Late

I am never late. So how to manage a post and be on time when I'm actually interstate? Ah love Blogger's Post Options so if this works, I'll actually be on time for Theme Thursday.

I'm off to Melbourne for a long weekend, some Christmas shopping, giggles with the girls, fine food, fine wine and whatever shenanagins we can get up to at our age! Catch you Monday!

Don't be late for Theme Thursday . . . . .and the best thing . . a tight-arse fare of $175 and free accommodation thanks to a friend of a friend!

However, I will be late catching up with your efforts so be patient! Have a wonderful weekend.

Sanctimonious and Shameful

Two little Bangladeshi girls, both almost 3 years old, conjoined since birth by the head were separated today. Found in an orphanage, rescued by a well-meaning Australian, Moira Kelly of the "Children First Foundation".

Surgeons at the Royal Children's Hospital successfully separated Krishna and Trishna at 11am and after 32 hours of surgery, these little girls are now in intensive care at Melbourne's Royal Children's hospital and we wait to see if they recover.

I wonder about the ethical dilemma here. Had they remained in Bangladesh, they would surely have died. Unable to ambulate and showing signs of intellectual disability, in an orphanage that could not afford their care.

Nobody has mentioned the cost of the surgery or who's paying. We can only hope since they are not Australian nationals (for whom the surgery would have been free) that the charity will cover the expenditure or the wonderful doctors who performed it and the hospital which provided their facilities have given their services pro bono.

Either way, it makes me wonder, perhaps cruelly, about all the children who might have benefited from something more simple and less costly in a world where charity is dwindling thanks to the GFC and our perceived need to tighten our belts. Eye surgery, immunisation, occupational therapy to correct rickets, AIDS education and care or simply a fresh water pump in their village. Am I cruel for thinking that a glamour event with 25% success rate is denying other children a chance at a better life? I don't begrudge these little poppets their chance at life. I am grateful that a wonderful Australian charity has taken up their cause but I just wonder how you choose . . .who to save . . who to leave. Triage at it's most heart-wrenching.

Sanctimonious and ultimately shameful words from me, while I sit here with my cheapo chardy, dinner on the hob waiting for the family to return and plooking away on my computer. Me, who has just paid $185 because her stupid dog who eats better than most third world families, chose to eat a bee this morning at 7am and puffed up like a Sharpei before 7:45. So distraught was I about her plight, I didn't even take a photograph!

Not Lily but a damn good impression . . .

My priorities are so hypocritical. That's it. I'm doing something about it. I whine about having no money, working 45 hours a week, having recipes that cover a million ways with mince, complaining about not being able to sell my nest egg. I have absolutely NOTHING to worry about. My tap water is potable, I have hot water and a flushing toilet. I have a fridge, access to free health, fabulous cheap fresh food, a roof over my head and the necessities of life. For goodness sakes we have three cars between us - clapped out but working! I'm not flogging my horses to carry firewood or pull tourists around some middle eastern city or to provide food for the hungry although they're well fat enough!. They're just paddock bashing organic lawnmowers bought at a time when money was plentiful and whims were to be satiated. And if all else fails, they can be butchered and eaten! I have a dog that is on weight management dog food, I'm fat as a house and I sleep in a Queen sized bed ! Ashamed doesn't cut it.

"I iz itchy"

Today I am feeling fortunate that by nothing more than sheer luck of birth I was born into a middle class western family. Even the Troll Bitch cannot dampen my gratefulness . . . . my frustration, loneliness, lack of liquidity are absolutely meaningless compared to the trials of others who by some whim of fate ended up in places so much worse than me.

I hope these little mites make it and I hope others are driven to do something pretty special to help the less fortunate who are not brought into the limelight, no matter how small. I know that I am grateful for the things I have even if I whinge constantly for the things I don't.

Me Tarzan . .Need Ladder

It was hot yesterday. It's been hot for a few days. Not quite the heat wave the poor South Australians have endured over the past week but hot enough for the kids to bring a few friends around, muck about in the pool and build an appetite for barbecued take-away ribs and wings

One of my nephew's friends and Clare's old schoolfriend, not the sharpest tool in the shed, decided to take up position in the big gum tree in the front of our house. This offers a nice vantage point to spy the oncoming ribmobile and sound the alarm to hungry punters. Problem is, he didn't tell anyone he was doing it! Climbing up the Wisteria posed no problem.

All well and good until he realised getting down was not quite as easy as getting up! None of us knew he was there until someone said "Where's Brownie" and a plaintive voice could be heard coming from the front yard.

Naughty Neph has a ladder, a big one . . .

Little bit trixy . . .

We did get him down in time for tea . . . you can take the man out of the tree, but you can't take the boy out of the man! You'd think they'd learn by the time they turned 25!

Sorry rather fuzzy shots due to much laughter causing camera shake

The Clayton's Friday Fuckwit

Short of posting something awful that some fuckwit has done this week - there are plenty of cruel and desperate people in the world - I really can't find anything funny enough to set you off for the weekend.

Then there were five drunken Brisbane men who decided it would be a good idea to strip off and go through a car wash in the small hours. Fortunately, none had the wherewithal to operate the thing otherwise they'd have been pressure hosed and willy-whipped by rotating rubber flanges until their skin flayed. Twits.

Remember that non alcoholic mixer that bragged "The Drink You're Having When You're Not Having a Drink?" Well here's the Clayton's Friday Fuckwit. . .

So for your entertainment pleasure, and because at this very moment The Man At The Pub is matching me glass for glass with a Friday drinky poo instead of actually going to the pub . . . (impending fatherhood will do that to you!) thought you might like this! Have a great weekend folks! Cheers! *hic*

Telephone

We don't have a telephone. Well we did but the line rental was costing more than the calls so, like so many mobile phone bearing families we had it disconnected. Now you have to pay big bucks to call us or contact us on Skype for free!

I cannot for the life of me remember telephone numbers except my sisters' and only because the last digits are 1610 - my birthday 16th October.

I can use a computer, work a DVD recorder, master four remote controls but I can't use predictive text

My first telephone in my first flat was a burnt orange coloured wall phone . . very fashionable in the 70's. It matched my VW Beetle.

I remember walking about 6kms to the nearest telephone box so that I could have a private conversation with my boyfriend and not have my mother nagging me to hang up at home. I never understood why she was so bothered about it. Nobody ever rang us after 7pm.

My Grandpa bought me a marble faux antique telephone for a wedding present. It was packed so badly that it had smashed to smitherines by the time he arrived at the wedding from England in 1979. He just said he was sorry and didn't buy me another present. I suspect someone gave it to him.

I have a wonderful telephone manner and a young voice so I can flirt outrageously with helpdesk and customer service people and they think I'm about 21.

My phone is also my alarm and wakes me up with birdsong every morning, it's so shrill that I have to turn it off in a nanosecond before it wakes everyone else.

I hate answering machines. I hang up. Actually, I'm not fond of talking on the phone but in the absence of lunch and fine wine . . it's the best way to keep in touch.

The best way to deter a caller with sexual harassment on his mind is to have a referee's whistle and blow it loudly at the 'breather'. A nice policeman gave me that tip.

My lifeline is my telephone line. OK it no longer feeds into a conventional phone but it powers my naked ADSL well most of the time. I was without Internet for three hours last night until a nice man called Ari seemed to actually know what he was talking about.

I once called a clairvoyant to see if I could ascertain the identity of someone who nicked a visitor's piece of jewellery. I think she got it right but it cost me $7 a minute!

I first heard this song in 1977 on what was then Double J AM radio . .it's now Triple J FM and I've been listening to the same station ever since. Some of their DJ's weren't even born in 1977! Now that's customer loyalty and I must be one of their oldest fans. Free stuff please TripleJ?

Now go see what other Theme Thursday contributors have conjoured up on their telephones. Or call me, call me now . . . email and I'll give you my Skype address. All you need is a microphone, either in your PC or via headphones and the will to talk to someone in the Antipodes. . .

John Farnham's Greatest Fan works at Harris Farm Market

One of the perks of my place of work, and believe me there are precious few other than the five lovely men who distract me from one scowling woman, is the fact that I have a Harris Farm Market and wholesale butcher downstairs.

Largely Fruit and veg, exotic breads, frozen pasta, fresh pasta, dairy foods including lovely cheeses, marscapone and a variety of creams. Homus, fresh salads, salamis, smoked salmon, trout and other deli delights - pasta sauces, pesto, weird Chinese thingies and European cakes and biscuits, even exotic teas and some things I'm not sure what to do with. There's a huge nut bar, where you can help yourself to a variety of unsalted nuts or dried fruit. Today's specials included Chinese cabbage for 99cents, three bunches of asparagus for $5.00, three bunches of baby bok choy for 99cents, bags of red peppers for $1.00, Macadamias were $14 a kilo and mangoes, the first delicious Bowen yellowness of the season just $19 a box!

The butcher too is huge with a wide variety of meats and due to the high Chinese population in Parramatta serves cuts of meat I've never heard of. In fact I don't really want to know what a Pork Maw is but I tell you it doesn't look much more appetising than the chicken feet. However, they do have fillet steak for $15 a kilo, ham off the bone, not that wet supermarket stuff that comes from sausage shaped pigs, chicken breasts for $6.99 and other daily specials. They have home made sausages (which of course you know I never buy), two small fresh chickens for $8.00.

But what makes this place rather sweet is the spruikers. There are two youngish men, young, solid and looking slightly Lebanese with the tiniest of giveaway accents and booming voices. They clearly love their job and the opportunity to promote their produce.

One stands by an electric frypan, cooking up the special of the day. Today it was sirloin steak, selling for half price at $6.99 a kilo. Marinated and cooked to perfection and being proffered on little toothpicks for any willing punter. His voice bellowed across the entire floor enticing shoppers to take advantage. The other, similarly Lebanese Australian, was just outside the door selling boxes (that's about 24 punnets) of strawberries for $10. Clearly they were all 'ready to eat' and wouldn't have lasted well for more than a couple of days but some entrepreneurial person bought ten or twelve boxes and was selling them up the road for $2.50 a punnet.

The charmer of this little multicultural retail wonderland is a Downs Syndrome kid. He's older than most, at a guess about 25. He has a girlfriend, I know because he told me and his name is Nick and for some reason, he always remembers mine. He's now trying his hand at spruiking. He's hired mainly to stack fruit and sweep the floor and in true 'Downs' fashion is very friendly, very sweet and always ready for a chat if you have the patience to wait and try to understand him. He'll yell something that sounds like 'ga yi blorr anaringes . . thix a tay dillers' which I think is six blood oranges for two dollars. Then I could be mistaken, perhaps he's abusing shoppers suggesting that we're "bloody urang utans and thick as school dinners"

Today, as you do, I hit the sunshine by Parramatta River at lunch time, armed with little more than a Dare Double Espresso iced coffee and a cigarette and this kid was standing on a small wharf which to the world looks like a little stage protruding from the bank out over the river's edge.

His iPod firmly wedged in his ears, he was oblivious to all around him. He performed, he shimmied, he threw a defiant fist in the air and sang. He bowed and thanked the invisible crowd. Or maybe he was thanking the pigeons and seagulls who seemed to enjoy his rendition of John Farnham's "Your the Voice".

You know, it was charming to see someone who clearly knew what they were doing and didn't give a rats arse about who saw him doing it. He spent a full 20 minutes parading with an imaginary microphone, yelling out his encore with the bass clearly banging in his head and 'the voice' screaming his best rendition before graciously saying "Thank you very much, you're a great crowd and here's another one of my favourites . . John Farnham the LEGEND . . and You're the Voice!" (again . . I think it's the only song on his iPod).

I went back into the panic pre-Board paper preparation thinking about these three young men and how they seemed to be loving their work, engaging with shoppers and doing what they do with little or no regard for what people thought of them. They were happy, smiling, clearly making the most of their laborious day.

Now that's freedom, that's being in the zone, that's knowing who and what you are and having it sit so well with you that you don't care what others think . . I long for that kind of self assurance. Pity this little 15 minute respite is over so quickly and I have to go back and face the troll bitch and her scowling face and vicious recriminations of her own staff. How does someone with all the money and power in the world manage to maintain such rage? I think I'd like to work in Harris Farm and entice shoppers to try marinated Pork Maw on the barbie.

Newtown Community Festival

The suburbs (or more appropriately south western part of the CBD) is 'interesting' to say the least. It's scruffy, alternative and areas such as Newtown are buzzing with alternative culture and pop culture as well as the down on their luck. Today was Newtown Festival. Market stalls, music, people from all over and a particular magnet for the dreadlocked, tattooed, heavily pierced and those who dress up their dogs.

We wondered down to meet with some friends for lunch and a browse around the stalls. Markets aren't what they used to be, they're creative, fun, avant garde but really too expensive. The weather was warm but 'mizzling' a mixture of drizzle and mist punctuated by the odd heavy shower that had everyone donning their umbrellas or rushing for cover. It was crowded and difficult to park but fun nonetheless. I have to say though, next time I go to Newtown, I won't bother doing my hair or ironing my shirt. I felt conspicuously overdressed, neat and tidy!

The crowd gathers for lunch on the lawn and live music

Thomas Kenneally talks about the process of writing (he wrote Schindler's Ark among many others, later turned into film as Schindler's List)

Even the police had a little shopping spree although why he's looking through the ladies wear I'm not sure

Everything oozed colour and I took the wrong lens with me!

Pet treats

Watches made out of coconut shells for $10

Every home should have one don't you think?

Handbags made out of old 45s

The bands played

The people danced

The ponies snoozed

And the rain came . . frequently