Bugger

Well, we lost and - worse - St Christopher has been suspended for the first three games of next season for playing dirty.
My husband, who's really on a roll this week, has suggested we spend the next few days deciding on the AFL's Dimmest and Toughest Awards.
It sounds a lot more fun than picking Best and Fairest, so I'd like to start the ball rolling by nominating Barry Hall, Jonathon Brown and Stephen Milne.

Word of the Week: Strappado

I haven't done one of these for ages so I thought I'd share "strappado", which I came across in the Oxford English Reference Dictionary when I was doing the Jumble Word puzzle in the paper this morning.
(Not cheating, just looking. Honest.)
I thought strappado might be the name of a Greek stew or some sort of fancy flamenco move but it turns out it's "a form of torture in which the victim is secured to a rope and made to fall from a height almost to the ground, then stopped with a jerk" (the dictionary doesn't say if the jerk should be someone you know but I'd be happy to share Mr Nasty Garden-Path Man if you can't find anyone).
The interesting thing is that strappado must be the forerunner of this:

As in, one day, torture; the next day...well, still torture if you ask me. Let's hope waterboarding doesn't catch on with the extreme sports set.
My word of the week was actually going to be "balls" in honour of my husband, who not only has them but used them to great advantage at Bunnings yesterday.
We both went to Bunnings a couple of weekends ago to buy one of those big patio heaters for our deck because the temperature out there hovers between "brass monkey" and "nithered" (now there's a good Yorkshire word) for all but four months of the year.
It was a bargain, this heater - reduced from $269 to $169.
Then my husband went back to Bunnings on Saturday to buy some phone cable and found that in the space of a week this patio heater had been marked down again, to $99.
He was spitting chips when he got home but seeing as the patio heater was still in its box, convinced me to help him Hunt for the Receipt.
I've used capital letters there because such is the chaos of our in-house filing system, it took three days to find the docket (it was on top of a stack of bricks in the shed - obvious really).
Anyway, long story short, my husband returned the patio heater to Bunnings and got a $169 refund from the lady at checkout number 1. Then he went and picked up another heater - exactly the same - took it through checkout number 2 and paid $99 for it.
I would never have had the guts to try this on and am still positively breathless with admiration. What a guy.

Go Blue Boys

It might be an idea to skip over this post if you're not into AFL or if you're an overly sensitive Dockers supporter.
But first, apologies for the absence - I didn't realise how long it had been until I looked at the date of my last post just then.
There's been lots keeping me busy on the house front, mainly painting, but we've also found a new garden-path bloke (a landscaper) who is smart and friendly and thorough, as in he's spent ages measuring things and chasing up tradesmen. He also bears more than a passing resemblance to this bloke.

Now, I don't know about you, but I'd be more than happy to mortgage the dog to have a smart and friendly Eric Close look-alike wandering around the place for a few days. Hopefully we won't have to - we'll find out when we get his quote today.
But back to footy. The pic at the top of this post is of the thoughful home-made trophy given to me by my nephew, a West Coast supporter, when Carlton first won the wooden spoon back in 2002.
It took him ages to colour it in with blue texta, which tells you all you need to know about West Coast supporters if you ask me.
Since then, despite another wooden spoon, the Blues have clawed their way back and
on Saturday night, for the first time in 8 years, will be playing finals footy.
A sad but true fact: I'm nearly wetting myself with excitement. It's one of the highlights of my year.
My friend, Dennis, on the other hand, is spewing. This is because Dennis is a Dockers supporter and, let's face it, has a lot to spew about.
Which brings me to another highlight of this year.
Considering I've been abused, ridiculed and generally dumped on for years for following Carlton, you'd think I'd empathise with the plight of Freo fans.
Unfortunately, life's not like that.
It all started innocently enough when the Dockers got a hiding at the hands of the Bombers back in Round 2. I thought it might be fun for Dennis to find in his mailbox an application for Bombers membership sent by Mr Matthew Lloyd himself.
The accompanying note read, "Mate, You know you want to do it, love from Mattie."
As it turned out, it was more than fun, it was addictive.
Every week since then, barring when he was overseas on holiday, Dennis has found a letter in his mailbox from people as diverse as Mr B. Fevola, Mr C. Cornes (who sent a lovely birthday card), Mr L.Jurrah, Mr S. Freud and Mr J.H. Christ ("Mate, Would you like me to ask Dad to smite Nick Riewoldt for you?").
The final letter, last weekend, was from Mr F. Sinatra on behalf of Mr M. Pavlich and the boys.
It went like this:

OUR WAY
And now, the end is here,
We stuffed it up, we blew the season.
My friend, I'll say it clear,
We came 14th, and with good reason.

We dropped so many kicks,
So many games, we played the Power way.
We're just a bunch of hicks,
Who did it our way.

Regrets, we've had a lot,
We wish we'd never started playing.
Each time we hit the road,
We knew we'd usually get a flaying.

We know we played like girls,
We'd like to say, not in a sour way,
We wish we'd never tried,
To do it our way.

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew,
When we bit off more than we could chew.
The Saints, the Magpies and the Crows,
The Dogs, the Cats, yes, heaven knows,
We lost them all, we hit the wall,
WE DID IT OUR WAY.

PS: Thanks for being such a good sport Dennis. Up the mighty Blues.

Young Einstein

I read in the paper this morning that Canadian animal psychologists have found that dogs are as intelligent as the average two-year-old child.
They used tests designed to show the development of language, pre-language and basic arithmetic in kids and found that dogs could understand up to 250 words and gestures, count up to five and do simple mathematical calculations.
Golden retrievers are apparently among the most intelligent and, the report said, dogs can rival apes and parrots for their ability to understand language.
I don't have an ape or a parrot but I do have a golden retriever (pictured above with my husband's jumper on her head, pretending rather cleverly that she's invisible).
Ella, who also answers to the names Bumhead and Nuffnuff (because that's the noise she makes when she spots next door's cat through the window), doesn't have quite the vocabulary of your canine high achievers but she will very soon, because now I know what she's capable of, I'm going to start intensive vocab lessons.
The words and phrases she knows already are no, sit, stay, walkies, catch, go get it, drop it, good girl, dinner, breakfast, biscuit, chewie (aka Schmackos), yummy medicine, Paul and Kate (our kids), Mummy and Daddy (I nearly didn't include those, so embarrassing), squeaky bone, hot dog (the shape of her favourite squeaky bone), car, let's go, go and do wee, give me a cuddle (when I say this she jumps up on my knee and stays there for hours or until I can no longer feel my legs, whichever comes first), where are my socks, and lie down.
Here is a picture of Ella understanding and obeying the command "lie down".

And here is another picture taken after my husband thought she looked too comfortable lying down and said, "Cat!"

You'll notice that the TV in the background of picture 2 is showing an image of a man in a silly costume. This is because it's the History Channel, to which my husband is connected intravenously.
Some time this week, I'm going to teach Ella the words "History Channel" and this will be the signal for her to grab the remote control and bury it in the garden.
Now I know how clever Ella is, I'm sure she'll have no problems learning this.
Next week I'm going to teach her Pythagoras' Theorem. I'll let you know how it goes.

PS: In case you're wondering, the most intelligent dog breeds were found to be border collies, poodles, German shepherds, golden retrievers, doberman pinschers, Shetland sheepdogs, labrador retrievers, papillons, rottweilers and Australian cattle dogs.
The least intelligent were Afghan hounds, basenjis, bulldogs, chow chows, borzois, bloodhounds, pekingese, beagles, mastiffs and basset hounds.

My First Dictionary

Many thanks to JudiJ for sending me a link to My First Dictionary, a blog by British librarian Ross Horsley, who comes up with definitions like the one above most days of the week.
Horsley's blog is very dark and very funny and I love it. You'll find it here.

Up the garden path (2)

Back in May we asked a bloke to come over and quote a price for laying the garden paths around the house.
This man, who I'll call Mr Can-Do, was very friendly. All over us like a rash, truth be told. Nothing was too much trouble, he could do everything from go to whoa.
The price he quoted for the job was amazing, almost too good to be true. We accepted straight away and, yes, he could start some time in June and, yes, he'd put the quote in writing and leave it in our mailbox the next time he drove past.
He never did give us that written quotation, even though we asked him twice, but this didn't bother us too much because, for some reason, a lot of tradesmen down here won't.
Besides, Mr Can-Do was a nice bloke, wasn't he? Friendly. Trustworthy.
As it turned out, Mr Can-Do didn't start in June. We were also having the house rendered and he agreed with our renderer that it would be better to lay the paths after the rendering was finished. Just ring when you're ready for me to start, he said. What a guy.
So, once the rendering was done - brilliantly, I might add, by a lovely bloke called David Cook - I rang Mr Can-Do and left a message on his phone.
When he didn't ring back after a few days, my husband called again.
And what my husband got this time was a very different bloke. A bloke who was rude and surly and whose conversation consisted of words like "nah" and "dunno" and "maybe".
Now, we're not idiots. After that phone conversation, even Blind Freddy could see that Mr Can-Do had lots of other work and didn't want to lay our garden paths any more. But we decided not to worry about it until after the weekend because, well, sometimes you just get sick of this shit and need to stick your head in the sand for a while.
Then, lo and behold, on Saturday, in the middle of the footy, there was a knock on the door and there he was, in the flesh. He thought he'd better have a look round, he said, before he started the job.
He was friendly again, talking in words of more than two syllables but, unfortunately, he'd morphed into Mr Can't-Do.
There was a lot more work than he'd originally thought when he gave the quote, he said. Before he could start we'd have to do all sorts of things: dig up and redistribute the clay and have compacting sand delivered and put it on the paths and compact it and remove a section of fence and dig up heaps of plants so the barrow could get through because he wasn't having his blokes pushing barrows uphill.
Now, my husband works five days a week, so on Monday he rang Mr Can't-Do and asked if we could pay extra to have some of his labourers do this unforeseen prep work.
"Nah, can't help ya, too busy."
Did he know of anyone else we could pay, then?
"Nah."
It was like dealing with Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Then, lo and behold, we got a call Monday afternoon saying his two labourers would be coming over the next morning - as in, yesterday morning.
So I arranged for the sand to be dumped in the driveway by 9am and dug up the plants and put them in pots and got money out of the bank to pay these two blokes direct.
My husband got up at six yesterday morning to finish things off and the two labourers turned up at quarter past eight.
My husband showed them what we wanted done, then headed off to work, and the two labourers drove off to pick up their tools.
And they never came back.
I waited and waited and waited. The sand was delivered. I waited some more.
In the end, because I had to go out, I rang Mr Can't-Do at 10am to see what was going on. This was the conversation.
Me: Hi, it's Michele. Your two blokes left to pick up their tools at 8.30 and haven't come back. I have to go out and I was wondering what was happening.
Him: Dunno.
Me: Do you know if they picked up their stuff.
Him: Yeah, they got it.
Me: Well, they haven't come back here. Do you have a mobile number for them?
Him: Yeah, hang on. (Pause 10 seconds). Look, I'll have to ring you back.
Me: OK. My number's...
Him (interrupting): Listen, I'm on the road. I don't need this. I'm too busy for this.
Me: Yeah, well, we're all busy. It's not just you.
Him (shouting): Don't you get uppity with me.
Me: I'm not, I'm upset they haven't come back. You'd be upset too if you were treated like this.
Him (shouting louder): Shut up. Just shut up and listen.
Me (shouting back): What? Don't you...
Him (screaming over the top of me): I don't have to put up with this. You can shove the job. I don't need your money.
And then he hung up.
When my husband found out, he phoned this prick and said things to him that could never be printed here.
And that's what Mr Can't-Do wanted all along because now he'll be able to tell whoever's interested what nasty, difficult people we are. He'll be able to justify not doing the job for us.
But only to himself. Everyone I've told about this (everyone I can think of, basically) thinks he's an arsehole who didn't have the balls to say, "Look, I agreed to do this job when I had no other work but now I've got lots and I'm pulling out."
Which is why this post is headed "Up the garden path (2)". If you look at the post below you might see some similarities.
Footnote: we now know that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And if you've got this far, congratulations and a big thank you for bearing with me. I really needed to get it off my chest.

Up the garden path (1)

I have a very dear friend, single for a long time, who for the last three months has been in a relationship with a man who is witty, intelligent and passionate.
We're talking about passion with a capital P, both physically and emotionally. He even sends her e-mails from work along the lines of, "Only six hours until I can touch you again."
The last time I saw her, which was the last time I was in Perth, the two of them had just spent a particularly lovely weekend together.
That was four weeks ago. He hasn't spoken to her since.
He doesn't return her calls, nor has he replied to her e-mails.
He's not dead. She knows this because she rang his workplace. Apart from that, though, she doesn't have a clue what happened.
So, for the past four weeks she's been through various kinds of hell, starting with puzzlement, going through bleak disappointment and hurt, and ending where so many women end up: It's probably my fault.
It's not, of course. The guy's an arsehole. A gutless wonder who didn't have the balls to say, "I need a break" or "I'm having second thoughts" or whatever it was that was disturbing the universe that is him.
My friend recently entered the next stage of this awful affair: anger.
Now, I've seen her when she gets angry and feel that someone should probably say to this bloke, "Be afraid. Be very afraid."
It won't be me because I think he deserves whatever's coming. I'm now waiting with bated breath to see if it makes the evening news and if it involves his testicles and a mangle.
She's already talked about hiring a skywriter but I suspect it may go way beyond that.