Our Stella(r) Attraction

Stella (the puppy formerly known as Odette/Beatrice/Bailey/Stephanie/Margo), December 2009

This is what TS Eliot had to say about 'The Naming of Cats' (from The Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats):

The Naming of Cats

The naming of cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey -
All of them sensible everyday names.

There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter -
But all of them sensible everyday names.

But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?

Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -
Names that never belong to more than one cat.

But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover -
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

...but the naming of puppies is equally hard it seems. Since we collected her from the RSPCA on Tuesday 29 December, this 8 week old brindle girl has had at least 5 different names. (If TS Eliot's theory holds true for dogs as well as cats she can probably hang on to two of those and invent one of her own). It may have bean easier if she, like most of the shelter dogs we looked at already had a name. We had toyed with adopting Jackson or Dennis and pondered at the couplings that produced Oprah and Larissa, but whatever challenges they presented, naming them would not have been one. We think the name 'Stella' has stuck, but watch this space for updates.

Stella's arrival ensures that we will be seeing the New Year in quietly at home, probably with the lovely (prerecorded) Shaun Micallef. We saw his 'Good Evening' recently; I'll comment on that in a separate post. Happy New Year, reader(s).

Gotta find out who's naughty or nice

It was customary once in the lead up to Christmas to tell children that Father Christmas had been assessing their conduct over the year and good little girls and boys would receive a gift while those who had misbehaved would get a lump of coal. Hence the lyrics of Santa Claus is coming to town, 'he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake' etc.

Setting aside how annoying it is that the invention of the jolly fat guy doubles the number of omnipotent patriarchal figures judging us at Christmas time, and the fact that material reward has much more to do with Mummy's & Daddy's income than with getting your just deserts, I might just borrow from the conceit and award a few 2009 bon-bons and lumps of coal.

Firstly the coal, well Carl Sandilands obviously . 'Naughty' is too tame a word for him, 'repulsive', 'boorish', 'bigoted' - he can have a whole coal mine and a landslide - though metaphorically I think he's already got those! I'm afraid Kevin Rudd has been a bit bad too. He is showing a marked tendency to voice knee jerk opinions such as those on Bill Henson's work, and ill considered populist policies on internet censorship which earn him a lump of (clean?) coal from me as a reminder to behave better in 2010. Now little miss Kate Moss, you has been naughty with your pro anorexia utterings so you can have coal for Chrissy too - but whether a lot - to keep you warm, or just a bit so you don't fall over trying to lift it - I am undecided.

Who would have something nice under the tree if it was up to me? Well Barack Obama has really had a bit of a bigger present than he deserves with the Nobel Peace Prize but given his humility in admitting he is not in the same category as most past winners he can get a few gift wrapped poll points from me. Generally speaking he is turning out okay and calling Kanye West a 'jackass' alone needs to be rewarded! A personal choice, Nam Le, for giving me the most memorable gift of my reading year in The Boat, I want to reciprocate. Again there has been plenty of well deserved formal recognition, but I have to say Nam Le is a prodigiously talented writer which equals being good, very good. Now a contentious choice, someone usually placed firmly in the naughty camp, John Saffran. John you were hugely courageous to publicly confront so many of your demons in Race Relations and you did it with a mixture of hilarity and poignancy that made the program compulsive viewing in this household. Have a Hannukah trinket on me!

These are just a few names, I will be making a full list and I will be checking it twice! Seasons greetings, reader(s) - doubt I'll blog again till December 26th.

The night I burned our shammy down…

It was last night actually. Call me a stick-in-the-mud, or an alarmist, or both, but I have long been wary of the concept of Facebook. I worry about privacy and about being (more than usually) boring and self absorbed. My sisters have been badgering me and cajoling me for some time with invitations to become their ‘friend’ (too little too late if you ask me) and last night I succumbed. I thought I was just responding to an invitation to look at the tree changer/hugger sister’s latest pix of her renos and chooks but before I knew it I had created a Facebook account. And Facebook accounts are the Olympic flame of on-line record creation – they blaze forever and can not be extinguished – apparently!

Any way, I did not even attempt to undo what I had done. Partly because I thought there was an inevitability about what was happening, like abandoning BETA videos for VHS and learning how to use You Tube (which I did last month). But also because there IS something seductive about all these rellies and chums suddenly appearing in cosy little photographs beckoning you to ‘chat’ with them. Even as I mentally calculated the hours I might spend in this pursuit and playing scrabble with the other sister, I was being lured by the virtual, colourful intimacy that Facebook promises.

Then paranoia struck. There are some people with whom I do not want this added dimension of communication. Bad enough that they send me god-bothering, maudlin chain emails! I began to envisage them now being able to comment unbidden on any aspect of my life, sending me silly games and quizzes and links to photographs of their drunken revels and ghastly social occasions! Then there are people I really never want to have any contact with again. What if they found me on Facebook?

Although it was gone 8 pm and I was trying to organise dinner, I needed quick advice on how to block anyone in these categories. I put the chips on, started the salad and sought advice from those savvy but cavalier sisters of mine. Only one person on my blacklist has a name of the ‘John Smith’ variety so we found and blocked the others quickly. It did command my attention a bit though and I forgot I had put the frypan on for the schnitzel - until smoke assailed my nostrils. Oh, my god, (not the chips) but a tea towel and our brand new magic ‘shammy’ (faux chamois) cloth were alight. This conflagration lacked Olympian qualities though and a few flicks from another tea towel put it out. The ‘shammy’ is ruined. The dinner was very ordinary with dry and overcooked (oven) chips. The salad was unsinged and rather good...

We have to live with our mistakes. I hope joining Facebook isn’t one of mine and that I get the hang of it and use it in moderation. I know I will remain at heart a committed blogger though – it’s easier to get the tone of spontaneity just right when you can draft what you write first!

Farewell Waldorf

Waldorf's time on earth was limited but he used it to his utmost.

Our bunny of less than a year, Waldorf, was last seen at 3 am last Sunday. After several short- lived attempts to join the feral rabbits over the road he succeeded in leaving his genetic legacy there about 2 weeks ago (we saw him in congress with the little brown one). Then, presumably on a return visit, he must have succumbed to a dog or fox or even an owl. There is not hide nor hare (sorry) of him to be found...

Here is his farewell song (to the tune of '*Raggle Taggle Gypsies' - with apologies to 'Trad' - oh, and he had an Irish accent)

Three bunnies stood at our front gate. They jumped so high, they jumped so low

Waldorf sat in his hutch quite late. His heart it melted away like snow

They smelt so sweet, they bounced so cute that fast his tail began to twitch

As he lay on his lucerne bed, he started to feel a ceaseless itch.

He slipped the latch of his high class hutch all made of treated wood-o

He hopped to the street all stealthy like & went out in the weather & the mud-o

Avert yer eyes, leave open the gate, to roister and frolic is my intent

I’ll ne’r return to my hoi class hutch – till I secure moi heart’s content..

So oi’m off with the raggle taggle bunnies-o! (so I am)

He hopped high and he hopped low, he scampered the length of Bellbird Street

Until he came to a neighbour’s lawn and there spied a-laydee bunny-o

She nuzzled his head, she looked in his eye, and this is what she said-o:

"What makes you leave your hutch and lucerne & your golden bunny muesli-o?

What makes you leave your human slaves to join us raggle taggle bunnies-o?"

"What care I for my hutch and lucerne? What care I for my humans-o?

What care I for my buckwheat treats? I'm off with the raggle taggle bunnies-o! (So I am)"

"Last night you slept on a fluffy towel, with a layer of lucerne spread o’er – o

Tonight you sleep in a grotty ditch along with some raggle taggle bunnies-o!"

"What care I for a fluffy towel, with a layer of lucerne spread o’er-o?

When I can sleep with a laydee bunny - the best of those raggle taggle bunnies-o!"

Farewell, Waldorf - I would never have thought a bunny could be so delightful, mischievous, clever, infuriating and loveable!

* Click here for The Chieftains version.

Why we get cynical about politicians

Is it just me or has this week given us a monumental amount of evidence that most politicians are ambitious, disloyal, reactionary, self -interested, self justifying bastards? I am going to stop short of saying I feel sorry for Malcolm Turnbull. There is something about Malcolm's self assured, smirky, well-heeled persona that precludes sympathy. But for all his arrogance and sense of self righteousness he was trying to be a leader, to take a principled stand and to bring to book moronic neanderthals like Wilson Tuckey. He was clearly unsuccessful in persuading rednecks and conservatives in the Coalition that climate change is an authentic and pressing issue for the planet, and one that the electorate expects its political leaders to grapple with. Perhaps had he been more consultative or indulged the loonies just a little he could have done so. Instead the Liberal party has licensed the wonky world view of that Jesuit educated zealot, Tony Abbott. Rudd must be in 7th heaven - who in their right mind is ever going to vote for Abbott?

Below: Leunig proffered a number of candidates for federal Liberal leadership more inspiring than T. Abbot in last weekend's Herald.


In NSW the movers and shakers in the right faction of the ALP thought they'd ape the antics of the federal conservatives with death wish tactics of their own and before we even had time to recover from the national Coalition's circus act they staged a parochial one to rival it. Poor Nathan Rees (I do expend some sympathy on him). He'd shown some balls and announced the major reforms of outlawing donations from property developers and enabling the Premier to choose his own ministry only to have the thugs and bullies of the right do him to death. Does Kristina Keneally feel easy wading through all that spilled blood? How long will she last?

Firth among non equals

Oh dear. It was so long since I'd been to the Dendy that my loyalty card had expired and what did I waste tonight's precious visit on? A vapid load of old bollocks called 'Genova'. Colin, Colin, Colin what were you thinking? School fees? New car? Enormous donation to your favourite charity? It is hard to imagine what could have persuaded you to grace the limona that is Genova! Grief has been done so much better (Truly Madly Deeply). Grief with sinister intimations of further tragedy has been done so much better (Don't Look Now). Ambiguous ghostly presence has been done so much better (The Others). Middle aged academic fancying younger student has been done so much better (Elegy).

I could go on and mention any film that involves a slutty anorexic American teenage girl, a parent frantically searching for a child who has wondered off or a widow/er making a fresh start in a new city. They would almost all inevitably be better than Genova which is always dull, largely cliched, often nasty and when it touches any emotions at all does so with blatant manipulation.

Colin Firth's talent is worthy of much better material and the themes the film is supposedly trying to tackle also warrant a more subtle, thoughtful vehicle. Maybe Michael Winterbottom, like Woody Allen when he made Vicki, Christina, Barcelona in that city, had to be in Genova for some reason and thought 'how can I quickly cobble together a movie set here?' Unlike Allen though being entertaining didn't seem to figure in his plans, oh, and he also ran out of film before he gave his story any kind of conclusion!

Mr Darcy incognito hoping to sleep off this unappealing project

Obituary (?) Ashes to Ashes

More please!

16 part dramedy series that is born of superior original spine tingling drama starring the impeccable John Sims hath but two seasons to run and they are full of cheesiness. Lo, yet doth the viewer not become fond of Raymondo, Chris and Bolly and elevate Philip Glenister's Gene Hunt to a pedestal hitherto reserved for James Spader's Alan Shore and James Bolam's Jack Ford? Yes, she, and a few million other viewers do, apparently. Reports of Ashes to Ashes demise are greatly exaggerated! I just checked out the Official Philip Glenister site and a third series is in production! Suspending disbelief will be a very big ask indeed but for a few more serves of the Gene Genie I'm prepared to give it my best shot!

Compost loving vegetation hugger arrested!

Peter Cundall was among 50 demonstrators arrested at rally held outside Tasmania's Parliament House to protest the building of a Gunn's pulp mill in the state's Tamar Valley yesterday.

Peter is one of my heroes, an all round sensitive and gentle man who appreciates and fights for the things that enrich our existence on the planet. I had the good fortune to meet him in the restaurant at Hobart's Botanic Gardens (home of 'Pete's Patch') a couple of years ago and to shake his hand and tell him what a positive influence he had been in my life and continues to be in this country.

Like David Bellamy before him, I hope this high profile 'tree hugger' garners the publicity needed to counter Tasmania's greedy, wilful sacrifice of it's exquisite natural heritage.

A domestic spy checks out

Who would make a good small screen spy in late cold war Britain? Edward Woodward would!

The anti-hero of my youth has passed on. Edward Woodward died this week aged 79. Long before he was the Breaker (1980), long before he did a guest cameo in Hot Fuzz (2007) as a fanatical member of neighbourhood watch, and long before I became aware of his early success in the quirky cult classic, The Wicker Man (1973), Edward Woodward was Callan (1967-72). That is where and how I discovered him and fell for this alienated, ruthless loner, very probably a small screen version of Harry Palmer but with a safer more domestic sexuality than Michael Caine.

Those gritty credits with the swinging light bulb were the prelude to a weekly dose of angst and nastiness that held a strong and furtive appeal to my budding sexuality. What ardent 17 year
old girl doesn’t yearn for a brooding Byronic type forced by circumstances to remain lonely and unfulfilled whose troubled brow she could smooth with her caresses?

First step in learning to separate the performer from the character he played was purchasing tickets to see EW in Male of the Species at the Theatre Royal in Sydney. A newcomer to professional theatre, I was rewarded by a capable, entertaining, if not virtuosic, performance in a jolly British play that wasn't as broad as Whitehall farce a but not Orton or Bennett either! The creeping realisation also began for me that Edward Woodward was not a tortured soul but just another amiable thespian bonking his leading lady (Michele Dotrice, who became his second wife). The mystique was unique to the Callan character!

After that my obsession with EW gradually began to fade, but not until I had committed the bizarre act of spending most of the income from my first part-time job on buying his entire recording oeuvre! I've followed his career intermittently. I liked him in Common As Muck (1994-97) but completely missed him in The Equaliser (1985 – 89). I've still never seen The Wicker Man and I wasn't aware of roles in Eastenders and The Bill which I don't watch. And I actually found his bully-boy dignity in Breaker Morant a bit corny and his casting a touch of cultural cringe!

But, by all accounts, Teddy Woodward was a good natured, generous spirited, workman-like actor who was not at all up himself! Bruce Beresford and Simon Pegg say so and I have no reason to doubt them.

His death marks the end of my relationship with his Callan persona and with an era of British television that dominated my youth. It also disconcertingly reminds me that the truly alienated, lonely figure of my girlhood was my father who once barked at me in drunken self pity that I cared about Callan and his bleak existence but not about him, who, he claimed, had endured real manipulation and enforced secrecy at the hands of British intelligence. I seriously doubt he was talking about anything more than working on a defence force aircraft contract and having to sign a confidentiality agreement but the angst and regret were real.

Yes, Julian, yes!

Watch the 2009 Andrew Olle Memorial Lecture delivered by Chaser Executive Producer, Julian Morrow last Sunday evening. He is very witty and also makes good sense.

High Tea in Kingsgrove

The petits fours after we had tucked in.

Blackamoor Confectioner and Tea Rooms on Kingsway, Kingsgrove was mentioned in the Herald a few weeks ago as a hidden gem. My husband surprised me with booking high tea there for my birthday this week.

The place is amazing! Like a portal into another world, completely at odds with the surrounding post WW2 suburb. It occupies one of Kingsgrove's few terrace houses and is a series of little rooms decorated in broadly French provincial style but incorporating china, mirrors, books, prints and clocks from the 19th, 20th and 21st century as well as some Dali references. The main room is festooned with swathes of orange and aquamarine chiffon.

We were the only patrons.

High tea started with champagne then we were brought a two tier stand of mouth watering savouries and sandwiches (including the obligatory cucumber). There was a short interval and we had a pot of Russian Caravan tea and more tiny sweet pastries & confections (including fresh raspberries and cream and tiny lemon meringue tarts). Everything was freshly made on the premises and completely delicious. There was much more than we could eat. When my husband sheepishly asked for a 'doggy bag' we were assured that no-one has ever been able to finish the spread!

At $47 a head our high tea was as expensive as a meal out but worth it for the experience and the ambience of Blackamoor's. A cheaper delight can be had by purchasing their exquisite hand made chocolates!

Sculpture By The Sea

We finally got there after years of meaning to. We went late, at twilight, and darkness descended before we saw everything, but it was exhilarating to experience such a diversity of imaginative works against the back drop of the ocean!

Double the points, double the oppression!

My son the geek says there is an explosion in the numbers of middle aged on-line gamers. Second life has had a lot of publicity and I can see the allure of a virtual world where you can be spectacularly rich or attractive or achieving. What staggers me though is something a colleague told me she is spending 2 to 3 hours a night playing. It's called HK Cafe and here are its Engrish instructions on how to play:

• Cook the food as people order as quick as possible.
• If food is not done and being drag out it has to be throw to the rubbish bin and cook again. $50 will be deducted for wastage.
• Once food is drag on the plate/bowl, you can not move them no more. If you want to change to other combination, throw the whole plate/bowl to rubbish bin and cook again.
• If people getting angry $100 will be deducted.

Is it just me or does this sound a tad demoralising? Remember the 'politics of housework'? In a 1988 article on the topic in The New Internationalist Debbie Taylor argues that 'women are trained to take care of their loved ones' and that 'domestic labour has become fused in our minds with love' which no-one wants to set a limit on, and that housework is by its very nature a Sisyphaen labour, that a 'woman's work' is literally never done.

If the food in HK cafe 'is not done' off it goes into the garbage and you start again. You don't even get the satisfaction that the family is sated until the next meal time! Once food is on the plate/bowl, 'you can not move them no more' - talk about the washing up from hell! And rubbing your diners up the wrong way costs you $100 so no scope to be a Basil Fawlty here!

Perhaps I am drawing a long bow to equate a simulated hospitality industry game with thankless domestic labour but give me Scrabble and a meal with real people in a real cafe any day!

The elusive holy grail for caffeine fanciers

Saw The Graham Norton Show last night and giggled at David Mitchell's blast against coffee obsessives. It was really funny but I thought perhaps a bit hyperbolic until I got in the lift at work this morning.

A man and woman, clearly work colleagues, were engrossed in a coffee appreciation dialogue as follows:

Petite well groomed woman (PWGW) looking up at lanky colleague holding paper cup:Where do you get your coffee?

Lanky authoritative man (LAM) nursing lidded paper cup of coffee: I go to that little place in Campbell Street, not the really trendy looking one, their coffee is undrinkable...

PWGW: Oh so, you go the place on the corner? Is their coffee good?

LAM: Yeah, the place just near the corner. The African woman who used to work there made really good coffee; there's a French guy there now and he's not quite as good.

PWGW: Really an African barista? She made good coffee then?

LAM: Well, I drink long blacks and half the time they just give you this watery stuff... See this one (inviting her to peek under the plastic lid of his cup) you can still just see the creme. On a proper long black the creme should last for at least 3 minutes, there's just a hint still there....

You get the idea - I had to alight at that point.

Just googled a few Surry Hills cafe reviews. One referred to 'Melbourne-style coffee' and another one said to try and catch a day when George was there as he was the better barista. So David Mitchell is right, almost all of middle class western society appears to be obsessed with the search for 'real' coffee and can elucidate it's quest endlessly.

For years our kids have teased us about our need to find somewhere that has 'decent' coffee whenever we're out or on holidays so mea culpa too I suppose.

So random

Hester 1996 - 2009

Life is 'like so random'. In our sorrow at losing Cassie we were taking comfort in still having Hester, our brindle staffie who was three years Cassie's junior. But as John Lennon sang shortly before the cosmos threw a bit of a surprise his and Yoko's way: 'Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans' (Beautiful Boy 1980).

This week, in a matter of 4 days, Hester went from giving us some concern about her lethargy and weight loss to joining Cassie under a shrub (a grevillea) at the end of our garden. Intestinal adenocarcinoma with lymphatic invasion. She had the good grace to go to sleep of her own accord - at about 1 am this morning. We are polaxed. Enough already.

Postscript: Got some great comments on this to my personal email here's my favourite:

Sorry about the dog, but I'm not much of a pet person. At least your life will be simpler.

Hey, I wrote a long poem on the death of our canary in 1970. It does hurt. And if it doesn't, it should.

Right Neighbourly

There was a very assertive rap at the door this morning. At first I thought it was our neighbour from across the road seeking redress for my perfunctory call on them of the previous afternoon complaining about their kids’ pranks. (More about that later).

But no, it was two Jehovah’s witnesses with accents like the restaurateur in ‘Lady and the Tramp’. Their conservative suits and the copies of The Watchtower they flourished gave them away before the older of the two told us that he had ‘a vair-ee e-special a-message’ for us. I was sitting at the table eating my cereal, my unruly slept-on new hairstyle protruding maniacally from my skull (more about that later) and my husband made it to the door before me. Before the ‘vair-ee e-special a-message’ could be delivered he informed our visitors that we were a household of atheists. ‘You donor looka like atheists’ replied Jehovah’s Witness senior just before wishing us a ‘nice-a day’ as the door swung closed on him, his colleague and their publications.

What do atheists look like? we wondered. Admittedly I look nothing like Julianne Moore or Uma Thurman, two of the more prominent contemporary female atheists (more’s the pity). My spouse does however share facial hairstyle preferences with Hemingway and Darwin! Perhaps he just meant we didn’t have obvious horns or cloven hooves!

I am a person who earns her living in the world of personal development. I usually pride myself on taking a win-win approach to conflict resolution and not subduing the other party with bombast. What price my principles? The detonation of six ‘fart bombs’ on our front veranda it would seem! The little wretches over the road have been regularly setting off these putrid things outside our front door for the past two weeks. Usually I’ve only heard about it after I got home from work and although we’d started collecting the wrappers as evidence I was never home to catch them in the act. Our son had, and chased them for a block a few days ago. On Friday the little imps failed to connect the presence of my car in our driveway with my presence in the house. Early afternoon came the ‘pop’ sound that my kids tell me heralds the emission of the rotten egg gas and then the farty discharge itself. White splashes on our tiles also accompanied the eruption.

I sped across the street fuelled by indignation, knocked very hard and repeatedly on their door and when it opened, blurted out ‘Can you tell your kids to stop letting off joke shop fart bombs on our veranda? Once we might consider a joke but not six times!’ The poor woman’s smiling face crumpled and she said ‘Yes, yes, I’ll tell them’ and went in. I heard her ‘balling them out’ seconds later. My kids were delighted and suggested that I do present as a tad formidable in full flight. Perhaps I can harness this righteous fury to help in the battle against global warming or whaling ‘for research purposes’ next.

Oh, the haircut. I have thin greying hair and a fat face. I do not have anyone giving my tresses the daily attention that Julia Gillard and Juanita Phillips so clearly enjoy. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve decided that a short layer cut is the only practical coiffure for me. Last week I succumbed to delusion again and asked to have it left longer, in a sort’ve bob. (My fantasy is to have hair like Betty Churcher). No amount of fiddling and ‘product’ replicates the way it looked when I left the salon and after sleep I resemble Larry Fine (of the Three Stooges). Vanity, vanity all is vanity! More on foil foibles and the politics of greying in a future blog posting!

Snorty little secret

A few weeks before poor old Cass went for her big sleep I went for a sleep study. My family has commented on my snoring over the past 18 months, I wake several times a night, hardly ever feel rested in the mornings and take every opportunity to have an early night or an afternoon nap. I mentioned this to my GP and she wrote me a referral. The study involved an overnight stay at a sleep laboratory, the Woolcock Centre, Glebe. I chose a Friday night because I expected to feel pretty washed out the next day and didn't want to have to front up to work. As the doctor I saw today maintained I slept for 6 hours (not the 2 it felt like) that may have been a self fulfilling prophecy.

Before I left work on the night of the study I mentioned where I was going and a colleague said she ought to go to a sleep lab, that she knew she stopped breathing several times a night and was too scared to have a day time snooze in case she did so permanently. I immediately felt like a complete alarmist as my symptoms are trivial compared to hers. I had to check in at 7 pm - not enough time to go home and cook dinner first so I convinced my husband and daughter it would be nice to have a meal in Glebe. We cut it fine and I had some trouble getting access to the Woolcock Centre carpark, so we opted for a restaurant a few doors away.

The dashing waiter (he had a waxed moustache and new romantic ringlets a la Adam Ant) asked why we needed to be out in a hurry and I told him what I was doing. 'Why?' he enquired 'I snore' I replied. 'In that case, I should book in' he said as he topped up my merlot ('to help you sleep') and confided that he snores so badly his wife regularly exiles him to the couch.

At 7.10 my family farewelled me as if I was about to undergo serious surgery not sit in an Ikea style visitors' lounge sipping green tea until a delightful Indian research student ushered me to a comfortable bedroom (with en suite) to start the first phase of my wiring up. Mohatma (I'll call her that to protect her identity and because I can't recall her actual name) could not have been clearer, more considerate or thorough. After attaching the first set of wires she suggested I might like to go and relax in the lounge. Glancing at my tendril exuding reflection in the mirror I said it might be hard for me to relax in a public setting looking as I did. We were all in the same boat Mohatma said, so there was no need to feel self consciousness. Off I boldly went. During my 3/4 hour in front of the huge plasma screen watching an SBS doco on Robert J Oppenheimer only 2 of the other 'inmates' scurried in and hurriedly departed. Clearly looking like a pasty complexioned, pyjama -clad android in the repair shop themselves or thinking I was one does inhibit social interaction!

At about 8.45 Mohatma summoned me for my final wiring. It was basically as depicted here but a bit more intrusive as I also had electrodes gummed onto my scalp and taped to my arms and legs, belts around my chest and midriff and a peg thing on one finger of my left hand. My hair was definitely a tad mussed up too - not like this guy's smooth coiff.

At 9.50, when I was all plugged in, Mohatama went to the observation room down the corridor to check she was getting readings. She asked me to raise first one leg then the other, each of my arms in turn, to look up, down, right and left and to blink, then, apparently satisfied, she popped back to bid me good night and explain that the microphone in the room would pick up any calls for assistance during the night.

When I called out 3 times seeking permission to swap the peg thingy from my pinkie (where it was pinching) to my middle finger and was unheeded, I took the initiative and swapped it myself. Luckily nothing else required their intervention overnight. I managed to avoid a visit to the loo (which would have required some unplugging) but did need to take ibuprofen for back pain (that mattress really agreed with me though, I woke up twinge free, must check what it was). I was woken up promptly at 6 from what I thought was my only episode of deep sleep. As I was unaware of any snoring and my mouth felt decidedly undrooly I felt I had spent quite an atypical night and that they would learn nothing or I would be pronounced just a bit restless or stressed.

After being sprayed with delightful jets of tepid water to un-gum my attachments I was allowed a shower and was released. By 7 I was on the road home. I noticed how many denizens of Glebe were already up and about at dawn. Perhaps they have trouble sleeping?

Well today I got to hear the results of the study and got a diagnosis of mild sleep apnoea. No mouthgards or breathing apparatus recommended at this stage but my weight and alcohol consumption definitely under scrutiny. I don't know if I was in denial before or hoped for a 'magic bullet', but I feel rather despondent. Perhaps that's why people endure appalling quality sleep and don't get the study done. They won't have to confront their unhealthy habits!

If the mere mention of what I was doing elicited poor sleep confessions from 2 people (and I've since heard more sleep stories), how many people have a snorty little secret I wonder?

Postscript: the stories keep on coming. One friend literally did not sleep a wink for his sleep study but then dozed off after he was told he could leave and was woken by the cleaners that afternoon! Another is on her second breathing machine and has slept with a mask for years! It seems people talk about almost anything else they do in bed but their sleep habits are taboo!

The Big Sleep

Cassie. She was 15. A good dog.

From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase & Fable:

Sleep (Anglo-Saxon slaepen).

To sleep off. To get rid of by sleep.

To sleep away. To pass away in sleep, to consume in sleeping; as, to sleep one's life away.

To sleep on a matter. To let a decision on it stand until tomorrow.

To put to sleep. Commonly used as a euphemism for painlessly putting to death pet animals.

We had our aged staffy, Cassie 'put to sleep' on Friday afternoon. That is she received a lethal overdose of anaesthetic and died swiftly and hopefully peacefully.

We are fortunate that we can exercise this judgement in relation to elderly, unwell dogs and cats. Anyone who has watched humans suffer the final stages of cancer would have at least considered the desirability of such an option.

There was no moral conundrum for us but that still didn't make it particularly easy. Cassie timed things well - her rapid decline occurred on the afternoon of the last day of the working week. We got home from the vet's surgery with her at about 5 pm so there was no digging in savage sunlight. The only hiccup was an unfortunately timed phone call from my employer hoping that everything was 'okay'. We buried her in the still twilight (luckily there were none of the wild winds that have characterised many of the last few days). Her plot is home to a fragrant boronia we bought at the nursery 5 days ago without this destination in mind. My green thumbed sister says boronias are notoriously hard to grow so it may not be her long term memorial shrub.

All in all not a bad death. We feel sad and drained and I have been doing quite a lot of 'sleeping it off' however endorphins from aquarobics and sympathetic hugs from the aqua women and from my dog walker/book group friends and reminiscing with the family about Cassie's traits and adventures have all helped. No 'anger' stage of grief with this one!

Sometimes I've read a poem or piece of prose or a song lyric when saying goodbye graveside to a pet (we've said a few goodbyes over 34 years) but Cass needs no other epitaph than this quote from my son's Facebook posting for that evening:

Just buried (my) dog of 12 years, Cassie. She was 15. A good dog.

Damn Spot is outed

The canine bard in authentic Elizabethan garb

Debate has long existed about whether William Shakespeare is actually the author of the many plays (and presumably poems) attributed to him. It is generally asserted that a village boy who left school at 15 would not have had the vocabulary or the knowledge of the classics, the sciences and humanities that his canon displays. Rival candidates usually cited are Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Dead white males all! In 'A Room of One's Own' Virginia Woolfe posited a genius sister for Shakespeare, who perished in anonymity because of the circumstances an Elizabethan woman of letters would have faced. But no-one has gone beyond questioning the sexism of assuming Shakespeare was a man to consider whether he or she was human at all!

Now with the discovery in rural NSW of The First Bonio any doubt about where the foundation stone of the British literary tradition originated has vanished! This precious manuscript was found in 2004 lining an abandoned kennel in Gulargambone when the community embarked on the massive clean up that won it that year's Tidy Town award. It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that 'Shakespeare's' works are by a dog!

Just consider these titles:

All's Well That Smells Well
Julius Schnauzer
Muckbreath
Two Cattledogs of Verona
As You Lick It
Prince, Great Dane of Hamlet
Corgi Ole Anus
A Midsummer Night's Walkies
The Distempest
Measure for Muzzle
The Taming of the Shi-tszu
Love's Labrador Lost and
Richard the Turd

Only arrogant human plagiarism explains how they have been mis-attributed for so long! It's time to laud the doggy bard, Wilhelmina Wagtail, not to view her as 'a beast that wants discourse of reason' but to acknowledge her thusly:

What a piece of work is dog! How noble in reason!
How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable.
In action how like a wolf. In apprehension how like a dog. A dab paw with the thesaurus.
The paragon of animals!

Living Rock Aquarium & Tailoring

The Campsie/Canterbury area where I live is highly multicultural and burgeons with the enterprise of immigrants. Earlwood shops cover every facet of the bridal industry: bombonerie, page boy & flower girl outfitters, florists, solariums, manicurists and businesses offering deluxe wedding photography and video packages. It also has two serious Greek Tavernas. Campsie has halal butchers and Turkish coffee and nut shops, Vietnamese bakeries and Fijian grocers as well as purveyors of saris, sushi, kebabs, Indian spices and DVDs and twee kids' fashions from Taiwan &Hong Kong.

Canterbury Road specialises in appealing to renovators and petrol heads with most automotive services offered, car dealerships inBMWs, minis and Japanese imports and three car seat cover businesses. It has lighting, plumbing and tile emporiums aplenty and shops selling both new and second hand furniture.Ausland Furniture is not, as I first thought, a store specialising in furniture for the deaf, but one that sells the flashy bedroom suites and gigantic ceramic leopards beloved of some of our middle eastern neighbours.

However, by far the most original experiment in commerce on Canterbury Road was Living Rock Aquarium and Tailoring where in a single visit you could be measured for a bespoke suit and pick up a couple of guppies for your lounge room tank. This combined business lasted for about two years until piscatorial supply nudged out budget couture and we now need to go a bit further to get a pair of pants altered. The tropical fish business has also relocated but the sign proudly announcing this bold entrepreneurial venture remains. See photo below (we have enhanced it a bit).

We are abject - we can no longer order a suit and top up our aquarium at Canterbury's one-stop supplier of tailoring services and tropical fish.

Post script: If you go looking for the original Living Rock Aquarium & Tailoring sign you will be disappointed. It was painted over a week after I posted this!

TOFU SNAFU

Tonight I made my first attempt to cook tofu. I decided my stir fry needed a bit of protein and that defrosting chicken fillets would take too long. We had a packet of tofu in the fridge from when one of the kids' vegetarian friends came to stay that I thought would be just the ticket. Don't be fooled into believing that tofu's bland appearance and taste infer simple preparation! A site called vegetarian.about.com provides a helpful video that stresses that before you do anything with tofu you need to squeeze all the moisture out of it. Their recommended method is putting it on paper towel with a board and two tins of tomatoes on top of it. However, in my case this method did not result in a neat rubbery block like the man in the video held to camera but more of a white squishy mess reminiscent of cottage cheese but gelatinous! I did use tins of soup, not tomatoes, so that may have been my mistake...

Appearance isn't everything so I soldiered on and attempted to fry fragments of the mess in the wok in sesame oil with ginger and garlic. The tofu did not go brown & firm like those perversely yummy wettex-like lumps you find in laksa. It stayed basically the same except that it was now covered in tiny specks of burnt ginger and garlic! Oh, well taste is the ultimate test so I tried some. Yuck! It was pretty much how I imagine mixing warm cooking oil with plain yoghurt would taste. It went in the compost and I defrosted the chicken!

I am completely open to critiques of my method and hints for future attempts but in the mean time the only tofu I will be eating will be cooked by experts in Asian restaurants!

If I could be you, and you could be me...

Above: Everyone's favourite doppelgangers (and such sound genetic science!) 'identical cousins' - Patty & Cathy.

Alter egos, parallel universes, out of body experiences - there has been something of a recurring theme in my telly viewing over the past two weeks.

Starting with 'Drop Dead Diva' in which the 'soul' (for want of a better word) of bimbo model Deb, gets a second chance to make something of her life in the body of lawyer Jane who is on the operating table having just taken a bullet for her adulterous boss. The twist is that while shallow Deb is a toned, blonde size 8 slinking about in a body hugging sheath of a dress, Jane is a fat, virtually make-up less supposed frump who, despite an addiction to self help books, is quite intelligent and gives a damn. I was ready to be un-amused but did find it mildly entertaining. I'd probably give it a second go if it didn't clash with 'Ashes to Ashes' (see below). The 'net is full of reports about its poor ratings and imminent axing so a third chance may be out of the question.

Now 'Ashes to Ashes'* is not 'Life on Mars' II. Except that's exactly what it is of course but sans John Sim and sans the wonderful poignancy and unease that gave the hairs of the back of my neck and my tear ducts a regular work out. This time the protagonist is female, DI Alex Drake, and she goes back in time to 1982. And who does she encounter but the still delightfully un-PC Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister) and his team, now based in London. It isn't 'Life On Mars', but it does get you in, not least because of the sassy and sarcastic commentary Alex (Keeley Hawes) maintains on what she assumes is a shock-induced fantasy world and then there's all the lovingly fabricated 80s popular culture references. Think I'll stick with it - which, I've just read in the Herald Guide, means sticking with 2 series and 16 episodes!

'Wire In The Blood' has been transplanted too, but not just from north to south England, it's gone stateside, to Texas to be precise (shamelessly evoking Ry Cooder's music at every opportunity). The formula had started to get a bit tired in gritty old serial killer capital of the UK, if not the world, Bradfield, and is really just a bit too wheezy and predictably gratuitous now. Robson Green is milking his Tony Hill character to get every last drop out of the franchise but at least he is still Tony Hill and it isn't a ghastly US remake a la The Office, Kath & Kim etc (Wikipedia has a list of US remakes - it is telling how many say 'cancelled after 2 episodes' or 'pilot only made' - Kirstie Alley as the Vicar of Dibley, pulease!)

'Our' Toni Collette gives a virtuoso performance as Buck, Alice and T, multiple personalities (or manifestations of dissociative identity disorder as we've all learnt to correctly call the condition) of the eponymous heroine of 'United States of Tara'. I feared this Spielberg produced series might be smugly & self consciously 'out there' but in fact it achieves a directness and believability in its dialogue and situations rare in US TV productions. It reminds me of Spielberg's early films like 'Poltergeist' where family dynamics and conversations were so authentic. I believe this is down to Diablo Cody, the screen writer, whose work I haven't seen before but will look out for in future. The support cast is all excellent especially Keir Gilchrist as Tara's knowing, gay son Marshall. He gets my award for TV quote of the season: "I think I know my literary boners" asserting his interpretation of an E M Forster (I think) novel to his English teacher in class.

The silliest ever showcase for comedy actors to show off and explore alternate versions of themselves remains 'Red Dwarf'. I caught one of the 'Ace Rimmer' episodes last night where Chris Barrie gets to be marginally attractive (if also a bit of a 'smug git') as an Indiana Jones type hero for a few scenes. This classic sci-fi spoof has explored the concept of parallel universes and different realities in many episodes perhaps most strikingly in 'Parallel Universe' where the crew meet alternate versions of themselves: the analogues of Lister, Rimmer and Holly are female and they inevitably hook up with their counterparts, while the Cat is revolted by his alternate, a scruffy dog lacking all grace and finesse.

My absolute favourite out of the body, walk a mile in my (high heeled) shoes, psyche swapping, gender bending TV comedy drama though has to be 'Boy Meets Girl'. In this ITV series a man's and woman 's identities get transposed by a freak lightning strike. I just love it! Rachael Stirling deserves a BAFTA or three for a knockout performance as Veronica Burton, a yuppy fashion journalist suddenly 'inhabited' by morose, breakfast cereal addicted, conspiracy theorist, Danny Reed. Martin Freeman (already doing a lovely job of voicing Danny's thoughts trapped inside Veronica) will no doubt get to flex his acting muscles a bit more in coming episodes. I can't wait!

*Footnote: Having been an incredibly daggy teen I didn't know that 'Ashes to Ashes', like 'Life on Mars', takes its title (and its recurrent clown figure imagery) from a David Bowie song & video clip. I only learned as much on this week's 'Spicks & Specks'! A spooky Mulder coincidence or a triumph of cross promotion?

Buy polar bears

Just for a change, instead of talking about my pets, I’m going to talk about an important toy animal. Brumas is a toy polar bear cub I’ve had all my life. I’ve just dug out a picture of me (above) with him taken when I was about 3 (so around 1959). He must have been given to me at birth or soon after as Brumas toys would only have been on the market for a few years.

Created in 1949 to commemorate the birth, at Regents Park Zoo, London, of the first baby polar bear successfully reared in the UK, these toys were one of the earliest instances of a public institution merchandising its attractions. (Brumas holds the record for bringing the most visitors to the zoo in any one year of its existence, 3 million people!) Research reveals that Brumas shaped soaps were common Christmas presents in 1950 and that Brumas and Mum, Ivy featured on advertising posters for Fox's Glacier mints!

'Brumas' is a portmanteau word combining the names of two of her keepers, Bruce and Sam. The cub was initially misreported as male in the media. In those pre -feminist days even when the mistake was corrected (see Pathe News announcing her actual gender with a series of quaint anthropomorphic gags) no-one really took much notice, so my Brumas remained 'he'.

The zoo was a favourite haunt of mine so I may have been taken to see the real Brumas, I don't remember. It would have had to have been before I was 3 because by the time this photograph was taken the real Brumas was dead. She only lived until 1958.

My Brumas has endured partly because he has been loved and treasured and importantly because my husband was kind enough to have him restored at the Dolls' Hospital in Kingsgrove for my 40th birthday!

And the moral to that is...

So much for that pretentious rave about Candide/Voltaire. The refrain "You have been a fool and so have I" still applies - we had learned nothing until life imitated art! We just spent $1k plus to send our 14 yr old to a Department of Sport and Rec winter camp at which she lasted a mere 48 hours of the intended 7 days! Too depressing to relate the details here but the morals to be drawn from this experience are:

• never select an activity reactively - because you think you ought to or because all the other kids are doing it; ask is it right for my kid?
• don't dismiss your empathy/gut feeling about issues like homesickness, feeling they don't fit in etc; if you believe that's how you would have felt at 14 there's a good chance that's how your offspring will feel
• don't use your child's life to try to expiate/redress shortcomings in your own childhood
• don't clutter up school holidays with elaborate plans - just hanging out is all important
  
• often planting a veggie garden and visiting the local pool are more satisfying than expensive junkets.

So, neither pure, nor wise, nor good, and $1K the poorer, we'll tend our home and prune our trees, we'll make our newly established veggie garden grow, we'll relish each others' company and that of our little furry charges and do the best we know.

`Tut, tut, child!' said the Duchess. `Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.' And she squeezed herself up closer to Alice's side as she spoke.

Alice did not much like keeping so close to her: first, because the Duchess was VERY ugly; and secondly, because she was exactly the right height to rest her chin upon Alice's shoulder, and it was an uncomfortably sharp chin. However, she did not like to be rude, so she bore it as well as she could.

`The game's going on rather better now,' she said, by way of keeping up the conversation a little.

`'Tis so,' said the Duchess: `and the moral of that is--"Oh, 'tis love, 'tis love, that makes the world go round!"'

`Somebody said,' Alice whispered, `that it's done by everybody minding their own business!'

`Ah, well! It means much the same thing,' said the Duchess, digging her sharp little chin into Alice's shoulder as she added, `and the moral of THAT is--"Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves."'

`How fond she is of finding morals in things!' Alice thought to herself.

Chapter 9, Alice in Wonderland

Non sequiter: check out these wonderfully altered episodes of the classic anime series Yugioh. My son introduced me to them today. They are really funny!