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.