Salt and corrosion

I had barely turned the shower on this morning when my mother started banging on the bathroom door. "Shower quick!" she shouted. "Come outside, quick!" So I showered and dressed as quickly as I could and came out of the bathroom to find her hopping up and down in the garden. "Look, look!" she said, pointing up into the magnolia tree. So I look, looked, and this is what I saw:



It climbed to the very top of the magnolia tree, where it curled up for a nap... until the birds found it. The crows kept circling the top of the tree, the magpies sat on Next Door's roof and stared at it, and a very angry mudlark got right in the magnolia and cheeped loudly at it. So it climbed down and stomped down the driveway and along the street.

After that bit of excitement, I went to the bakery, which was staffed by two teenage girls. As I came in, one of them was saying to the other, "So I told him to go and he went out the door, then he came back and I had to chase him out again." She was in the middle of serving me when the other girl said, "Look, there he is again!" I turned to see this persistent rowdy customer, but it wasn't a customer at all. It was a wasp. They were still trying to chase it out the door when I left.

I had a half-formed plan to write a daily entry in January, then proceeded to do nothing of interest for the first day of it. So I will return to the year-end meme that I didn't do. One of the questions was about the best thing I bought in 2021. That's one I can answer: having spent so long in lockdown, we bought small things to fix annoying problems around the home. E.g. the dish brush used to sit on a tray under the sink, dripping on the plug; I bought a little ceramic pot for it to sit in. An attractive glass bottle with a non-drip spout for olive oil. A new toilet brush that has secret panel to keep a bottle of toilet cleaner in. Slip covers for the steak knives that live loose in the cutlery drawer.

And the best of the things: these clips for food bags. They were so good, I bought a second packet of them, and all twenty-four of them are all in use pretty much all the time.

The doorbell rang this morning. I let my mother get it, because I knew who it would be. I was expecting her to come back pleased, but instead she was perplexed.

"Some woman just left a big bunch of flowers and chocolates on the doormat," she said. "She was getting back in her van when I opened the door and she waved and said, 'Happy Mothers' Day!' Why would she give me flowers for Mothers' Day?"

I said, "Perhaps she was a florist bringing flowers from one of your children?"

"I only have one child... Oh, you mean they're from you," said my mother, eating one of her chocolates. "That makes more sense than a stranger bringing me flowers."

Yes, it does. I don't know why she didn't think of it in the first place.

In the small moments that constitute excitement in lockdown: my printer started giving me its "low toner" message this week. I had to set up an online account with a local stationery shop to get some more, and I took the opportunity to stock up on other stationery that was getting down: a ream of paper, some cardboard document wallets, a new red pen and... a packet of pastel highlighters. The highlighters weren't entirely necessary, but they are very pretty. In the delivery options box, I wrote that they could call me when it was ready and I'd come to collect. They rang me within five minutes. So I had a brief and unexpected outing that afternoon.

Also this week: finally, finally, my yacon tubers were ready to dig up. Six months they've taken, and I pulled up four large tubers plus eight of the small secondary tubers for planting again. I'm quite pleased with that for a first attempt. I've eaten one of them so far: half as raw, just to find out what it was like (which was: odd — pleasant, but odd, looking like a potato but eating like an apple), and half roasted like a potato.

( Weekly knitting photo )

The farmers' market at the foreshore starts at eight-thirty on Sunday mornings, so my mother and I usually get there early and go for a walk along the beach first. This morning we arrived at eight, while they were still setting up, but the strawberry lady, my goodness, she already had a queue six deep. So we joined it, strawberries being on our list, and only had to wait ten minutes. I wasn't paying attention to the woman in front of us until I heard the strawberry lady say, "That will be ninety dollars*, please." Ninety dollars! On strawberries! She walked off with a pallet of them. Six kilos. That's an awful lot of strawberries. If you're spending that much on strawberries, how much is the whole dinner? Unless they're having an all-strawberry feast, I suppose, but that seems unlikely. Anyway, the strawberry lady was looking stressed. "We sold out by ten last year," she said. "One woman cried."

Also looking stressed were the ladies in the arty homewares and jewellery shop when I went to buy a pair of earrings for my mother yesterday. They had just opened a new box of sticky tape and every roll was faulty. It was playing havoc with with their gift-wrapping.



* That's ≈ US$62/€56/£48.

I have words, random words, written down as reminders of what I what to write about, but I have writer's block about where to start. Perhaps I should do this entry in pieces and assemble it afterwards.

I have a week of leave, which has been welcome. With time to think I have come up with potential solutions for three minor office issues that have been niggling at me. Imagine all the problems I could solve if I had more than a week off.

I also planned to finish knitting my cowl this week. So far I have knitted exactly one row. Still, I have four days left, so perhaps I will get there yet, and have a couple of weeks of winter left to wear it.

In contrast to the Christmas card vision of winter as white and sparkly, winter here wears green and brown. I can tell it's coming to an end because now other colours are appearing. My mother put some miniature daffodils in a pot and they are out, fifteen of them outside one kitchen window, raincoat yellow. I bought a big bag of tulip bulbs labelled "shades of blue" and planted them in the garden outside the other kitchen window and the first of them are out too, mauve-pink and purple-red.

I have been to the library. I saw that the gate to the children's section was open while they prepared for story time, so I wandered in to have a look at the YA section. I have to wait until someone else opens the gate, because my secret shame is that I struggle to undo the child-proof catch. And then I had to hope no-one shut it while I was in there, because, well, what if I couldn't get out again?

Back in the easily-entered general section, I borrowed a book. Back home I discovered it had someone's bookmark in it. We have self-service book borrowing now, which scans the barcode and issues a receipt with the due date. Easier for the librarians, I imagine, but I do miss the leaf at the back with all the previous due dates stamped on it. Now there's no way to tell if this bookmark was left in a book returned yesterday or last year. This was a religious bookmark, with a quote from Psalms on the front and written on the back in an old lady's writing was To Ken with love from Valerie XX. I'll give it to the library information desk when I return the book, just in case Ken has been looking for it.

Last week I went to the local theatre, which had a double bill of two one-man plays, both about the life stories of a relative of the playwright. The first one was a man who opened an old cupboard in his grandparent's garage and found that his grandfather, an amateur brass band leader, had left reel-to-reel recordings of his music and musings to be found after his death. The second was a Gunditjmara man (Gunditjmara being one of the local First Nations) telling the life story of his (I think) great-great-uncle, who went to Gallipoli in the First World War and then came home to be, predictably, treated appallingly.

And this week I have been to the theatre again. Is there no end to my cultural appreciation? Yesterday my mother and I took the ungodly early train to Melbourne to see Come From Away, the feel-good musical about September 11. Which is a glib comment to make, but honestly, f-list, if you get a chance to see a production of it, go. It's just that good.

The City by the Sea, excitingly, now has four trains a day to and from Melbourne, so we were able to catch the early evening train and get home two hours earlier than previously. There was still time to walk to the station via Haigh's Chocolates to get a snack for the trip home. I was very tempted by the chocolate fish, but I bought a bag of scorched almonds instead. The thing about Haigh's is that after you pay, they always offer you a sample of that day's showcase chocolate. Yesterday it was milk chocolate cashews and they were so good I immediately regretted the scorched almond purchase. So that's next time sorted.

A grey and lazy Saturday. At least, it was grey when I went into the supermarket this morning, but I came out to an apocalyptic black cloud. And then it started to rain and it was just grey rain, not the end of days at all.

Which was good, because after the supermarket I had to make my fortnightly visit to the pet supply shop. This week the RSPCA cage had a family of four kittens, eagerly watched by a little boy and his father. The boy poked his finger gently through the mesh and one of the ginger kittens poked it back. The boy told me, "My cat bites, RAR!" so I said, "Perhaps it's a tiger."

"Yeah," he said thoughtfully, and went back to playing with the kitten.

The shop was also hosting a socialisation visit from two of the city's Maremma dogs, which live on an island in summer to protect the penguins. I got to pat Amos, who is a good boy.

Back home, I warmed the house up by making a chocolate and raspberry biscuit recipe that turned up on Pinterest, which turned out to be very nice indeed.

Today I had to go to the pet supply shop to stock up on Fancy Feast for Mister Cat. The shop has made a big deal about not stocking pets from pet farms; instead, they have a deal with the RSPCA. They have a big mesh cage (as in, I've seen four people walking around in it), and the RSPCA provides kittens to live in it. Visibility and socialisation for them, which is good. Today there were two kittens: a ginger one curled up in its bed, and a tortoiseshell sitting up on a climbing frame, ready to play. I got to boop its nose through the mesh and it swiped at my finger with both paws. Imagine the to-do if I brought it home. I'm not sure if Alistair would hide or eat it.

Then I went to the supermarket with my mother. In the fruit section, I noticed some Papples (TM). I have never heard of Papples (TM) before. They are pears that have been grown to look like apples. You know, for all those times when you want to eat a pear but wished it was round, or all those other times when you want to eat an apple but wished it tasted different. I must admit, I thought there were already apple-shaped pears in the world, but apparently the good people of New Zealand invented this particular variety and trademarked it. Papples (TM). And because I enjoy a novelty fruit, I bought some.

I didn’t care for them. They live up to expectations, in that they look like apples and taste like pears, but they didn’t taste like particularly tasty pears. Maybe I picked a bad batch. Or maybe I will stick to apples that taste like apples and pears that look like pears.

But that’s in the future. In the past, when the world was young and I didn’t know what Papples taste like, back in the supermarket, I started unpacking the trolley. I put the dairy items on the conveyor belt, then the fruit, and then my mother, who was holding the shopping bags, decided to plonk them down on top of everything. I said to her, mock sternly, “Don’t squash my Papples!” The checkout lady heard this and sort of squeaked, “Don’t squash my Papples!” and started giggling. And once she started, she couldn’t stop, which made us laugh, and also the woman queuing behind us. Poor lady. She had to have a drink from her water bottle and take a few deep breaths, and even then she kept giggling quietly while she put our groceries through.

Things I noticed traipsing round the shopping centre this afternoon.
* Aldi sells frozen turducken. (I did not buy any.)
* Kmart has personalised jars of Vegemite and Nutella. (Or rather, they have blank jars of Vegemite and Nutella and will print a personalised label for you.)
* Flamingos are really having a moment. (Not to eat, I should say. As a decorative item.)

We are having a pre-Christmas dinner on Friday. I am in charge of the spiced walnut nibbles, asparagus and pomegranate salad, and the raspberry and pistachio pavlova wreath as depicted on the cover of this month's Donna Hay magazine.

This week, I bought a new doormat. My thrilling life. I went to Clark Rubber ("Everything pools, foam and rubber!"). It's an odd sort of shop, that. It's a big, concrete-floored space, with metal shelves full of practical things like caravan mattresses and pool hoses. Utilitarian rather than decorative. But they also sell pool toys, so the first thing you see when you go in is a giant inflatable peacock. As in, already inflated, to greet you at the door. So that's a bit of fun. (The giant gold swan on that same page was also lurking about at the end of an aisle, although not the giant rainbow unicorn, sadly.)

This is back to keep me honest: ( Weekly knitting update )

Today I noticed Alistair looking curiously at a patch of the garden, foot raised and cautiously ready to strike. There had been a little sparrow hopping about earlier, obviously not long out of the nest. I hoped it hadn't found its way into his clutches, so I went over to investigate. Not a sparrow, no. It was the most enormous red centipede I've ever seen. I don't know what that would do to a cat, so I removed him. Alistair, I mean. Not the centipede. I left that alone. Then I made the mistake of googling "centipede bites" and clicking on the image tab. I knew that would be a mistake, and yet I did it anyway. So my gift to you, f-list, is to tell you not to do it. It is not pretty.

It's summer, and that means the City by the Sea's road workers have awoken from hibernation to begin annoying everyone. They are very much like blowflies in that respect. They did this last year too. Surprise roadworks. You never know where they'll be. It will be somewhere of maximum inconvenience though.

The reason I was out and about and dodging roadworks was to do my Christmas shopping. All of it. Other than food, I will not need to venture into the shops again. I do miss working in the city centre. and being able to walk to the shops this time of year. So many people I've spoken to have been complaining about empty shops and people shopping online and causing the town to die. Which is true to a point, but I think it's a bit simplistic to blame the internet for all the town's shopping woes. There's terrible service in some shops, and high shop rents, and developers and the council preferencing big box franchises rather than small boutiques with interesting things. Anyway. I've done my bit this year.

While I was browsing in a bookshop, a woman came in and asked the staff if they had any Elf on the Shelfs. They did. Only one. She said, "Oh, thank god, I've been everywhere and now I've got the last one, it's like a movie." I've never actually seen an Elf on the Shelf before. It turns out they're hideous and creepy. Did everyone else know that? (I've just looked at their website and there's a game to find your elf name. I'd be Peppermint Sleddington.)

Finally, when I did my grocery shopping, I went to the new Aldi that has opened in the shopping centre I usually frequent. I'm all for breaking Australia's supermarket duopoly, but Aldi is never as exciting as I think it will be.

I also did my donation. My extended family decided not to give presents a few years ago. We each pick a charity to give to, and mention it in our cards to each other instead. This year I've given to APOPO Hero Rats. Brave rats clearing landmines and detecting TB! Is there nothing they can't do?

There isn't a knitting photo from last week. I didn't knit at all. I've been too busy working. And going to Melbourne and such, but also working. That was a shock to the system. I'm doing, as agreed before I left, some casual hours for my old work to proof and format all the education and training policies. That will keep me busy for another week or two.