Big Car Smash LAst Night.

As I was closing up last night I noticed a big melee on the main road. There were police and people everywhere. There had clearly been a big prang. I watched for a while and went off to bed.

This morning in the park it was the topic of local gossip. There had indeed been a big smash and all the debris had just been swept into the gutter and left in a big old pile, awaiting collection by some unknown and unlikely soul.

After coffee, Steve and I wandered out to have a look at the aftermath, and there was plenty to look at. It was a real crime scene with police markings all over the road. There were yellow arrows drawn all over the road and we guessed that these might have been pointers for broken bits to be photographed, but we could definitely be wrong in this. So we stood and tried to work it out. This intersection has often been the scene of big smashes. Only a couple of weeks ago some older bloke wrote himself off on his motor bike simply by going too fast.

Well last night an 18 year old girl was running from police and was going too fast, she lost control and mounted the median island ( no easy feat in itself ) and ran head on into a car going the other way. A couple of elderly folk are in hospital as a result. The young girl is in critical condition and it looks pretty grim for her.

The media circus was just beginning as we were walking back because the police had apparently just released the story. The reporters and camera man accosted Steve for comment. He may be on the news tonight. I declined because I looked a bit of a fright and I didn't know what their angle was.

The thrust of the reports is yet to be made clear. It beggars belief that there are so many fatal and near fatal accidents at this intersection. It seems so safe to me. Last night I suppose it can be argued that had the police not chased the girl there would have been no accident. Steve reckons that the sort of speed that must have been involved would be the result of aggression but I reckon that fear could push someone to the same end.

Anyway however it unfolded, the families involved must be reeling. The older couple who are the innocent victims must be wondering about their appalling luck in being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the family of the young girl must be exhausted from trying to work out how and why all this has happened.

It would be all too easy to lay the blame firmly at the feet of the police who were in pursuit. I sincerely hope this does not happen. We don't know what caused the initial chase but I have faith that the police were and are interested in maintaining peaceful safety.

I certainly hope that nothing comes to light to disturb my utopian beliefs.

'Offspring' returns. Yippee!

Steve's Saturday golf means I can please myself with all manner of girlie shit on the tellie, if I have had the foresight to record something worthy. And as luck would have it, on a quick flick around last night I saw that the final episodes of last season's 'Offspring' were being replayed, so with a flickity flick flick, it was sitting there for me today. Don't ya just love technology?

2 Hours, well less cos I fast forwarded through the ads, of emotional rollercoaster. I laughed and cried like a baby. Yes I had seen it all before, but I had no trouble watching as if for the first time. I reckon it is so well put together!

When I wiped away the last of the tears I was left wondering about the family dynamic of both Nina and me.

To summarise, this is Nina's lot:

• an interfering but quirky loveable mother.
• a father who isn't her father who is divorced from her mother but still loves her all the while he is off on a grey nomads journey with his baby son and his mother who was heavily involved with another bloke but broke it off to go a wandering.
• a latterly discovered biological father who is more than a little odd but pleasant enough who had a renewed affair with her mother, but that too died a strange death.
• a flaky sister and a soon to be ex brother-in-law.
• an organic hippy type of brother and his girlfriend and baby
• and of course there are other various hangers on who all add spice to the action.

She is surrounded by all this madness and mayhem but is beautifully loved despite or in spite of her own bit of peculiarity. And how lucky is that!!

My lot is smaller and far less harmonious and definitely less humorous:

• Dead dad gone too soon, no angel but a lot of fun.
• Bitter twisted estranged mother.
• Dead felon brother who I hadn't seen since he had smashed his way into my house and stole stuff and threatened to kill my sister 20 years ago.
• A sister who has become part of her husband's 'Look at me, Look at me, Look at me,' cult and therefore finds Steve and I too fat to tolerate.
• Beautiful daughter and grandie boy.
• Steve who has accepted this lot as he has found 'em, which for most of 'em is not at all.

I don't know anyone who has a 'normal' family, in fact I don't reckon I could describe what that would be, but I am pretty sure it wouldn't be Nina's.

And maybe that is why this show is such a hit. It certainly encourages us to think that familial harmony is possible and that if all else ends in a heap, you can always rely on 'blood'.

I am pretty sure that my Bell doesn't watch what she would consider such dross, but if she did I hope she would say that she is as loved as Nina, even if her family numbers don't quite add up.

Jack Sprat household but it seems to work.

Jack Sprat could eat no fat
His wife could eat no lean
And so betwixt the two of them
They licked the platter clean

So Steve's back and the jet lag was an almost non-event this time round and as the weather has finally decided it is time to give us mere mortals a bit of respite, our minds have turned to the garden.

When we did the courtyard a few years back, we decided on a design that demanded extensive use of railway sleepers for division and steps and textural diversity. They looked wonderful for about a minute and then all of a sudden they started to twist and turn and leap out of the ground, like a bucket full of over sized maggots.

Steve in his pursuit of excellence and perfection was very less than happy. He began a one man assault on Bunnings from whence the defective items sprang. They took it all very seriously because he used words like fraud and not fit for purpose and misleading and even included various sections of 'How to' tellie shows which showed landscapers using these bloody sleepers just as we had done. Clearly there was no mention of the twisty twisties.

So Steve didn't win and Bunnings is selling this shit still. He wants rid of 'em all and that is quite a lot!! So he is working out how to replace 'em and with what and I am dreaming of some passion fruit covered arbour as a welcome hall to our door. There is of course a bit of an overlap in that both require an engineer's bent but mine is aesthetic and his is structurally necessary.

This is a classic right brain V left brain dilemma.

I wonder what 2 lefties or 2 righties ever talk about.

Making an Omlette

I am not an interested cook. I reckon if you can buy it or eat out or have someone else cook for you then a NIKE is necessary,  Just Do It.

I have never made a successful omelette and it's nearly my oldest birthday. I reckon the chances of me starting now are very very slim. I cannot recall ever even attempting one, though it is possible that somewhere in my dark past I had a go and it was such an unmitigated failure that I have wiped the memory away, like chalk from a board during afternoon detention, yeh, THAT I remember!

So this morning we were all up at silly O'clock because Stevie's monster truck was due a service, and don't they just go on and on about that! So he actually bounded out of bed and I said I would meet him there cos there was no point in me sitting there waiting for him to go through the usual shit. I shovelled Dog into my car, we picked Steve up, run Dog and were sitting down for breakfast at Avril's all before.....wait for it.....8.15!!! It was a shocker to everyone, us included.

As we were driving back from the truck shop, I suggested breakfast out and as the idea became more concrete, I decided on an omelette. I have been known to make eggs of all sorts, poached, fried, scrambled, quiche, frittata, benedict and boiled, because I like an egg. But I don't do omelettes! Avril's Chau makes fabulous omelettes and unlike some chefs, he doesn't mind putting in cheese even though it makes a bloody awful mess of the frying pan. So a ham and cheese omelette for me and eggs with the lot for Steve and a side of bacon for Dog. We were a happy little lot!!

There is something so satisfying sitting out in wonderful Autumn weather, having someone else cook breakfast. Yummo!

And yes Autumn has finally struggled along. Days are shorter and cool enough for a sleeve and evenings are dark and cool enough for a coverlet on the couch while Dog keeps my feet toasty. The sky is just barely loosing some of its vivid blue and I reckon people in general are of a much happier demeanour. This is my favourite time of the year.

New to me Old Technology has its Foibles.

A few years ago Stevie gave me a Sony E-Reader. I didn't know what to do with it and the 'How To' book was a bloody nightmare to me, so it collected dust until Carol, my friend who knows all things technical, came to stay for a couple of days and she spent hours - yes HOURS setting it up for me. I reckon there were a number of times when even she nearly gave it away. She owns a Kindle and she kept saying how much easier it was.

Anyway, she got it sorted and I learnt how to buy books and off I went. It was sooo good and Steve was so jealous that I had to get him an E-reader for Christmas. Yeh I got him a Kindle and he set it up in about a minute.

Lee Childs has churned out about a million Jack Reacher books and we have been reading them cos they are designed for people to read quickly and then forget. I read '61 Hours' and it was OK, if more than a little predictable after reading a few of 'em. What I had not expected was, that for a tenner, you'd buy a book that was not complete!! It finishes with, 'To be Fucking Continued', Well truthfully less of the fucking and more of the how shitful is that !!

Now because I had an E-reader, I just went on line and bought the next one so I could find out in what strange unbelievable manner Reacher escaped this time.

I reckon that is just too fucking greedy for words to put 1 book into 2 editions so instead of a tenner it cost 20 dollars especially when the second book was a load of shit. It was over written and extremely unlikely even given the Jack Reacher take on things.

All I can imagine is that having signed some sort of a deal with Tom Cruise for the Reacher Rights, Lee has decided to really spin out what he can get from Hollywood and at the same time take the piss from the general public. As an aside, I find the very idea that Cruise makes a believable Reacher absurd, for a starter, he's just too bloody small.

SO now I am gonna take the piss myself. I'm gonna spend time in book stores and email myself a list of good'ens on my smart phone and then buy only ones that I reckon I have actually seen.

It's just too easy to throw good money after bad whilst lying back in the bath. Damn that Wi-Fi connection.

So You Think You Can Dance Final - Sexy Sluts versus The Warriors

I have not been watching this at all, not because I don't like watching dancing, but because it just hasn't ever turned up at a time when I fancied it. Like everyone I suppose I have seen bits and pieces in the ads and reckon that there was not an obviously shit dancer in the line up. Certainly compared to anything these fat old seized up legs could manage they were bloody terrific.

So today as a pleasant accompaniment to the drag of ironing I watched the replay of the final. Yeh, I knew who won so there was no huge suspense but music filled the lounge room and I could watch bits and pieces.

I did see the duets of the top 2 girls and the top 2 boys. The women were decked out in trench coats wrapped around sexy frocks and they contorted themselves over balustrades and other various poles before they ripped off the coats and  gyrated beautifully. The boys were dressed as samurai warriors and were armed with swords. They duelled it out and their acrobatics and dance were strong and vibrant.

So the best girls were presented as sluts and the boys were presented as warriors.

Could I be the only person to have thought this? I have not seen any such comments on social media or online news.

Years ago when I was teaching English, looking for all sorts of bias was an important part of the curriculum. So kids were exposed to texts like "Dick and Dora" that were my buddies when I was learning to read, and modern kids were encouraged to see the sex stereotypes. Of course this was often greeted with great laughter and incredulity. Generally the kids had no trouble seeing the old fashioned men and women and boys and girls, and they could identify great differences between their households and those of Dick and Dora. Of course they were being directed to do so.

I can only live in hope that for at least some of the kids I have taught, identifying this sort of bullshit sex roles might have become second nature. And maybe these kids have grown into discerning adults who like me didn't watch and didn't spend money voting and encouraging the crap.

Privatising Australia Post

Well really a private company could do no worse than the current shitful, service offered by Australia Post. They have outsourced the delivery of items to contractors and this has been the case for some long time now. As luck would have it, our fella is a lazy, good for bugger all, jobs worth, who after an imaginary altercation with Steve or someone else here at the house more than FIVE YEARS ago, now still refuses to deliver stuff at all. He just throws a delivery advice notice in the post box and runs along. I presume he gets paid regardless, so what does he care. I imagine he finishes very early and races home and puts he stinky feet up and spends his ill-gotten gains on online betting or porn. He certainly is not buying 'how to deliver stuff with attention to customer care' books.

So when I get the delivery card, which is more often than you might think cos I have a happy little habit of buying stuff unseen on line, I need to troop up to the local post office to collect it. The guy there, either knows me or is the most gormless cock or indeed both of these things. I give him the card, he asks for photographic ID, I ask why the delivery was not made and he gives some excuse which I negate. We have exactly the same dance every time. It could be 3 or 4 days in a row, if I think I have struck gold somewhere in the ether. I ask if he thinks that I have had good value for my postage dollar, he mumbles like a moron and I tell him I can't wait until Australia Post is privatised because efficiency could not possibly be worse, and he looks at me like I am speaking Chinese.

I guess what I wonder is who would reckon in this day of emails and internet everything, that buying Australia Post would be a worthwhile investment. But I really really hope that a sale is not only possible but imminent. I will happily be a parade of one, flag waving and gleefully chanting as they close the local shop and all those useless arseholes leave the building one last time, to head off to spend their undeserved redundancy packages and sign onto the dole.

That's the sad truth I guess, one way or another I will still be paying the blighters.