Spare me. Please.

If you looked at page 4 of The West Australian this morning you would have seen it featured two pics of blokes in suits.
The second pic was under the heading "Vote Yes for work-life balance: industry leaders" and accompanied a story on the daylight saving referendum.
It began like this: "For Wesfarmers chief Richard Goyder, it means being able to enjoy a casual barbecue or game of backyard cricket after work.
"Alcoa's Alan Cransberg says it provides extra time with his family in Mandurah.
"And for Rio Tinto's head of iron ore Sam Walsh, it makes easy a post-work swim, catching up with grandchildren or a meal out.
"But the three industry leaders agreed yesterday that daylight saving delivered significant benefits to the State's economy by making it easier to do business with the Eastern States..."
All I can say is: Like I give a shit.
At the moment, I have two friends who are staring retrenchment in the face because the company they work for has gone belly up, and I know many more who are doing it really, really tough.
And I'm supposed to vote Yes to daylight saving so I can help out three rich blokes who want more leisure time without compromising their money-making activities?
If it wasn't so insulting it would be funny.

Get thee to a kitchen...

...and make yourself some Anzac biscuits. The home-made versions of these biccies are so far ahead of shop-bought it's not funny and they're ridiculously easy to make.
Mine are courtesy of a Bill Granger recipe but there are heaps of recipes on the internet (or ask your Nana, she'll probably know one off by heart).
Whatever you do, don't call them cookies, or a digger might (quite rightly, if you ask me) come over to your house and wash your mouth out with soap.
Eat your Anzac biscuits in front of the Collingwood/Essendon game tomorrow.
This is something I look forward to every year, not because I like either team (they're Carlton's sworn enemies) but because there's a really good chance half a dozen of them will beat the crap out of each other, be hauled before the tribunal and be out for several games.
But that's just me.
Whatever you do tomorrow, have a good one.

Word of the Week: Crook

That's crook as in ill, unwell, feeble, queasy, frail, delicate, poorly, ailing, infirm, indisposed, under the weather, sick as a dog, in a bad way, rooted.
I've been all of these things this past week, first with the flu, then with a stomach wog.
And speaking of 'sick as a dog', as I was rolling on the floor in agony with what was probably wind but felt like imminent death, I kept bumping into our faithful hound, who'd decided she'd help make me better by lying as close to me as possible and sighing a lot.
As I looked into her big, brown eyes, I thought of all the little golden retriever ways I'd come to know over the years and said, "If I die and no one finds me before 5 o'clock, you won't eat me will you?"
On the upside, I'm feeling a bit better today and at least got to be sick in cosmopolitan surroundings.
We were up in Perth for a few days, not that I got to see anyone or do anything or go anywhere because I was too ill.
But the car trip was a blast. There's nothing like 400kms-worth of sitting still to make you realise that the human body is an amazing thing.
I mean, I can't think of anything else that would be capable of producing enough snot in four and a half hours to fill the MCG.
I was so busy blowing my nose, I almost missed one of the highlights of the trip.
It's just past the half-way mark and is known (in our family anyway) as The Place of the Three Signs.
In the space of just a few minutes you see these signs on the side of Albany Highway:
1. Welcome to Kojonup, First Shire With 1,000,000 Sheep
2. Moodiarrup
3. Crapella Rd
I hang out for these signs because:
1. My husband always says, "So many sheep, so little time" (I'm easily amused).
2. I love the name Moodiarrup. I often wonder if the locals shorten it to Moody, as Ravensthorpe is shortened to Ravie and Cuballing to Cubby. The picture at the top of this post is of the Moodiarrup Hall, which you can read about here.
3. Our dog's name is Ella.
And that's it really. One thing I love about writing this blog, as opposed to writing a newspaper column, is that I can just stop whenever I want without having to think of anything clever to finish off with.
So this is what I'm finishing off with today: The MCG is about to overflow. I'm going back to bed.

How the President will harvest his home-grown spinach

OK, maybe not. You'll find out what it's really all about here.

Whatever happened to used tyres...

...as stand-alone garden features? Why don't we see them around much any more, especially in these difficult economic times when we all should be getting back to basics and being extra mindful of the benefits of re-using and recycling?
We walk past this particular tyre every morning, my husband, the dog and I. It's one of three, all in a row, but it's by far the most picturesque because it's the only one that's actually got a plant in it.
Just up the road from this tyre, on the seafront, is something else we walk past every morning: Albany's bete noir, the huge, empty Esplanade Hotel site. It's empty because the Esplanade was demolished in 2007 to make way for a new multi-million-dollar luxury hotel, which has since been put on hold indefinitely.
So, what we've got on the beachfront at the moment is an enormous, multi-million-dollar sandpit surrounded by a high, wire fence and known among local cats as the best en-suite dunny in town, you can see their little paw prints all over the joint ("Hey, Fluffy, let's pee in the north-east corner today! Cooool.")
Apparently the town council doesn't have the power to force the hotel developers to get on with construction, something I'd always put down to the councillors' average age being 97 and three-quarters and all of them maybe too knackered to raise the necessary very big fuss. But I was wrong.
And it's a worry, because it's estimated the town is losing about $10 million in tourism spending for every year that the site stands empty.
My husband has an interesting solution to this. Being a Desert Storm kinda guy, he thinks councillors should storm the chicken wire, exert squatters' rights and build a casino. As in, they could get the tourist dollars flowing again simply by becoming the Apaches of the Great Southern.
Failing that, maybe they could do something creative with used tyres, something I should imagine certain other persons of power, albeit in a faraway land, are mulling over as I write.
I say this because I heard on the news that Barack and Michelle Obama are getting back to basics and planting a vegetable garden at the White House.
Which means that Americans will not only have their First Lady, First Children and First Dog, they'll also soon be blessed with their First Carrot.
And presumably, if the Obamas are ridgy-didge about setting a recycling, recession-busting, grow-your-own example, they'll also see the First of many Used Tyres.
As edging, maybe. Or encircling the spinach and collard greens.
It could change the face of garden design as we know it. And I, for one, will be watching developments with bated breath.

A mother's heartfelt plea

I read The Passenger by Chris Petit over Easter. The book was loaned to me by my son who said, "If you understand the ending, make sure you explain it to me too."
I thought, "Ha! Leave it to me sonny" in that thought-only, gloating way mothers have when they suspect their kids are getting cleverer than they are and they smell a rare win coming up.
So, in a nutshell, The Passenger is a fabulous book. Fast-paced, clever, dark, complicated, harrowing, unputdownable.
Then you read the final chapter and you want to scream, "WHAT THE...?!" and throw it out the window.
So this is basically a begging letter to anyone reading this blog entry who has also read The Passenger and understands the bloody thing.
Has Collard dreamt everything? Is he working it out in those awful 46.5 seconds. IS HE TALKING TO US FROM THE BEYOND FOR GOD'S SAKE??
I've already googled the book and all I can find is a bunch of really pissed-off people who don't understand the ending.
As I don't. And it's driving me nuts. Please help if you can.

Channeling Elvis 2

I decided to forgo the french toast cut into bunny rabbit shapes and do this magnificent creation for Easter instead.
Granted, it looked better in the magazine, but even then they had to use blurry soft-focus photography to get away from that "I lost control of my bowels while skiing" look.
It's called Choc Coconut Ice Cream Cake and I got the recipe from a New Idea mag, as in I was allowed to rip the recipe out of the magazine when I was at the hairdresser last week (thank you, Shelley).
This cake is a mixture of vanilla ice cream, crushed Choc Ripple biscuits, toasted coconut, mini marshmallows, strawberry-flavoured dessert topping, Ice Magic and M&Ms Speckled Eggs.
So delicious. So Elvis.

35 years and what do you get?

It was our 35th wedding anniversary on the weekend. The big question in the weeks leading up to it was how to mark 35 years that have encompassed just about everything you can think of, including good times and bad times, happy and sad times, two great kids, two dogs, seven cats, 14 different houses and lots of love.
For the last two big-ticket anniversaries, which were Silver and Pearl (sounds like two hippie sisters, doesn't it?), we went to Melbourne and stayed at the Hilton.
This time we had to be a bit more circumspect because our house still needs some work.
I say "some" but what I mean is "lots of". The 1965 kitchen still has to be replaced, the floors need to be sanded and sealed, the outside walls need to be rendered because the mortar is falling out, we need plastic blinds for the deck we had built (the prevailing winds up here on the hill are westerly, easterly, southerly AND northerly), and the 1960s decorative concrete-block boundary wall (does this get better and better or what?) needs to be knocked down and replaced with a fence.
A word on kitchens: if you need to be cured of the retro decorating bug, come and visit me. I have a kitchen overflowing with original 60s laminex - white with curly, silvery fibres all the way through it. It looks like a busload of senior cits decided to stop off at the laminex factory and trim their pubes.
Back to the wedding anniversary: we discovered on the internet that your 35th is Coral (Silver and Pearl's mum, presumably).
I was stunned, I can tell you. 35 YEARS AND ALL YOU GET IS DEAD REEF?? What were we supposed to buy each other? An aquarium?
My husband offered to buy me a DVD of The Battle of the Coral Sea. I declined, which was good, because it forced us to sit down and work out what we'd really like.
Which turned out to be decent ugg boots. Seriously.
Having never paid more than 20 bucks for a pair (good ol' Kmart), we decided we'd lash out on the super-duper versions they sell at Wombat Lodge down here.
Romantic? Maybe not. But we'll know in our hearts that when the renovations are finished and all our money is gone and we're freezing our tits off because we can't afford to turn on the heater, at least our feet will be nice and warm.

Word of the Week: Ovenable

How good is this? It was sent to me last year by Diana Lea, who found it in some Coles junk mail that had been stuffed in her letter box.
The possibilities this word opens up are endless - we could start a whole new language of "ables".
I'd like to get the ball rolling with girlable, adapted from the everyday scenario where a male says, "I can't find my keys/sunnies/specs/wallet" and the female says, "Go back and have a girl's look."
Girlable would describe any task that had to be done properly from the get-go.
As in, "Mate, we've got another girlable job coming up this afternoon, I'd better give you a hand."
Whaddaya reckon?

Hi ho, Crispin, awaaay

We got nabbed down at the park, the dog and I.
The dog was doing this.

And this.

As you can see, she wasn't attached to my person by a lead. This was because we were the only living things in the park apart from the ducks.
And, as it happened, Crispin.
Crispin is a ranger. He has a stud in his left ear and drives a white van with the words "Eyes on the street" painted on the side.
Some people would think that if you drove around in a van with "Eyes on the street" painted on the side, you'd be a bit of a dickhead. But not me.
What I thought was: Why are you harrassing a golden retriever who wants to lick you to death? Why have I never seen you keeping an eye on MY street aka Hoon Hill?
Let me tell you something about our house on the hill: If the Lady of Shalott had enjoyed watching hoons in hotted-up Holdens and bogans in black utes instead of Sir Lancelot in his feathered helmet on his way to Camelot, our house is where she would've lived.
It has very big windows which afford excellent views of knights and hoons alike.
Sadly, unlike Sir Lancelot, the local love gods don't sing "Tirra lirra" down by the river. They play really loud doof-doof music instead and shout "Faaaaark" out of the windows when they become airborne at 100kmh.
I was going to tell Crispin all this but in the end I was too busy giving him my name and address.
And listening to his Lone Ranger-style lecture on the dangers of unrestrained family pets in deserted parks.
And wondering where Tonto was when you really needed him (with my luck, probably shouting, "Faaaark, Kemo Sabe" out of the window of a black ute somewhere down my street).