Today’s wardrobe is three shades of black – five if you count the socks – and purple shoes which need a clean.
Who am I?
In the afternoon, in the foyer at the school, a woman with neat black hair and an ironed T-shirt asks did you watch Dr Phil in the way that people used to ask me did you see the news?
A waste of expensive blackberries
Last night, I made muffins which were so appalling that even my mother-in-law – a most generous and supportive and polite mother-in-law – agreed that the best place for them was the bin.
That has never happened to me before. Muffins are fool-proof.
Overheard in an Adelaide loungeroom
‘You look lovely.’
‘So, I pass the mustard then?’
Why teh blogging rocks
A lot of people they say why do you blog? Or they say blogging? what’s that? And then you tell them a bit about it and they look at you for another bit, and then they say something along the lines of why do you blog?
I could write an essay on it for a university subject. Or I could post comments at the posts on the topic that pop up from time to time. Or, I could tell you that I blog for moments like this.
Like, how good is that? A week later, and it still makes me smile.
On the walk to a Sunday brunch
The woman with the green windcheater and the grey moustache says ‘that breeze is chilly’ and she is right, because even with your back to the sun it isn’t quite warm.
The soft violet roses at the end of street need dead-heading. Already. Our icebergs are only just out and our kangaroo paws have died. We are thinking of ripping up the lawn.
In the street with the creek where you sometimes hear the frogs, a man has a concrete mixer mixing. It is not too loud, but it is Sunday after all. His mate, down on his hand and knees in the drive, is blonde and his face is round. His hat his West End red, but he gets away with it. If he were in year twelve and I were in year ten and I had ever been the kind of girl who wrote boys’ names on my pencil case, his is the kind of name I would write.
They – both of them – say hello and how ya goin in the way you might greet someone you know through mutual friends.
But I am the kind of person who never forgets a face and because of the breeze, I am not feeling warm, and it makes their hellos and how ya goins feel inappropriately familiar.
Even for a Sunday.
Even for Adelaide.
I’m really winning this one
Things with which children who are being raised in a house where we don’t have guns and we don’t like killing will chase and beat each other:
Agapanthus stalks gathered on the walk back and forth from the bus. Indesctructible, no?
Yoga mat.
Knee-high East African fertility doll. Quite heavy and extremely noisy when it hits the ground.
Rolled up, poster-sized, laminated copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Something I have always wondered
Why is this state called South Australia, while the entity above us is called the Northern Territory, and that to our left is called Western Australia?
Well, the Northern Territory is obviously Northern, because it’s the Northern Territory and we aren’t the Southern Australia. But still…
Is it safe to put up bat houses?
Statistically, it’s safer than owning a dog or planting flowers. Flowers attract bees whose stings account for far more human fatality than bats. Just banning bicycles or swimming pools would be hundreds of times more effective in saving lives, but how safe do we really want to be?
Quote from here an excellent website about bats which are messy if they roost in your house and your ceiling isn’t properly sealed, but beautiful especially if you see them in the morning when you are not trying to sleep. And things are never quite as spooky when the sun is out.
World Day Against the Death Penalty
So today as you go about your normal business, take a second to remember those who have suffered this ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment that violates the right to life. It is irrevocable and can be inflicted on the innocent and has never been shown to deter crime more effectively than other punishments