canny granny

My Lodger Gina thinks things that would never cross my mind. Not even in a fit.

Today it was : Just as we create flexibility in our bodies by stretching physically, we can create limberness in our minds by stretching mentally. We can do this in small ways such as taking a different route 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.

I walked a different way to the butcher shop, and found a whole new supermarket had sprung up overnight. With bolts of coloured cloth on the footpath, windows full of dead 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 Council Home Help Girl.

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.

I am moved to speak in defense of the prawn, a misunderstood little fellow, who asks nothing more than to give us a little pleasure when we bite into a scrunchy bit.

Family Says Flying Prawn Killed Jerry — The family of Jerry Colaitis claims he wrenched his neck, and later died because of it, after ducking to avoid a shrimp tossed by a hibachi chef.

They are seeking $10 million in damages, saying Jerry died from complications caused by neck surgery twelve months later.

The flying shrimp incident occurred in January 2001. Colaitis went to a chiropractor, then needed three neurosurgeons, and then underwent surgery in June. The surgery caused complications and, another ten months later, Colaitis suddenly died. Lawyers blame the shrimp.

Can you see the basic flaw here? What’s wrong the young people of today? A prawn hurled across a room didn’t hurt anyone, (apart from the prawn itself which, hopefully, was well and truly dead before its fateful flight).

The lesson here is — stay away from chiropractors, neurosurgeons and surgery. In that order. And keep clear of lawyers while you’re about it.

Yesterday I touched on a subject which remains vividly in the memory of many readers. The Free Milk for Schools scheme.

I’m not the only one who suffers recurring nightmares of forgetting to shake the bottle before opening and copping a mouthful of warm, lumpy cream, but fortunately no one else endured the horror of Miss Callanan who policed the crates in our school playground making sure no child got free without a bottle.

Even when the magpies had already pierced the top of the lid, there was no escaping the forced ingestion of Free Milk in all its curdled foulness.

It was the defining childhood experience that taught me the absolute necessity of being able to lie convincingly. “That’s mine Miss!” pointing to any old empty bottle in the crate.

It also taught me that some boys will do anything for a dare.

I’m shocked. Not so much by the news of the entire population of the North American continent going down with food poisoning from eating bagged spinach, but by the lack of respect shown to growing childen.

” Marina Zecevic said she made the mistake of serving creamed spinach to her kids the day the story (of the contamination) broke.”

No, Marina, your mistake was the heinous creaming of the spinach in the first place. In my day, no self respecting child would stand for such a blatant disregard of Human Rights.

Food plays such a large part in our character, it shapes our very souls. My generation gained tolerance through the wheatgerm which marred our porridge, fortitude from the boiled cabbage, and the daily teaspoon of cod liver oil constantly strengthened our righteous anger.

We survived the hideous institution of Free Milk in Schools and dutifully swallowed, every day at lunch, a warm bottle of clotted, curdled milk which had been sitting in the sun since sparrow-fart.

We were a tough bunch.

And no one would have dared to serve us creamed spinach.