canny granny

I was looking for an inspirational quote to get me down on my knees in my ‘garden’. Hoping for something to make me leap up, trowel in hand and gleam in eye.

Instead I found, in the maze of my hard drive, this snippet that I can’t remember collecting, much less who said it.

We create agility in our minds by stretching mentally. . . try taking a different way home from work ..

Well I’m always on the qui vive for anything that slows down my inevitable slide into the hellish pit of mindless old age, so I thought I’d give it a try.

This morning saw me walking a different way to the butcher shop, and I found a whole new supermarket had sprung up overnight. My Goodness!

What a lot of bamboo bowls. Bolts of coloured cloth on the footpath, windows full of ducks and aisles and aisles of strange exotic vegetables. Not that I look at vegetables much, nor should you, they’re very over-rated.

For a moment I thought I had inhaled some secondary smoke from my colourful Next-Doors, a happy young couple who are prone to kaftans, beads and chronic bronchitis.

Just when I’ve learned to distinguish between cappuchino, capocollo and a kreatopita, I have to grapple with a congee and a chua. Quite enough mental stretching for one day.

I had to have a little sherry to recover

We have had some doozies of Governors General in Australia.

If you don’t know the position, it’s the symbolic head of state, and I think the only other place left with this archaic position is Canada which still has a Gouverneur General, or actually a Gouverneure Generale, Her Excellency Michaelle Jean.

But as I said, we have had some pathetic jerks in this exalted spot. Like Sir John Kerr (aka John Cur), a man fond of a drink or three, who dismissed the Labor government of Gough Whitlam on 11 November 1975, creating the most significant constitutional crisis in our history.

Then there was Archbishop Peter Hollingworth who failed to act against a retired bishop who sexually interfered with a 14-year-old girl because he didn’t want to reduce the offending bishop’s capacity to earn money.

These men did much to inflame public opinion against our involvement with the British Crown.

But yesterday we overcame the past. No more mongrels as Governor General!
Instead we have the remarkable Quentin Bryce, prominent lawyer, academic and womens’ activist. Her appointment ends 107 years of male dominated tradition.

Congratulations to Bryce, Australia’s first female governor-general.

And about bloody time we got one worthy of respect!

Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

When I went to hang up my twinset and smalls today, I discovered all of my clothes pegs had vanished from the line. Gone! Completely gone!

Where do they go to? Perhaps they’ve teamed up with the safety pins and taken off for a dirty weekend. Or are the possums stealing them?

So I hiked off to buy more pegs only to find out that I simply cannot get wooden clothes pegs. Not for love or money. I went to three shops and all that was on offer were plastic things, the ones that snap if you hang out your bed socks.

Wooden pegs, on the other hand, are more durable. Once upon a time when it used to rain more than six days a year, you could get rusty stripes from the spring in the pegs, but these days you can leave your washing out for a month to get sun bleached if you’re too lazy to bring it in.

Doesn’t anyone make wooden pegs anymore? The ancient craft must have been superseded by the plastic stamping press and the venerable peg-makers gone the way of the Felt Hatters and the Lamplighters.

Gypsies used to make them once, things of beauty that were handed down from mother to daughter, but it looks like China has cornered the market now.

The Chinese will ban free plastic bags by June, but the Australian Government wants all of ours gone entirely by December of this year. Finito. Apparently there are some 5 billion of these bags floating around the place, getting into landfill, choking our wildlife, and turning up on our beaches when you least expect it.

Where do you get these plastic bags? I’d like to know, you certainly can’t get them in my neighbourhood. I haven’t even seen a plastic bag for at least six months. My shop only has paper bags, and the last time I asked there for a plastic bag, the Young Thing at the checkout rolled her eyes round like a nervous horse as if I had asked her for frangers.

The paper bags are fair enough, guaranteed not to stifle a penguin, but bloody impossible to carry groceries in. It’s just as well that I buy so few items to put into bags these days.

When I was a young nipper we lugged the groceries home in big wicker baskets that scoured your hip and cut through your arm to the bone. Then, thanks to the miracles of modern technology, we got plastic bags, which also cut through your arm to the bone, but left your hip mercifully unscathed.

Ou sont les sacs plastiqes d’antan?