Real Tart

I was all set today, with Six in school and Three at pre-school, to spend the day working on Mr Wolf, which I have almost finished, praise the Lord!
But then I awoke this morning to the melodic sound of the Bellbird, and of Three vomiting on the shag pile rug.
So, he’s at home today and I’ll be tending to his needs. I’ve managed to get most of the vomit out of the rug but, you know, it’ll never be the same again. At the moment it looks less like a shaggy dog than a dog who’s just been in a very smelly river and then rolled in something very nasty indeed.
Ho-hum.
On a lighter note – on Friday when I picked up Six from school, Three was running around with this little girl he sees at pre-school, called Rachel. As Simon & Garfunkel would say, they’ve got a groovy thing going, baby.
In the Bentley on the way back from school I laughed out loud when Three said, “Six, did you see me playing with Racheee?”
Six said, “Oh yes, Three, I certainly did. It seems you have your eyes very much glued to that girl.”

So, the latest on the Bosch dishwasher is that the extended warranty people sent an email to Three Weeks (because he is the only Bosch person in the area) telling him to give me a call to arrange to fix the bloody thing (bloody thing is a technical term used by irate people who have bought a Bosch dishwasher three years ago).
Of course, he didn’t call. So I call the extended warranty people again and they tell me if it’s the door seals then these are not covered under the warranty anyway. Of course!
I then call Three Weeks, actually he should be called Four Weeks as a month has now gone by since I first called him. This is the conversation:
“Oh yeah. I remember. You’ve got a leak. Where is it coming from?”
“Well, we don’t know really, do we? On account of the fact that you still haven’t managed to drag your lardy arse the 8km up here” (I didn’t actually say, lardy arse, but it was on the tip of my tongue).
“Well, I don’t know if the parts have come yet.”
“What parts?”
“The parts you want.”
“But we don’t know what the problem is yet.”
“Don’t you?
“No, you NEED TO COME AND LOOK AT IT!”
“Oh yeah.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“No.”
“What?”
“I mean tomorrow is not good.”
“What about Monday morning?”
“Oh yeah.”

Now, on Monday this week I had to have an x-ray on my hand because one of my fingers is hurting badly (it’s the one I use for pointing out things, and jabbing at tossers).
The x-rays get delivered to the doctor’s on Tuesdays.
I called the surgery today (Thursday) as I’d heard nothing from them.
“Hello, have you had the x-rays delivered this week?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Has mine arrived?”
Rustle of paper.
“Oh yeah.”
“Right. So, is it all okay?”
Yeah. No, I mean, yeah no.”
“So I need to come in to see the doctor?”
“Oh yeah.”
“When were you going to let me know, like next week or something?”
“Yeah.”
“Right. So is Monday afternoon okay?”
More paper rustling.
“Oh yeah.”

I don’t know if you saw the story last week out of Tokyo but it seems a study has shown fat people live longer than thin and healthy people.
To be honest I’ve not got much time for research like this. It reminded me of the bloke who used to run the local off-licence (evocatively called Bottle Shops down-under...) where I used to live in England many moons ago. He was a ferrety looking person with the pallor of a funeral director, but he was married to a sultry Italian woman who looked like Gina Lollobrigida. Yes of course I used to go in there regularly (umm, I mean into the off-licence..).
One day I was chatting to him about drinking and how much you should or shouldn’t consume, and also at the time there was loads of news about the benefits of eating plenty of fruit and veggies.
“You don’t believe all that, do you?” he said.
Sometimes I wonder. I mean if anyone can show me any definitive research that shows eating fruit and veggies makes you live longer I’ll eat my hat, I mean I’ll eat an apple.
Of course, it could be the same with this ‘overweight people live longer’ mularky.
Apparently what the Japanese Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry found was that people who were overweight at the age of 40 lived longer on average than people with other physiques.
The study showed that thin people had the shortest life expectancy, on average dying six or seven years earlier than overweight people. Serves them right for being so bloody pious, if you ask me.
Researchers studied the health of about 50,000 people aged 40 or older over a 12-year period. They looked at the past physiques of the participants and how long they lived past the age of 40, and grouped them according to their body mass index (BMI), an indicator of how fat a person is.
Men of regular weight (with a BMI of between 18.5 and 25) at age 40 lived for an average of 39.94 more years, while those who were overweight (BMI of between 25 and 30) at age 40 lived a further 41.64 years.
Women of regular weight lived on average a further 47.97 years, compared with overweight women, who lived another 48.05 years.
Obese men and women (BMI of 30 or more) lived a further 39.41 and 46.02 years, respectively. But thin men (BMI of less than 18.5) were on average expected to live 34.54 more years, and thin women another 41.79 years.
Possible explanations as to why thin people could die earlier included a theory that thin people are more susceptible to contagious diseases.

I’ve been trying to think of someone, anyone really, who I’ve come across in the past six months who has any idea what the fuck they are doing.
I discovered this morning that the Bosch dishwasher which is leaking all over the expensive blackbutt timber floor is still covered under warranty. That’s good, I thought. But whoa there, hang on... I paid the store I bought it from - David Jones, Chatswood, if you happen to be in the area take my advice, drive right on by, do not even slow down.
It seems that though I paid extra for an extra three years, the DJ’s people have not registered the extended warranty with the insurance people, so now I have to start faxing stuff, my fingerprints and DNA profile and all manner of ‘proof’, before I can even dream about getting my dishes all sparkly again. Really you’d have thought that was illegal. I mean it’s like taking money without delivering the goods. It seems the insurance people get this about three times a week.
Mind you, they are insurance people so how true that is, I just don’t know. I mean to my mind they’re lumped in with estate agents, car mechanics, call centre operators, the people at Telstra, bankers, peodophiles, pickpockets, genocidal murderers and, oh sorry, I got a bit carried away there.
Meanwhile, I had phoned the local Bosch person, as you may recall, to fix it because I’d forgotten about the extended warranty. I call him every week (this is week three) and he’s still not been out to even have a look, despite living only 6km away (about four miles).
So, hopefully once the warranty is all confirmed the people at Bosch will send someone out, anyone except for Week Three, I hope.
We shall see.
Anyway, I’m thinking of getting a sort of league board made up and put somewhere, maybe in the kitchen, with a list of Tossers of the Week. The only thing that worries me is I don’t have more than a couple of hours spare time a week and frankly the way things are going updating the board could be a fulltime job.
Hmm, maybe I could interest a keen school leaver who’d like to learn about commerce, umm, or not.
The only thing is with that, I’ve seen the kids around here and while they could get an A grade in Slouching Along, and certainly a Distinction in Hanging Your Shirt Out Over Your Arse, and clearly a Diploma in Monosyllabic Utterances and Grunts, I’m not sure any of them are ready for a demanding business role of this type.
Finally, I saw an advert yesterday (this has nothing to do with what I’ve been talking about but my mind wandered and I think you all deserve to know which way it veered) for a Director of Training for Greenpeace. The people they want trained are called Direct Dialogue Associates. What? Well, I figured out it’s the people who come up to you on the street and go, “And how are you today?”
Honestly, these days everyone has a fancy title. I think mine should be, Director of Special Familial Affairs with Executive Power Of Censure Over Related Infants. My side portfolio would be, Chef du Jour, Spag Bol.

So, I got to see Simon & Garfunkel on Saturday.
Well, actually I barely got to see them...let me explain.
As some of you will recall, I bought a ticket at the ridiculously high price of almost $400, so around 200 pounds, because that was all that was on offer, at least initially. As the weeks prior to the concert wore on the promoters dropped the price down to $75.
Okay, I’ve always wanted to see S&G live and I thought, hmm, 400 smackers will get me a super seat within hand-shaking distance of my musical heros.
You know, you can be so wrong.
The stadium is called Acer Arena, Acer being a computer company whose only link to music that I could find was the ability of their machines to help you download free music for which at some stage in the future you will go directly to jail (did you see the story last week about the woman in the US who was fined $2.4million for downloading 24 songs...).
Anyway, the concert was at Olympic Park which was built on a waste site back in 1999. I had to go to car park 5 which is like saying if you’re on your way to Marble Arch that you need to park in Walthamstow. Then you wait for a shuttle bus. It’s good really, the time spent in the rain let’s you mull over many of life’s mysteries, like where is the fucking bus.
In the Arena itself – it’s an indoors stadium – I discovered that the seats I and several hundred other people had paid handsomely for were on the floor of the arena, as was the stage, at the same level. The seats were not tiered so unless you were in the front row you could not see the stage at all. Unbelievable.
Conversely, those lucky folks who’d dipped into their savings to the tune of $75 were arrayed on tiered seats either side of us. This was good for them because it gave them the chance – pre-show - to laugh at us mugs in the pit.
Honestly, I was disgusted. I have never ever been anywhere where the seats were so poorly placed.
It wasn’t just me either. The level of complaining flowing across and around the seats was more vocal than Brian Clough.
As I always seem able to do, I did get a laugh and small ripple of applause because S&G were late coming on and someone shouted out, “where are they?” And I shouted back, “waiting for the shuttle bus.”
Anyhow, hearing them live was good, even if I couldn’t see them except by cracking my neck back and staring at the small film screen. Really, aside from actually saying I was there, I might just as well have watched the video when it comes out.
After it all finished – a good two hours of solid singing and a handful of interesting anecdotes – I walked outside with the hordes to wait for a shuttle bus but then decided to walk to the car park because it was quicker.
On the way this massive white stretch limo with lights arrayed along the sides and with blacked out windows swished past.
As I tramped along in the rain I thought, ah, now i know where my money went.

U.S. government-to-government arms sales are growing fast.
Arms sales were at a "pretty unprecendented level" after averaging $8 billion to $13 billion per year in the early 2000s, Vice Admiral Jeffrey Wieringa, head of the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency, told Reuters in an interview.
Sales in the first half reached $27 billion, some 60 percent of the year's expected total, making it likely the actual 2009 total would top $40 billion, he said.
Wieringa said the Obama administration was committed to building international partnerships, and arms sales were an important instrument of that policy.
"We sell stuff to build relationships," he said.
Of course you do.

Here’s the thing – I ordered Six’s winter school uniform and it didn’t turn up because the woman who does it (I use the phrase in its losest sense...) put me in the wrong ledger, whatever that means, and so I had to go into school and talk to some woman who looked like she was sucking on a lemon and who said to me, “don’t bite my arse off.” Frankly nothing was further from my thoughts, but it did send a shiver up my spine. Mind you, nothing compared to the shivering Six was doing as he tried to keep warm in his shorts.
Eventually, weeks later, the uniform turned up, well some of it. The lemon-sucking woman handed me over the strides (pants as they call them here) and five long sleeve polo shirts. I checked because that’s just me and the polos were all short sleeves. So, I took them back and she rummaged around the uniform shop (a shed without a lock which is apparently why so many bits of uniform seem to walk out of their own accord. Now, I’m no rocket scientist but I’m not sure I need a degree in astrophysics to figure that a lock of some kind would be good).
Anyway, I digress. This week the correct polo shirts turned up. Well, four of them, the fifth had apparently been given to some other child who I’m sure I’ve seen in the playground shivering, and who I now seem to be sponsoring. So, though I’ve paid for it all months and months ago I’m still one shirt short.
I went to the P&C meeting to vent my concerns and suggested someone look into all this and they looked at me like I was from Pluto and speaking Plutonese. “The ladies are volunteers,” one shocked woman told me. “Volunteer what?” I asked, but I got no answer, just some evil looks.
I also asked why this is the only school in Christendom that has no sign out front, you know the one that tells you which child has maimed someone most effectively in last week’s interstate judo championship.
“Oh,” said the headmaster, a man routinely referred to as Grandpa, “the lock is broken and so we don’t put anything in there because someone might come along and change the letters around.”
To be honest, having looked around, that level of academic ability is unlikely to be found in this area. I can imagine some could change the letters to read something like, “I’ll have large fries with that” but I doubt it would go further, and for sure the apostrophe would either not be there or in totally the wrong place.
I called the dishwasher bloke last week too to try and get a leak fixed. He said, stretching his words out like elastic, “Well, I’ll have to order the part.”
“Well could you do that, then?”
“But is it the door seal or the washer,” he pondered.
“Well I don’t know,” I said, “not being a dishwasher repair man myself.”
“Ah, I see,” he said slowly. “So what shall we do?”
I took a deep breath. “Can you come and have a look?”
A sharp intake of breath and a low whistle. “Well, you’re up the mountain, aren’t you? Well, I’ll have to see.”
I’ve tried to get Six enrolled in the local soccer team (I think I’ve mentioned before, rugby league is referred to as footy or football which must surprise the players every time they find the ball in their hands, but there you are).
The woman organising the team (I use the word organise in its losest sense, of course) keeps promising to get back to me once she has spoken to all of the teams. But the registration date has now been and gone.
I imagine she is saying, “We got this kid, he’s an Aussie but his Dad’s a Pommy bastard. That means he’ll try and organise things” (She would string the word ‘organise’ out for about a foot and a half). “Now, do we want that?”

It’s been really cold here the last two days, though you’ll laugh when I tell you it’s 15C in the day and about 2C at night, and it’s sunny.
Yes, I know it looks like I’ve gone all lily-livered and years ago I’d have slipped on a t-shirt to go out in minus 5C and play with snow, but the wind chill here is very nasty.
If you look at a map you’ll see the south pole is not a whole long way away and when we get a southerly it brings the smell of polar bears with it (musty they are, let me tell you...).
Teachers at Six’s school were walking around yesterday with about five layers on, which frankly is a bit of overkill, but still it is cool.
An hour away in Lithgow (regular readers with a memory will recall we went there to Ironfest and nearly froze to death) it snowed yesterday and also in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains which is also just an hour’s drive.
I don’t think we’ll get snow here but when I put the rubbish bins out last night the clear air, full moon and smell of woodsmoke reminded me a lot of England on a cold winter’s night, only there were no yobs returning drunk from the local pub and kicking my front gate in. Oh, how I miss it!
Right, off to chop some more wood. 

I just got these from a good friend in Melbourne (currently swine flu capital of Australia, but of course I’m reading nothing into that). You might have seen some of them before but there’s some excellent ones here...

Economic Models Explained By Cows

SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows. You give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows. The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM
You have 2 cows. The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM
You have 2 cows. The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows. The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away...

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons

AMERICAN CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to our listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public then buys your bull.

THE ANDERSEN MODEL...
You have two cows. You shred them.

FRENCH CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

JAPANESE CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'Cowkimon' and market it worldwide.

GERMAN CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves....

ITALIAN CAPITALISM
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You decide to have lunch.

RUSSIAN CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

SWISS CAPITALISM
You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you. You charge the owners for storing them.

CHINESE CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity. You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

INDIAN CAPITALISM
You have two cows. You worship them.

BRITISH CAPITALISM
You have two cows. Both are mad....

IRAQI CAPITALISM
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them you have none. No-one believes you. They bomb the **** out of you and invade your country. You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a Democracy....

NEW ZEALAND CAPITALISM
You have two cows. The one on the left looks very attractive.

AUSTRALIAN CAPITALISM
You have two cows. Business seems pretty good. You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

The fire is still warm. Embers whirl when I open its door.
Schoolgirls, laughing, appear out of the fog like drunken soldiers. One has a short skirt, bare midriff; a thick woollen scarf keeps her neck warm. The school bus is metal; creaking, groaning, engine roaring, climbing the mountain like an animal. The girls get on, a boy kicks a football through the door, jumps in after it and is swallowed with a hiss.
Six appears by my side, quiet as the mist. “Dad, when can I get the school bus?” he whispers. I look at him in his pyjamas, bear in one hand a Jedi warship he built in the other and I laugh because I'm glad to see him again and I say, “do you want toast or crumpets with your hot chocolate?”