from the mouths of babes....

'Steven,' says young Erin last night. 'You like glasses of wine, don't you!'
And she's right, I do!
Fortunately I'm going on a 10-day dry out, I mean retreat, next week so you'll just have to wait for the clean, serene me

bouncy bouncy

i went to the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art (which, given that EVRYTHNG is abbreviated here, i'm surprised isn't referred to as the muso-compo-art) to see a very good exhibition by a bonkers Japanese lady who's been 'happening' in various ways since the 60s (haven't we all!). there was some really interesting bits, my favourite was a room full of dangling coloured light bulbs. the room was totally blacked out and mirrored, with water on the floor so when you shut the door behind you all you could see was your reflection and an infinity of coloured lights. it was what i imagine sky diving in outer space must be like (something i think about a lot).
after the exhibition i had an obligatory wander round the gifte shoppe. there, along with nice arty books, back catalogues and a few arty bits and pieces there was a selection of random, non-exhibition or indeed art related goodies – Chinese pin cushion anyone? the weirdest thing though, was a container of 'super' bouncy balls - you know, those hard rubber ones, that sometimes have things in the middle or are a bit glittery.
well, all i could think about was picking one up and giving it a good old bounce. then i remembered when i was little and we used to have them at home and, obviously, throw them really hard and watch them ping around the room (or dogs used to go mad at them!). and all i could think about was how hilarious it would be if i bounced one REALLY REALLY hard and it went into major bounce mode around the shop, smashing everything breakable, ricocheting off glass shelves full of limited edition ceramics and into the path of horrified onlookers.
fortunately i managed to restrain myself and left, to catch a bus to Bondi beach. which was nice. it was different.

trains and boats and names

today on the train back from lunch with my dad i found myself staring at a cute pre-teen. He had that fresh, plumped faced thing going on that only the young ever pull off. he had black curly hair, sparkly eyes, the start of bumfluff and an oddly attractive missing tooth (the look was attractive, that is, not the tooth, which i assume was probably a bit manky hence its absence) near the front of his mouth (though not one of the front one).
He's alluring, i thought to myself. Far too young for me by a good few years but give him time...
and then he started talking to the person next to her, yes, her, for i realised in an instant that as Lou Reed so lyrically put it 'he was a she'. i had been oggling a pre-pubescent girl!
next week, i marry a fruit bat.

Dale Winton, start panicking

Quite often (approx once a week in fact) I speak to my mum on the phone. ‘What are you doing today?’ I enquire.
‘Going to the supermarket,’ she replies. I no longer wait for her to continue ‘then…’ because that’s all she’ll have on that day (usually a Thursday). It’s the one time of the week that my ageing gran gets out of the house, and is, according to my mum, an extremely tiresome and time consuming task. nan has turned the weekly shop into a royal walkaboutesque affair, and apparently lingers infuriatingly over items she has no need or desire for (step away from the tampons, we're about to get a parking ticket!)
Having visited one or two Australian supermarkets of late, I think I am turning into my mum (or worse, my nan), because doing the shopping here could quite easily now take me best part of the day.
I cannot believe how badly laid out and signposted the supermarkets are in this country.
Now, whenever I write a shopping list I almost feel like adding binoculars and a step ladder: binoculars because none of the aisles are signposted at the end, instead there are tiny labels half way down each one with, in tiny letters, a random selection of SOME of the things you’ll find there. A selection mind. How anyone with less than perfect vision manages to do their shopping in less that four hours is beyond me as you have to wander half way down each aisle before you can read that actually there’s nothing there you want.
The step ladder is to help me get stuff from the top shelves – this is normally where anything you might actually want is kept. I am relatively tall but even I struggle to reach some of the stuff kept way on high. The other day, no word of a lie, I came across a granny pushing stuff along the top shelf with her walking stick. ‘Can I help?’ I asked, suddenly coming over all ASDA advert. ‘No, I’m fine thanks, that’s why I brought my stick.’!
There is also not the ready meal culture here that us Brits have embraced. Which is hardly a wonder given that the few just heat and serve options that are available come in transparent vacuum packed bags, meaning that the lentil and back soup and chicken stew look like they’ve already been eaten and thrown back up again.
And as for shopping logically, forget it. The other day, unable to find a hairdryer anywhere in the ‘small domestic electricals’ section of our local superstore (not for me, natch, I have no thatch) we asked one of the assistants, who, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world asked us ‘have you looked next to lipsticks?’. Weird. Weirder still was that the hairdryers were, indeed, right next to the lipsticks. Which were next to magazines.
So, did the visual merchandising team think ‘let’s put the stuff our shoppers use together in the same place’? If so the missed out on some great ‘double selling’ opportunities. For example, laxatives could have gone next to toilet paper also next to the magazines (though you may have to relocate the hairdryers) and milk could nestle next to the cereals along with the morning after pill and pregnancy testing kits…