Salt and corrosion

I don't want to suggest it was a slow news day here in the City by the Sea, but the local paper featured an interview with a woman who has two dishwashers.

My mother was watching Selling Houses earlier. It's a show in which people who want to sell their houses call in a team of experts to fancy them up a bit first. Tonight's couple who wanted to sell their unit on the Gold Coast were... really in need of the expert assistance. Their unit had been on the market for three months and in all that time it hadn't occurred to them to mow the lawn to make the garden look tidy. I mean, that's basic stuff, house sellers! Anyway, at some point, they had decided to give their bathroom a bit of a makeover. When they bought the place, the bathroom walls were "a sort of yellowy-green colour". Did they paint those walls? No. Did they tile those walls? No. ( What did they do? )

I saw two bats flying overhead tonight. Or maybe it was the same bat twice. It's hard to tell with bats.

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.

I was looking at piano videos on YouTube before, and came across this comment:

when i play the beet is inside of my heart.

Which is rather touching, and also physically improbable. It makes me wish I could draw, because then I would draw someone playing the piano, all black and white except for their heart, dark red with a leafy green top.

Speaking of physically improbable, this week's How To Treat in the medical newspaper we get at work is How To Treat... Fingernail Discolouration. How bad could that be?, I thought as I turned the page. I was so innocent, f-list. Page after page of hideous, weirdly coloured fingernails. Yellow, green, red, brown, blue. Generally speaking, the yellow and green ones were caused by fungus or bacteria, the red and brown ones were cancerous and the blue ones were caused by eating too much silver.

Some people have a naturally occurring brown stripe down their fingernails, which looks very groovy. But! Under that was a photo of an almost identical brown stripe that suddenly appeared on someone's nail, and next to that was a photo of the same finger with the nail removed to reveal a melanoma. So: lifelong stripe, interesting conversation starter; suddenly appearing stripe, harbinger of death. Remember that.

Some people have a condition called Benign Racial Pigmentation, which means that the skin under their nails is a different colour to everywhere else. What a saving on nail polish.

Well, last week was quite A Week. All sorts of excitement that I could have done without. Here's hoping this week life returns to its usual sluggish pace.

It won't though, because - oh, joy! - I will be taking delivery of my new fridge. I know, my thrilling life. It's this one. It's got telescopic freezer bins, so I'll be able to use them to look at comets.

A headline in the paper the other day proclaimed a Grandma pushing ice, which sounds like a nice little old lady has turned to a life of crime, doesn't it? No, though. The 'grandma' in question was 39.

The Sunday paper's supplement magazine has a what's hot/what's not list every week. What's hot this week? Achachas. I wrote about how good they are two years ago! I am so ahead of the curve. Their new popularity may explain why I haven't been able to find any this year.

I had to buy a new can opener today. The old one fell apart last night; just sort of collapsed, right in the middle of opening a tin of salmon for Lord Cat. So that was quite distressing, at least for the one of us that had to eat dry cat food for dinner. Anyway, while I was in the kitchen shop, I saw this thing, a little skewer with a tiny plastic roast chicken on it. The idea is, you poke it into your roast chicken, and when the real chicken is cooked, the plastic chicken's legs pop up. So that's fun.

It must be praying mantis season. I've found three in the house so far today.

Livestreaming kittens! They always seem to be asleep when I look.

It feels as though someone has flicked a switch and turned on Christmas this week. It's everywhere. Decorations in the shops, carols piped in, gift catalogues in the paper. The Christmas issue of the supermarket's monthly magazine had pages of gift ideas, including a tampon starter kit in a sleek, black purse. Imagine the lucky girl who unwraps that on Christmas morning. The knick-knack section of the newsagent featured a ceramic cube with a painted slogan: MY MUM IS MY BFF. 'What's a BFF?' asked my mother, then, when I told her, 'Get me that and I'll kill you.'

Today I went to an exhibition marking the 140th anniversary of the local paper. My favourite exhibit was the front page marking the Queen's coronation. Imagine what that page would look like if that happened today. That would be the only story, wouldn't it? Maybe one big photo; maybe an introductory article leading to the pages and pages of coverage inside. That wasn't how it was done back then. The coronation story took up one quadrant of the front page. It was so short they had to fill up the column with a paragraph containing the breathless news that the Egg Board was putting up egg prices by half a shilling. Front page news!

I have been meaning to go to that exhibition for weeks, but I finally got my act into gear when I realised that this was its final weekend. In a couple of weeks, the local gallery's next exhibition will open, which will be all about pop culture aliens, including: the alien from Alien, an Ood and Matt LeBlanc's spacesuit from Lost in Space. I think I'll go to that one too.

Oh dear. (From here.)

In today's paper was an obituary for a woman called Sheila Scotter, who was an old biddy an old lady who was often in the paper for no reason other than being a bit posh and always wearing black and white. It turns out she'd done quite a lot in her life: born in 1920 to a military family in the dying days of the British Raj, studied aeronautical engineering, became a model for couturier Hardy Amies, moved to Melbourne to become a fashion buyer and socialite, was appointed editor of Australian Vogue and after retiring took to raising funds for the arts and good causes. She got an MBE in 1970, back when we still gave out British honours, and an AM (Order of Australia) in 1992. So that's all considerably more interesting than anything I've done with my life.

The bit that gave me pause for thought, though, was this, about her memoirs:

Ever the publicist, she finished the book with a list. 'I pay special tribute to some gentlemen with whom I have enjoyed breakfast,' she said. Twenty-four names followed. Apart from her two husbands, there was Harold Holt, Sir Ian Potter, Sir Robert Southey, Sir Anthony Griffin and Sir Frank Packer.*

(These are respectively: an Australian Prime Minister (who would almost certainly have eventually been Sir Harold had he not unfortunately drowned while he was still Prime Minister*); a banker who has a wing of the National Gallery named after him; senior Conservative politician and something do with the Australian Ballet; never heard of him but the internet tells me the most likely candidate is an Admiral in the Royal Navy; a newspaper proprietor and founder of a media dynasty. Obviously the other nineteen men were talentless no-names.)

Having written this list, she then asked Sir Frank Packer's widow, Florence, to launch the book, only giving her a copy to read the day before. Lady Packer took it well, saying her husband would have been furious as he would hate being on a list and would rather think he was the only one. Still, the friendship ended, thus justifying my original impression of her as an old biddy.

Meanwhile, in the local paper, every Friday they have a Q&A with a local person. You know, favourite song, that sort of thing. Today's interview was with a farmer and collector of antique machinery (favourite book: Power Farmer magazine). He offered these two answers:

If a genie gave me one wish... I'd wish for a wife with a sense of humour.

So either he's not married and that's who he'd like to marry, or he is married but his wife is humourless.

One of the nicest things to happen to me… was meeting my darling wife.

That answers that, then.



* But he got a swimming pool named after him, so that's something.

I knew there was something I was going to say the other day! I remembered while I was watering the garden. There was an article in the medical newspaper we get at work, in which a doctor shared funny stories about doing pap smears. Nothing like a spot of medical humour to lighten up my lunchtime reading. Anyway, one of the stories was about a 70-year-old woman who brought her 15-year-old granddaughter along to watch her pap smear, so she'd know what to expect when her turn came. Which is a nice idea, I suppose, but I think that would traumatise her more.

It was so hot last night. So. Hot. The sort of weather that makes one petulant and whiny. Then the power went out. When it goes out on hot nights it's because of excess demand from air conditioners and such. I don't have an air conditioner — I get by with awnings and ceiling fans — so I'm quite resentful of other people's excesses spoiling my modest wants. Hmph.

Anyway, it was as hot inside as it was outside, so I thought I would sleep on the patio. I thought I had a foam mattress, but I don't; or if I do, it wasn't where I thought it was and it was too hot to be bothered looking anywhere else. So I made a mattress out of layers of blankets and, while I wouldn't want to sleep on it every night, it wasn't uncomfortable. It was quite nice outside, with a bit of a breeze. Only then the breeze picked up and swirled a host of dead leaves around me and banged the door of next-door's garage. Meanwhile, Percy thought me sleeping outside was such a top idea he wanted to snuggle into the crook of my knees, which, while hot, was preferable to his previous locations: the pillow next to my face and stretching over my feet. So what with the cat and leaves and door, I gave up and went back to my regular bed about two-thirty. I don't think I am cut out for camping, not even genteel camping like that.

Hello, f-list. I am typing this with one hand, while holding one of my mother's caramelised pineapple tartlets in the other. Delicious! Also, I am watching channel GO!'s Saturday movie, which is ¡Three Amigos!. So I am a happy daisy, full of exclamation marks. Or I would be if the ad that's currently on wasn't the Motor Finance Wizard jingle.

Before this, I saw some of the Australian Open tennis. They had this little filler piece, showing Andre Agassi reminiscing in black and white about his early days. He said one of his earliest memories was of going to the courts one day, opening his eyes and seeing a sea of tennis balls. I don't know why he had his eyes closed before he got there. Anyway, this statement was illustrated by... a lot of tennis balls floating on the ocean. I don't think that's what he meant.

This time of year brings the speedway to the City by the Sea. Some sort of motor race thing. I don't know. It's like prostate cancer: it's a big deal for some people but it doesn't affect me at all. I only know it's happening because there's a motel around the corner from me that has a parking area large enough for their trucks. That's fine. They've got to park somewhere.

The front page of yesterday's local paper, though, had one of the drivers being outraged — OUTRAGED! — because he had parked his truck over someone's driveway and they had complained to the police, who visited the driver and asked him to move off the driveway. And today's texts to the editor are filled with people complaining about the complainer, because these drivers bring a lot of money into the local economy and we should be nice to them. Up to and including let them block us into our houses, apparently.

In the gardening section of the paper today, someone said that the first instinct of people with a rose is to smell it. Is it? I mean, I do smell them, but is it instinct? Or memory of previous roses? Hmm.

Look at this map of Reykjavík! Doesn't that make you want to go there?

On its comics and puzzle page, the local paper has a celebrity birthday column. It's just a list of famous people who are celebrating their birthday today, or would be if they weren't dead. At the top of the list is a photo of one person from the list with a label: Mozart would be 255 today. (I mean, they don't claim they're all Mozart. But you knew that.)

Anyway, today's photo was Salvatore Riina turns 81 today. I wondered who he was, so I checked the list: 1930: Salvatore Riina, Sicilian Mafia boss. Does he seem like an, er, unusual choice of person to put in a celebrity birthday list? But, you know, happy birthday to him anyway.