it putt along in the bath. I thought it was cute, but she seemed slightly baffled. (I think she would have preferred some nice hand cream.) I can't quite decide which of our colleagues gave her that. Process of elimination from guessing who gave all the other presents suggests it was New Lady... yes, I can see that.

She told me she is getting bicycle for Christmas. 'I told Peter I wanted one,' she said, 'and he believed me.'

(Jeff Daniels is now engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the rubber spider. Now he is paralysed with fear while the rubber spider walks up his leg. Now he is flipping the spider off his leg and into a fire. Now he is screaming in terror while the now flaming spider runs at him. Now he is shooting the flaming spider with a nail gun. Man, this is a good film.)