Slippery Suburban Slope

Now that I'm essentially a suburban housewife and mother I've noticed daggy suburban food creeping onto the menu at Chez Zezette. Not every night, mind you, but frequently enough for me to have noticed a trend. Meals I would have cruelly sneered at just a year or two ago. Tonight's fare: tuna pasta bake. I can hardly believe I just typed that: tuna pasta bake. Two nights ago, bangers and mash. I have things in the freezer now, vegetable-type things, and no vodka.

I used to look at daggy suburban types and wonder how on earth anyone could let themselves be that way, how anyone could care so little and put in so little effort. But of course I get it now: when children are involved everything takes so much damn time and effort that nothing else really matters. I've stopped dyeing my hair for the first time in about 20 years. And you know, I quite like it.

Paul Kelly A-Z

The very generous Paul Kelly is giving away live recordings of many of his songs, and as a concession to the obsessive-compulsive in all of us, they're in alphabetical order. And there's even CD cover art to print off as well. What a top bloke.

There's one letter's worth issued each month; we're up to D. It doesn't look as though there's any way of going back and accessing A-C, but still.

Absolute Garbage

A few days ago the woman ahead of me in the supermarket queue upbraided the poor underpaid kid behind the counter for asking if she would like her groceries packed in plastic bags. "No thank you! As you can see, I have bags!", and dumped her algae green Coles bags on the checkout. Having bugger all else to occupy myself with I had a leisurely survey of the contents of her trolley. A couple of litres of milk in a plastic bottle. A few packets of these, 15g portions of cheese in hard plastic cups. A thick clam shell-style container full of baby spinach. And -- this is my favorite bit -- a roll of small plastic garbage bags. You know, the ones that are about the same size as the ones the poor guy behind the counter was offering her for free.

I'm all for reducing plastic consumption, but it doesn't begin and end with plastic shopping bags. Milk also comes in cardboard cartons; fruit and veg, by and large, do just fine unfettered by film, at least until you get home. And as for those fucking cheese portions... let's just say that my kids are going to have the daggiest lunch boxes in the playground. I'm quite capable of punching a piece of cheese with a novelty biscuit cutter and plonking it in a lunch box. And the spinach: there are two fruit and vegs stores in our area, and the one that sells spinach in the clam shell has been banned. A wee thin bag does just fine holding light leaves, I've found. Those other containers are the kind of thing you could keep a goldfish in, or use to bury your savings in the backyard.

So think, people. Use that great blancmange between your ears: if you're going to talk the talk, at least try to walk the walk, eh?

Milton Bowl

Very rarely do I do anything other with our local paper than pluck the rubber band from it and stick the rest in the recycling bin. The wheelie bins are located just near the letter box, so it's a convenient operation. Last week, keen for information about the then upcoming local election, I actually took the paper inside and had a browse.

You learn all kinds of things if you just look. For example, I would not have known that Milton Bowl was about to close had I not opened the rag. Milton Bowl is a classic old bowling alley, so I decided that we'd trot along this weekend to at least take a few photos for posterity.



Actually, you know, Milton Bowl was pretty crap. My imagination had whipped it into some Happy Days style utopia, but in fact it's a large, drab Besser brick cell. The painting over the lanes is what had stuck in my head, possibly because the only time I've ever bowled there was late at night and drunk. At least now I'll pine a lot less once the bulldozers erase it like so much else in this city.

So we bowled today, and pathetically. I'm now nursing a hamstring and quadriceps strain after having blistered up to top score the day on 92, beating Lofty by one point.

Fold

Can you make an origami crane? Or a really great paper aeroplane? Yes? Think you're pretty good, don't you? Think again.

Polly Verity is very good at paper folding. Astonishing, in fact. Here's some photos of her work.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Anna sent me this. She's going through a bit of a nostalgic phase, you see.



This got me on to a nostalgia trip of my own. This is from the same era, and at the time I thought it was the first and last word in cool.



Any less silly? Well, possibly not. Probably not.

The past truly is a foreign country.

Remo

I like to browse the Avant Card stands when I'm out and about, and just before Christmas I picked one up for Remo General Store. Apparently, Remo is a Sydney institution of many years' standing, but to me it's just a new place to browse (and occasionally purchase) Very Cool Things. My first purchase? A Perkins Paste t-shirt. Those educated solely in Queensland are ignorant of the little pinky-purple pots of paste, but for those of us who did some time in the NSW education system know it as the sweet-smelling stuff that everyone had and some ate with gusto. I was never a paste eater myself -- I've long been able to discern stationary from food -- but do remember the paste with some fondness. I'm wearing the shirt as I type this. It's very cool indeed.