A question of taste.

 It’s a funny thing, this home ownership. Depending on how you look at it, it can be a source of great pride and joy or a total guilt trip. Renting is so free of worries – you don’t have to paint, even though you might want to, you can’t renovate, even if you’d like to. Ultimately, it’s not your place to fix, you’re only borrowing it. But when it’s your own place…changing one thing can trigger a chain reaction which leads to a complete renovation.

 There’s nothing which makes the difference between the sexes more apparent than talking about what should be done to improve the house. We women think in practical terms such as a ‘nice’ bathroom and a ‘decent’ kitchen. A man tends to concentrate more on the ‘finer’ (so they think!) things in life: a home cinema, stereo speakers in every room and a three-phase power in the shed just in case he needs to do an industrial lathe. Agreeing about what needs doing to a house is something that’s never going to happen and you might as well accept it. Let’s take a simple example.

 From what I’ve seen in my own home, and amongst my married friends, most men don’t really care what’s in front of a window frame as long as there’s glass in it. Tell them blinds and they think venetians. Ok, she says, get some quotes for some blinds; the sun coming through the kitchen window is so hot she can’t do the washing up in the mornings. He thinks, better do it, or he may end up doing the washing up himself.

 The blind man arrives. I’ll rephrase that: the man selling blinds arrives and asks him what kind of blinds he was thinking about. He wasn’t thinking about blinds at all – are there different types? Oh yes, says the blind man (the man selling…you know). Venetians? The blind man then goes on to reveal that there are different widths of slat and different colours. He is amazed; who would have known? He makes executive decisions. Gloss, cream, 25-millimetre slats; she is going to be so happy with him when she gets home. What about the patio doors? The blind man says verticals; he sees the sense in that and makes more decisions on colour and fabric. She’ll probably give him a cuddle for being this smart.

 She comes home. He says, ‘Venetians.’ She says they can’t have venetians in the kitchen – too much steam and grease, they’ll get discoloured in no time. Ahh, but they’re gloss-finished, he points out. She’s already onto the next problem. She hates verticals. He’s all out of excuses. ‘But they’re cheap,’ he says, hoping that will bring her round. Too late, he obviously doesn’t ever listen to her; she doesn’t know why she bothers. He is frustrated and goes off to play on his Playstation.

 Sound familiar? And that was just the margin of error possible on blinds for three windows. Imagine how far apart you can get on a whole extension. Men are broad-brush merchants; they think about the big picture, we women are into detail, such as where to hang the little picture. A man can never ask too many stupid questions when he’s trying to understand what his partner wants. She will say the word ‘dishwasher’ and know exactly what she means. She’ll have in her mind the colour, the brand, where it should go in the kitchen and the type of powder she’ll use. He’ll think, does she mean like a machine or have we got to pay someone to come in and wash up? Even roof insulation can turn into a major debate. He finds out there are different types and get quotes, but she wants to know what the difference between wool, polyester and fibreglass. He says it’s obvious; you wouldn’t wear a fibreglass sweater, would you?

 And the differences don’t stop inside the house. There’s the garden. You think you know someone until you start to garden with them. Guys think shed, garage, a few shrubs, some grass to mow, maybe a place to put an old car to do up. We girls think a herb garden and veggie patch, place to grow flowers for cutting, roses, stone edging, no straight lines, nice and informal.

 Whatever you’re about to embark on around the house, remember that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, and dishwashers are from the planet Zanussi.

A big-sized problem.

 Have you noticed that we are now totally dependant on something which barely existed a generation ago? No woman’s handbag is complete without some. All good hotel rooms have a box full of them. There could well be one in your pocket right now. I’m talking about paper tissues. Family-sized, big-sized, handy-sized, we just can’t get enough of them. Yet not that long ago, we got by without them; instead we had that disgusting patch of cotton called a handkerchief.

 I’m not advocating the return of the hanky. A less desirable piece of fabric is hard to imagine, particularly after it’s been put to its intended use. Those of you who can remember them will recall a couple of things. You got them as presents, usually with somebody else’s initials embroidered on them; and it was considered ladylike to have one tucked up the sleeve of your blouse.

 The weirdest thing about the old hanky was the amount of uses it had. You could tie your money up in it. If you were a Pommy at the beach you could put a knot in each corner and use it as a hat. You could tie it around your neck and pretend to be a cowboy or cowgirl.

 There were the evil uses too. Every child dreaded the moment mum spotted an ice-cream trail on your face, which had to be removed by her spitting on a hanky and rubbing your face with it. For some reason this had to be done in public, with many accompanying tuts of disapproval.

 The tissue put an end to all of that. They’re more hygienic, they’re disposable, they don’t need washing…but there’s the rub. I think the tissue resents the fact that it’s disposable. Anyone who has left one in a pocket and then included it in a load of washing knows what I mean. A couple of ply of gossamer-thin paper only big enough for one feminine nose-blow can disintegrate into enough fragments to ruin a family’s washing for weeks.

 In fact, a sure-fire way to sabotage a teenager’s social life would be to let him or her rock off to a favourite nightclub, only for the ultraviolet lights to reveal little bits of white tissue stuck all over that cool black shirt or dress. It’s hard to look attractive when you resemble nothing so much as a Dalmatian in negative.

 Any discarded tissue which isn’t safely stowed in a bin will certainly come back to haunt you. My dad found that out the hard way a few weeks ago while mowing the lawn. You drop one as you’re lawnmowing and foolishly think the mower will sweep it into the grass-catcher. Wrong. It spreads itself all over the lawn and has to be picked up by hand. If you try to go over it with the mower again, it spreads to an even bigger area in even smaller pieces.  I wonder how many forests are cut down specifically to make tissues. Maybe there are plantations of special tissue trees; they’d be really brittle, thin, wispy trees which go all floppy and disintegrate when it rains.

 Tissues really aren’t terribly practical. There hasn’t been a tissue made which can withstand two hard snorts from a grown man’s nostrils. The big-sized tissue is just a ploy to make you think you’re getting something tougher, more practical. All big-sized means is that the tissues are big enough for us to unfold with our stubby fingers. (Can you tell I don’t like my large stubby fingers?)

 You can’t possibly start a box of tissues without tearing the first one into several pieces or dragging a clump of ten out of the top in one go. Whereas the old hanky could be re-used many times a day (disgusting as it may seem nowadays), the tissue can be used once, maybe twice, tops. Tissues are a triumph in marketing over matter. They’re an inferior product. You can’t wet one and clean your kid’s face with it – all you do is rub little bits of paper over their skin.

 Tissues come in colours, in boxes of countless different designs. This is presumably intended to help the boxes blend into different décors. In fact, all the artists succeed in doing is making them look like tissue boxes. At least this provides an outlet for all you craft lovers to think up forms of disguise.

 Yet there is a tissue that can’t be beaten. We first saw it in its lemon-scented genius as the refresher towel at KFC. It cleans the grease off your hands like magic; it’s wet, yet it doesn’t fall apart. Now widely available in travel-packs and cylinders to keep them moist, no picnic or day out is complete without them, no mother would leave home without them.

 So from the useless dry tissue has evolved the practical wet one. Let’s hope that even now, paper scientists are working on a paper tissue into which you can blow your nose with absolute confidence. Then we can leave all those cold, wet noses to the dogs.

The offside rule is proof men really are stupid (online blog).

 SOCCER'S offside rule I am not so sure about. But the stupidity of man - that is something I am certain of. The latest two dopes to chisel their name on to this particular stone are British soccer commentators Richard Keys and Andy Gray. Calling a game over the weekend, they were taped off-air talking about linesman Sian Massey, who happens to have committed the greatest sin in men's sport, which is that she was born female.
What Ms Massey can do about this is uncertain, but it appears she is unwilling to take the necessary steps. Bully for her.
 So to the telecast on Sky Sports, and Keys can be heard saying: "Somebody had better get down there and explain offside to her." "Yeah I know," Gray replies. "Can you believe that? A female linesman. That's exactly what I'm saying, women don't know the offside rule."
Keys: "Course they don't. I can guarantee you there will be a big one today." And there was. Fernando Torres fired home one of his two goals and it looked like he was well offside. The crowd howled as Ms Massey allowed the goal.
 Yet replays showed she was correct, and Gray even acknowledged her call on air. Massey, in the malest of domains, had had the greatest revenge possible. Now, I don't want to turn this into yet another soccer bash-up, but who can help himself? The measure of any true soccer fan is their understanding of the offside rule. And it seems, according to these soccer fooligans, that only males can possibly understand this. It all gets a little tiring.
 Soccer people pride themselves on this higher understanding that the rest of us don't seem to get. Never mind the other mistakes that riddled the World Cup and its qualifiers.
Frank Lampard's goal, anyone? Thierry Henry's handball?
 Mistakes such as these are part of any game, and there's nothing wrong with that - so why the arrogance about the offside rule? A woman in a man's game, what would they know about the offside rule? There are plenty of things women do know, like why men are so stupid.
 In last year's World Cup opener Mexico lined up a corner and, as the ball curled in, South African goalie Itumeleng Khune came out to contest the ball, leaving defender Steven Pienaar behind on the goal line. Carlos Vela headed one past him into the net.
The far linesman called it offside. It looked as wrong as wrong could be. Didn't the linesman see Pienaar? On replay, ESPN commentator Efan Ekoku said: "How can he be offside, there's a defender clearly on the line." Ah, but we men are idiots.
 Under FIFA rules, a player is considered offside if he is "nearer to his opponents' goal line than both the ball and the second-last opponent".
Second-last. Not even many men know that, and the Vela non-goal was argued in bars across the country. And by men, at least half of whom didn't know squat. Most people - even the men - overlook the goalie.
 But this isn't really about the offside rule. It's about the stupidity of man, over which there is no argument.

Tongs and thongs make Australia Day! (Online blog)

 Ah, Australia Day (Wednesday the 26^th of January.) Doesn’t it make you feel all warm and gooey inside? It’s one of my favourite days of the year. In the week leading up, my chest is puffed out that little bit further (actually that could be the push-up bra), there’s a purposeful stride in my step, and I begin to crave Vegemite on toast for the first time in a long time. In honour of this great day, I’ve compiled a list of the top five things that make us “Australian”:

Thongs:

Don’t ask for them in the US unless you want g-strings. Elsewhere known as jandals or flip-flops, these unattractive pieces of rubber are as Australian as Vegemite. But they’re bad for you, leading to splaying of the sole, also known as duck feet in my family.

Reckon:

I have a friend who refuses to “reckon”. Don’t worry – his day of reckoning will surely come. I love a good, old-fashioned reckoning. The use of the word need not be followed by anything that resembles fact, or even strong belief. You just have to “reckon”, and people think “Yep, that sounds fair dinkum to me”.

Oyster Bay:

That’s right; you can pick a true Aussie by the number of bottles of NZ sauvignon Blanc in his fridge. It remains our top-selling wine. Choice, bro’. I will revisit this list in a year’s time and, hopefully by then, it will be replaced by a Hunter Valley chardonnay.

Danger:

Where else in the world do people confront danger on a daily basis? Whether it’s sharks in our jewelled seas or snakes on our sweeping plains, we’ve got enough deadly animals to poke a stick at. (Best not to, of course.) Then there are the crocs in our waterways, spiders lurking under logs and those infernal drop bears. (Actually they don’t exist. But it’s fun to tell tourists about these huge koala bears that drop from trees and scare the pants off you.)

Mates:

A lot of women don’t “do” mate. They reckon it’s blokey. Impersonal. I use it all the time, even when I know the person’s name. It confers an instant camaraderie, a kinship. An understanding that we’re all in this together. Technically, it means “one of a wedded pair”, if you look into its etymology, but that doesn’t matter. Don’t you love, when you come home from overseas, hearing the first “G’Day mate?” It’s music to the ears!

 So have a ripper Oz Day, Cobber. Sing the national anthem loud and proud – even if you only know the first verse. Wear one of those silly cork hats, and wave the flag with pride. Throw a snag on the barbie and burn some slabs of dead cow. Because I am, you are, we are Australian.

HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY EVERYONE!!

True brew.

 There’s one thing without which no home is complete. A roof, I hear you shout. Certainly, in a purely physical sense the roof is very important, but I’m talking about something that turns a house into a home. Television! Close, but no free cable subscription. Kids! Desirable but not essential. It’s coffee.

 This tasty little bean is increasingly making our world go round. If you live in one of the inner suburbs which are currently being bought up and renovated by young couples, you will be very familiar with coffee. In fact, the only businesses in the main street of these up-and-coming areas are coffee shops and picture framers – two career options they didn’t tell us about when we were at school.

 Coffee is much more than a drink these days. No barbie is finished until you’ve had one. Some of us can’t wake up without one. People actually meet only ‘to have coffee’. (The pretence is that it’s to have a conversation too, but in most cases it’s just to get close to a skilled coffee professional and his or her gleaming, hissing, espresso machine.)

 If it’s so good, you ask, then why is it called ‘The Devil’s Brew’? Please, that was centuries ago. People who called it that thought potpourri was a cure for the bubonic plague! I’m not denying it’s a stimulant, but if you don’t have blood pressure-problems and only read the favourable medical research, it’s actually good for you. There’s certainly no denying it has powerful laxative properties.

 I’m sure part of the reason for coffee’s increased popularity is the intimate relationship between coffee and chocolate. The after-dinner mint tastes good with no other beverage – surprisingly, not even peppermint tea. Cafés always serve, at bare minimum, chocolate brownies and usually there’s a mud cake on offer too. The ultimate combination is, of course, the chocolate-coated coffee bean. A bagful of these and your tastebuds have the party of a lifetime. Sure, you won’t sleep for a week, but it’s worth it.

 And your house sells more easily with coffee. Admit it; a home looks better during an inspection if the smell of fresh coffee is wafting through the rooms. Like magic, it makes you see things through rose-coloured glasses. It’s like alcohol only you’re safe to drive. So if you’re selling a house, get yourself a really good Lavazza bubbling in the percolator – the way the market has been, it could earn you a few extra thousand. The buyer could well be one of those picture framers.

 Up to about 15 years ago, most of us contented ourselves with the instant, freeze-dried variety of coffee. In fact, a lot of us were tea drinkers. But today there’s a lot less jiggling and a lot more plunging going on. I reckon that plungers are so popular because they look stylish; the glass pot with the chrome or gold holder. Let’s face it; it’s the same way you make a pot of tea but with a really great strainer.

 Serious caffeine addicts own a mini-espresso machine. They also dress entirely in black, live in café suburbs and ragroll their walls. They’re extremists – don’t befriend one unless you like manic phone calls at three in the morning to help with a crossword clue.

 My friends tend to be dyed-in-the-wool drip-filter types. They say there’s just something about it. It takes skill. If you don’t get the filter paper absolutely right in the filter, it can fold over and cause a disaster. The water doesn’t drip into the coffee; it fills up the filter, washes coffee from the paper and blocks the hole in the bottom. You end up with a filter full of coffee-grounds soup. Only the most desperate would attempt to drink it by filtering it through a sieve.

 Last and certainly not least, there’s the percolator – very Italian, very trendy and part of a whole set of equipment. Did you know that there’s a special little saucepan for reheating the coffee once it’s cold? That’s because leaving a percolator on the heat once it’s perked isn’t a very good idea unless you want a hole in the kitchen ceiling and your percolator showing up on airport radar screens. A friend of mine (new to the whole percolator scene) recently filled her percolator with coffee and left it on the hot plate. After a while, a very strong smell of burnt coffee was all through the house. Yes, she’d forgotten to add water. The place still smelled a week later, and not in a good way.

 That’s coffee for you. Nobody said it was going to be easy. But you know what they say – can’t sleep with it, can’t stay awake without it.

Bread: the rise and fall.

 Recently I was out for dinner with my family and some family friends celebrating my mother’s birthday and the bread basket duly arrived. It was full of lovely thick slices of sourdough – some studded with olives, others with caramelised garlic. Next to it was a generous slab of butter and a bowl of olive oil.

 But here’s the thing – no one touched it. Even the men. Like me, my companions were all famished, but that harmless wicker basket may as well have been a nuclear reactor, such was the contempt and suspicion that greeted it. When did bread get such a bad rap?

 Probably when the Western world decided that carbohydrates – far from being the life source of civilisation – are, in fact, the devil dusted with flour. Remember when breaking bread was synonymous with love? Now it’s the evil obstacle between us and our skinny jeans; the modern equivalent of Eve’s forbidden apple. But where the apple simply triggered sin, bread is guilty of far worse – apparently it makes us fat.

 I’m fed up with all this high-protein, carb-free nonsense, which is doubtless running rampant this month, after the festive excess. (Poor bakers, they must hate January.) Sympathies if you’re gluten intolerant, but I love bread, which is why I’m campaigning for its return to our pantries and dinner tables.

 Bread (and the occasional bit of jewellery) has marked some of the most memorable moments of my life. There was the time one winter in Italy back in 1992 when my family were stuck on the train going down to Bari to visit family over the Christmas holidays. Because of the shitty cold weather, and the amount of snow that had fallen while travelling, the train was stopped in the middle of nowhere for 18 hours until the weather improved. So, the first thing I was able to get my hands on when we finally got to Bari, was a huge slice of freshly baked bread that my uncle had bought on the way to the train station to pick us up. The smell of fresh bread and taking a big bite out of it just made the whole miserable trip down there all worth it.

 There were also the times in summer where I would walk to the bakery each day early in the morning for a hand-kneaded loaf. It would be slathered in honey for breakfast or laden with tomatoes and salt in the late afternoon, that simple country bread fuelled a love affair that, fingers crossed, will last a lifetime. Even as you read this, I’ll be sinking my teeth into a sausage sandwich, a ritual essential to Sunday morning nippers.

 It’s almost sacrilegious, the way we’ve demoted bread from the staff of life to the stuff of scorn; how our ability to resist it somehow makes us cleaner and lighter. Now, I’m not advocating munching your way through a half loaf of Wonder White sandwiched together with Nutella. But let’s celebrate bread and honour the coming together of grain and water that’s nourished us since Neolithic times.

 Yes, it’s the post-Christmas purge and we’re all steaming chicken breasts and arranging lettuce leaves. But once that’s over, as inevitably it will be, try this – it’s fabulous. Grab a basic bread recipe. Chuck some red grapes, rosemary sprigs, walnuts, salt and a teaspoon or two of sugar into a bowl. Make your dough, push half the grape mixture into the middle, and squash the remaining half on top. Bake until....well, it looks like a loaf of bread. If that’s too difficult, just embrace the old Spanish proverb: “If there’s no bread, cakes are very good.”

The udder delight of morning milk.

 A lot of time and money is spent on finding out what makes us happy. University researchers are hunched over questionnaires, crunching numbers to create a formula for that most elusive emotion. (Which would make the aforementioned researchers most unhappy.) So I woke up this morning and decided to list the simple things that make me smile:

Finding milk in the fridge for breakfast:

There appears to be an unusual form of evaporation in our house, targeting milk instead of water. It’s the same with toilet paper. Perhaps our university friends could look into that.

The first bittersweet sip of coffee:

Accompanied by a witty remark from a friendly barista, there’s no better start to the morning.

The honesty of a child:

“Why is your bum so wobbly?” asks a four year old girl at the centre where I work.

Travelling to a new place, whether it’s just around the corner or on the other side of the world:

A few weeks ago I found a spot at Manly Beach where the little penguins waddle up the beach at sunset.

Cooking the perfect roast chook:

It’s deeply satisfying when you cut into flesh that’s moist, but not too pink.

Doing something – anything for charity:

Giving makes you feel good. Better than getting.

Hearing a song that reminds you of that first blush of youth:

Today on the radio it was Ian Dury & The Blockhead’s Reasons To Be Cheerful. Some of his reasons are similar – porridge, wine, and equal rights. What are the simple things that make you happy?

After the beep.

 A lot of people talk about the pressures of modern life. They are forever leaving messages on answering machines, asking you to get back to them on their mobiles so they can tell you just how busy they are. When you do, you get their voice-mail because they’re too busy to take your call and have switched off the phone.

 Life was no easier for our parents; in fact it was probably harder. Yet, I’m sure they were less afflicted by pressure simply because they only had one phone. Even if you have only one phone, I believe you have to use it wisely. If not, it will stop being a servant and turn you into a slave. That is, if you’re not one already. Are you screening your call right now? Is that a mobile in your pocket or are you just looking for your keys?

 Answering machines are essential if you’re running a business. But people get fed up with the same old message – particularly if it’s funny. You can only laugh at the same joke twice (maybe three times if it’s Robin Williams). Start with a good funny message and you’ve made a rod for your own back. People will feel free to comment: ‘I liked the last one better’. Or ‘So when are you going to think up a funny message?’ Show any creativity and your friends will throw it back in your face. Your life becomes a treadmill of inventing new witty messages. You have to change them at least twice a month. Ahh, the pressures of modern life.

 I keep my voice-mail and answering machine messages simple. This means nobody has any expectations of it being funny. Meanwhile, people will leave messages that assume my answering machine is a doctor’s surgery. Old, confused people mumble about appointments. Government departments dial the wrong number but still want to contact someone with a completely different name who I know has never lived here. Should I invest in a phone-call to correct their wrong number? Did the little old lady realise her mistake or did she change buses four times to get to an appointment she never made – all with a bad hip?

 Sometimes I see the red light flashing, press ‘Play’ and hear someone yelling in a foreign language. Should I have a multilingual message to avoid confusion? Another pressure of modern life.

 Then there’s ‘Call waiting’. Has there ever been a ruder invention? It’s the whoopee cushion of telecommunications. Imagine it: ‘Hun, you’ve got to help me, my husband’s left me, and he’s taken the kids, the dog, the cat, and the car. What am I going to do?’ ‘Just a minute sweety, I’ve got a call on the other line’. What are you supposed to do while you wait for this person to talk to you – write a country-and-western song? Do helplines have ‘Call waiting’? ‘OK don’t kill yourself quite yet. I just have to take the call on the other line, then I’ll be back to talk you off the window ledge’. ‘Call waiting’ actually rewards somebody for coming second – and makes you feel second-best for coming first.

 Of course, the king, queen, and divorced princess of all phones is the mobile. I can not believe how many people use them for total trivia. The number of mobile users on the beach last year was staggering. I can only imagine the conversations. ‘Yeah, I’ve just got here. I’ve put the towel down. I’m slapping some sunblock on. Now I’m gunna catch some rays. I’ll give you a ring to let you know how the water is.’ Why do you need to tell anyone you’re at the beach? Don’t you go to the beach to get away from the phone, the hassles, and the pressures of modern life? I know I do. The only reason for using a phone on the beach is to annoy someone by telling them that you’re lying in the sun while they’re clearing a blocked drain.

 In reality there’s no need to feel under pressure. Just unplug everything except one telephone. Answer it if you’re in. if you’re not and it’s important, they’ll phone back. It still works for my parents, and they have their health, their friends, a house, a car and eat three good meals a day. What more do you need? Apart from cable television…

Fat of the land.

 For most of us, summer is the time of reckoning. It’s strange how you can convince yourself that you haven’t gained weight until you put on your swimming togs for the first time every summer. They’re your own little fat gauge.

 My neighbourhood seems to be full of gut-busters. Guys and girls gamely strutting along, trying to look as though they’re enjoying the walk. You just know they’d rather be at home with a pie and sauce. It’s the price we have to pay for our lazy western lifestyle. We take the car for even the shortest of journeys these days. We use remote controls, food processors, dishwashers, electric can-openers and all other manner of electrical gizmos which save us time and energy and pile on the centimetres around our stomachs, thighs, and bums.

 Let’s face it, a lot of us drive a car to the office, drive a desk all day, then drive home and slump exhausted into a chair, moaning about what a tough day we’ve had. If both you and your partner work, you may be even so tired with sitting down all day that you phone for a nice fatty pizza because you can’t be bothered cooking. Shame on you. Order a deep-pan Supreme with extra pineapple and bacon, and I’ll be over to help you with it later.

 It’s an easy trap to fall into but take heart; it’s not your fault. We can blame the Americans. First they hit us with their fried chicken and special herbs and spices. Then it was their hamburgers and ‘have a nice day’. Then all-you-can-eat family restaurants: clean, quick and cheap, and we can’t get enough of it. They cash in on our tastebuds’ love of saturated fats and our desire to order in rather than cook. To make this even more tempting, they produce lots of great television and then advertise pizza meal-deals during our favourite shows. This is the thanks we get for winning the war for them.

 So how do we keep in shape with all this temptation? Sadly, it just means willpower. The big causes of weight gain, apart from not walking anywhere near enough, are fats, sugar and alcohol. I’ve found that if you can be tough with yourself and eat fewer biscuits and chips and cut out the grog, the weight will actually go.

 Yes, it’s easier said than done. I don’t think scientists spend enough time thinking about diets. The statistics show that an alarming number of us undertake diets ever year, nearly all reverting immediately afterwards to their old habits. What we need is something to stop the cravings, like smokers have with nicotine patches.

 Why not sugar patches, grog patches, and fat patches? We’re onto something here. It may be a while before science catches up, so experiment. Next time you have a sugar craving, tape a jellybean to your back. That way, if you’re tempted to retrieve the bean and eat it, you’ll think twice. I’m not saying it will stop your craving, but it will give you something else to think about…like will it melt, will it stain and does very cherry flavour work better than the thrill of vanilla?

 Alcohol can be avoided. You simply have to stop being sociable. People can’t insist you have a drink if you’re not there. And the words ‘Drive in’ at the local bottle shop are a suggestion, not a traffic sign. Fat can be avoided. Some avoid it too much but let’s leave Calista Flockhart out of this. Fried foods are a lot easier to avoid in the hotter months. Salad is your friend, salad dressing isn’t. And Cesar Salad isn’t really a salad – it’s just a fancy way to eat bacon and fried bread.

 Of course, the other option is to let it all hang out at the beach this year. There will always be someone there who looks worse in his or her togs than you do. Trouble is, the older you get, the fewer of them there are.

We shall fight them on the benches.

 Humankind is a bit wussy, when you think about it. We’ve put a man on the moon, and we’ve invented all sorts of machines to make our day-to-day lives a lot easier. But really, we’re scared. We’re scared of death, we’re scared of the unknown, but we’re most scared of insects and common-or-garden creepy-crawlies.

 We’re supposedly the dominant species on the planet and we spend a fair bit of our leisure time fighting little creatures no bigger than a fingernail. Take the ant. It has many characteristics we should admire. It has an incredible strength-to-size ratio, brilliant communications and a work ethic which would put most of us to shame. So do we admire them? Do we live in harmony with this remarkable little creature? Not likely. We dust them, pour scalding water on them, spray them, do anything to stop them coming into our homes.

 Then there’s the spider. Now, we do have a few poisonous spiders I admit. But for the most part, they’re just a vital part of the food chain, keeping flies and other insects in their places. Maybe it’s their ability to do something that we can’t even do with aerosols which scares us. Just knowing there’s a spider somewhere in the bedroom is enough to make me spend the night on the lounge. My screams from the bathroom usually mean there’s a huntsman trying bravely to climb the sheer walls of the bath. I try not to kill spiders (ok I don’t try too hard) but if there’s a funnel-web I usually introduce it to a close view of the Yellow Pages.

 And the humble fly. Let’s face it, Australia is run by flies. We try to deter them with screens and silly, beaded, coloured blinds in shop doorways. We make them stick to flypapers, we hit them with knock-down sprays, and we slather ourselves in insect repellent. Someone, somewhere, once hung corks off his hat to deter them. Unfortunately, this was photographed by a travel writer and now most of the world thinks we all wear them all the time. Of course, urban Aussies, happy under our clouds of pollution and car fumes, can keep flies in check. But once you get out in that fresh country air, flies rule. Have as many corks hanging off you as you like, a blowie’s still going to fly into your mouth as you eat your food.

 Don’t forget slugs and snails. They slide, they dare to eat our flowers and vegies; they must be destroyed with pellets or the kinder, more Aussie solution, in a slug pub – funny how letting them drink themselves to death on free beer seems a kind way to kill, isn’t it? Plus it’s a waste of good beer!

 Mosquitoes are a menace too. They are so small, so devious and can carry nasty viruses. So we try our best to put them off. More insect repellent on our exposed bits. And we burn those little scented coils to keep them away – of course; we only have the manufacturer’s word for this. If you weren’t bitten at least once, you wouldn’t bother to buy anymore coils, would you? You can take direct action too – the mozzie zapper. But don’t buy one yourself or you’ll have every mozzie in the street at your back door. No, buy one and give it to your neighbour. Let them have your mozzies and have to listen to that sickening “bbzzzttt” every time a moth hits the electric mesh which, let’s face it, is what moths do.

 Now there’s another one, moths. They eat our clothes so we make our clothes stink to high heaven to discourage them. Their larvae eat valuable Persian rugs – I am ever-vigilant with the camphor.

 However, we save most of our fear and loathing for the cockroach. It’s really just a beetle. Plenty of insects are dirtier, more dangerous, more invasive. Fleas are harder to get rid of and they bite you; dust mites can be a far greater health risk and there are hundreds of them feeding on your skin while you sleep each night. But we don’t seem to mind them compared with the loathsome roach. Maybe it’s the way they scuttle. Or the way they sit, antennae twitching, in your fruit bowl. It could be the old scientist’s tale that in the event of a nuclear holocaust cockroaches will become the dominant species.

 So this unfortunate-looking insect feels the full weight of humankind’s wrath. Surface sprays and baits are now improved so that one infected cockroach kills all his mates. We even bomb our own kitchens to get rid of them. It’s meant to kill all adult roaches and make the eggs infertile. Clever? No. We’ve just solved all their over-crowding problems for them in one stroke.

Chip off the old block.

 Technology is a wonderful thing if it’s used wisely. If you’ve read ‘After the beep’, you’ll know I’m a tad sceptical about whether the telephone is such a crash-hot invention, but there’s no doubting the computer – it’s great. And if you don’t believe me, ask one of the richest men in the world, Bill Gates.

 How many women out there have been persuaded that the family needs to buy a computer to do the accounts and to help the kids with their school work? And how many found out it was just an excuse for the old man and the kids to play video games every waking hour? It may be a lot quicker and cheaper playing a round of golf at home on the computer, but I somehow don’t think it’s doing such great things for your cardio-vascular system. Although anything that saves any man from wearing shorts and long socks is a plus in my book!

 It’s amazing how quickly you pick up the computer jargon about RAM, memory, speed and the like. But more amazing is how quickly your sate-of-the-art PC is outdated. It used to be possible to stay fairly current for about four years. Not any more. I’ve had this machine for about two years and already it’s possible to buy one twice as fast and with double the memory for nearly the same price. That’s an incredible increase in the rate of improvement. It’s like going from the first car, with the man walking in front waving a flag, to the latest Ferrari, in four years.

 If you’re the materialistic type, it makes keeping up with the Joneses a nightmare. Not only do you still need the new car every couple of years, you’ll have to replace the family computer every year, then every six months, every month, week, and so on. If this rate of progress continues, you’ll have that day’s computer delivered to your doorstep with the newspaper. You may think I’m exaggerating and that’s because I am.

 What I find really strange is that a computer is somehow a more acceptable décor item than a television set. Over the years, furniture companies have spent millions developing furniture to make a TV set disappear into a cocktail cabinet or bookcase. But go into many living-rooms today and the PC sits on a table or one of those awful-looking computer desks, completely out of keeping with the rest of the furniture. Nobody seems to care, least of all the pale-faced teenager staring into the screen zapping people into a million blood-spattered pieces while Star Wars-style sound effects make the six o’clock news seem as if it’s live from a war zone.

 But new computers certainly come with all the bells and whistles. And games, do they have games! What used to be a box, a screen and a keyboard now has satellite navigation, internal fax/modem, etc etc.  And your new computer can be a frightening thing, particularly with those powerful speakers. Whenever a warning window comes up, the sound that goes with it is enough to make your heart skip a beat. But soon you get so blasé and ignore anything that doesn’t say, ‘Move away from the screen, it’s about to blow!’

 The only other downside of owning a computer is that there’s no longer any excuse to send a letter with spelling mistakes, unless you forget to make sure you’ve set up the spell-check for Australian English and not American English. (For some reason Americans use a lot more zeds. Or to be precise, they use a lot more zees.) You can simply set up your word-processing program to correct your most common spelling mistakes automatically, check your spelling and grammar as you go, and the words practically write themselves. And the best bit of all is that it even counts the words, which is very handy indeed when you’ve got to fit it all onto.......

How to enjoy the perfect summer’s day.

 It’s summer here in Australia. Summer is not the time of year to be overdoing it. If you do too much, you sweat, dehydrate and are well on the way to heat exhaustion. Summer is nature’s way of telling us to slow down. Which is strange, because everything else that lives seems to speed up.

 I wonder why we don’t grow seasonally, like plants. It would make growing up so much easier. You’d buy winter clothes for your kids and they’d fit perfectly all winter long. Then, when they’re back into shorts for summer, they could grow as much as they like – no need to let down trouser legs or skirt hems. Parents would save a fortune on clothes. If your children were getting too tall, you could make them spend summer in the shade. Likewise, a short winter break up north would soon add a couple of centimetres.

 I wonder why we don’t grow more hair in winter and less in summer like most animals. Think of the savings in haircuts. I digress. I’m here with tips on how to have the perfect summer’s day. You will need:

Weather:

Cloudless blue skies, a light breeze, a touch of wood smoke from a neighbour’s BBQ, and high fire danger.

Sunblock:

The days of thinking a tan means sun protection went out with the electric typewriter and the Sex Pistols. Anyone wearing what used to be called a healthy glowing tan is likely to be an English tourist. Soon, instead of Bronzed Aussies we will be known as Alabaster Aussies.

A hat:

Very important for the follicly challenged male and the teenager with a buzz cut. It should ideally have a broad brim and SP factor of 15 or more. But try making teenagers wear their baseball caps the right way around. They’d rather squint into the sun with their hands shading their eyes. Stops them burning the backs of their necks, I suppose. The older you are, the better the hat you can wear and just not care.

A shirt:

Linen is cool, as long you’re not the one having to hand wash it (not tumble it, not spin it) and dry it flat in the shade. This is a washing instruction which makes no sense whatsoever; the only place I know which is flat and in the shade is the kitchen floor.

Shorts:

This garment was so called because the legs are short. Not any more. Now that it’s a fashion accessory, the defining thing about a modern pair of shorts is that it is anything but short. Some still allow a flash of kneecap, but most teenagers wouldn’t be seen dead in shorts which end any higher than mid shin – the kneecap is about where the baggy crotch comes to. The only place any man can still wear his short shorts without being laughed at is playing Aussie Rules or in his back yard.

Sunglasses:

Very important if you’re to avoid cataracts in later life. Wear silly little John Lennon ones at your peril. The sun gets all around the frames and you end up squinting. I prefer my sunglasses to look like a pilot’s or a federal agent’s glasses. The Australian Cancer Council’s wraparound glasses are very good if you really want your kids to giggle and do Roy Orbison impressions all summer.

A deaf ear:

Not really deaf, just selective. You do want to hear the sounds of an Aussie summer: cicadas, crickets, kookaburras, parrots, cockatoos. You don’t want to hear whingeing kids, barking dogs, lawnmowers and chainsaws. Best stick in the earphones and listen to some music.

 I’d give you some more tips, but frankly it’s a perfect day outside and this is too much like work.

Google rules in world of sex and silliness (online blog).

 AT THIS time of year, the media is full of articles and lists that trawl back through the last 12 months, reminding us of the newsworthy events that shaped our recent annus mirabilis.
 We get to relive the tragedy, sorrow, scandal and hilarity that made up our current affairs existence between Christmases.Usually these lists are conveyed with sombre gravitas, concentrating on the world-changing significance of events - what they will mean for humankind in the realms of politics, sport, environment, technology and entertainment.
 It gets interesting, though, when you compare these lists to summaries of what people have been typing into internet search engines during the year.You may have worked your whole life to attain fame, skills or social standing, studied or practised or slogged away for your deserved slice of history, but when it comes down to it, you'll be remembered and Google-searched for just one thing. And honey, it ain't the thing you want. Take, for example:
Julian Assange
THE internet activist founded WikiLeaks, a site that exposes previously secret information of political and social import.
He's seen by some as a dangerous threat to security and international relations but by others as a visionary and a crusader for free speech.
Assange worked as a computer programmer, journalist and hacker before deciding he could affect potential change in what he regarded as unjust regimes by leaking private information.
What he will be Googled for: Alleged naughty acts with Swedish ladies.
Tiger Woods
A PRODIGIOUS golfer of unprecedented talent, skill and success, Woods has, for all intents and purposes, rewritten the story of golf.
Major tournaments throughout his career became simply a matter of who would come second, and international companies clamoured for endorsement opportunities.
What he will be remembered for: Cheating on his wife. A lot. And perhaps for jokes containing the word "wood".
The Chilean mine disaster
IN AUGUST, an accident in a mine in Copiapo, Chile, left 33 miners trapped underground for more than two months.
The world watched, transfixed, in October as every single miner emerged alive, ready to label the rescue as either a triumph of human skill and persistence or a miracle, depending on their beliefs.
As each previously-trapped individual was squirted out of the right end of the rescue tube, we cried real tears and marvelled at their stamina.
What it will be remembered for: Miner Yonni Barrios, whose wife and mistress waited for him to emerge. Admittedly, there may also be some Google searches by those curious about how the miners went to the toilet for 69 days but it's mostly Yonni's show.
Prince William
THE late Princess Diana's most crumpet-esque son, William has been in the public eye since foetus-hood.
We've watched him complete his education, wear dashing military uniforms, shake hands with countless international dignitaries and do good work for an impressive number of causes and charities.
In November, after seven years of courtship, William finally proposed to girlfriend Kate Middleton, causing a heart-fluttering frenzy of media attention and pearl-clutching.
What we're most concerned about: His bald spot.
Julia Gillard
GILLARD has a long stream of achievements, from a law career to an early interest in politics that led her to become deputy prime minister in 2007.
In June last year, Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as the party leader and Prime Minister, an act which some saw as a timely and significant change of leadership, and some saw as a good old traditional schoolyard back-stabbing.
She led the ALP to the narrowest of tentative victories in September after some almost interminably long speeches by at least one independent. She is known for being godless, childless, and weddingless.
What we actually talk about: Her boyfriend is an ex-hairdresser. How does her hair look today?
Michael Clarke
"PUP" debuted as a cricketer for the NSW team when he was still, well, a pup. His massive potential saw him make his Australian team debut in 2003, his Test debut in 2004, and eventually his debut as captain in the Fifth Test of the 2010/11 Ashes series. Dotting the scoreboard with centuries throughout his career and winning the Alan Border Medal in 2005, it's been firmly established that Clarke can bat, bowl and be a team leader.
What we really want to know: If his ex-fiancee Lara Bingle really threw her engagement ring in the crapper.
Oprah Winfrey
AUSTRALIA was besieged by Oprah Fever and its associated audience members, as the talk show host took a whistle-stop tour Down Under.
Getting her start in media at the age of 19, Winfrey has since managed to feature prominently in lists headed by words like "richest", "highest-rating", "award-winning" and "most influential".
From a background of childhood hardship, she clawed her way to supremacy with her determination and business nous. She has scored exclusive interviews with reclusive interviewees, reached an unprecedented number of viewers, and amassed a mind-boggling fortune that she shares with people who need it.
She's boosted more careers and book sales than you've had hot dinners, and has dabbled in radio, acting, writing and magazine publishing.
What we actually seem to be interested in: What she's eating, what the deal is with her bestie Gayle King, and Tom Cruise's shoe-prints on her couch.
Sarah Murdoch
SARAH Murdoch, statuesque beauty and wearer of familiarly branded smalls, easily thumbs her nose in the face of the dumb model stereotype.
Articulate, personable and endearing, she's been a Bonds girl, a fill-in host for the Today show, a figurehead for charities, television host and producer, and producer of heirs.
Her standards are as high as her cheekbones, she is the patron (saint) of the National Breast Cancer Foundation, involving herself tirelessly with fundraising and awareness.
What she'll be remembered for: Mistakenly announcing the wrong winner during the Australia's Next Top Model finale last year.
Justin Bieber
SINGING brat who badly needs a haircut.
What he'll be remembered for: Nothing. Relax. There'll be another one of him along in a minute.

Take the fear out of New Year.

 A whole New Year stretching out in front of you? I can sum it up in one word: potential. This could be the year to achieve all your goals on the home front. But don’t make resolutions; you’ll only break them. What you need is a plan.

 You should plan to start small and work up. After all, you’ve got all year. So, seeing that it’s hot here in Australia now and you don’t want to get tired so soon after Christmas, make a list. Three columns should be enough: ‘Can do in a day’, ‘Can do in a weekend’, ‘Can do in my dreams’. ‘Can do in a day’ jobs are easy things: for instance, making a list. You can do that in a day, have a drink and congratulate yourself on a great start to the New Year. Now, a list is a very personal thing. You don’t have to show it to anybody else, but you’ll now you’re working to a plan, which will give you a real sense of purpose. So when you’re on the sun-lounge, pen and paper at the ready and your partner asks, ‘What about all this work you said you were going to do?’ You can respond with a mysterious, ‘I’m doing it now’.

 ‘Can do in a day’ jobs are mostly routine maintenance: lawn cutting, shrub pruning, weed pulling, door shaving – and any other problem areas you can think of. The trick with this list is to make sure the job takes a day at the absolute outside. Allow time for a stretch, plenty of refreshment breaks and time to watch TV.

 ‘Can do in a weekend’ are the larger projects. The room-painting, patio-paving sorts of jobs. Those who are gluttons for renovations will willingly take on such a project every weekend, with a couple of ‘Can do in a day’ jobs on week nights as well. However, if your home is in reasonable condition – after the kids have gone to bed and the washing up is done – you don’t need to bust a gutter. One weekend project a year may be enough. One a month and you could, say, paint every room in your house this year...by spring. That would still leave three free weekends a month to visit friends and be overly sympathetic about lack of progress with their place.

 So what about the ‘Can do in my dreams’ list? What ever you put in here should be totally unattainable. Building a large-scale model of the Opera House, cooking the world’s largest lamington, creating the weed-free lawn – things that really would take time and skill far greater than mere mortals could hope for.

 But why, I hear you ask, why must our dreams be so grand? Because you can do everything else in a day or a weekend. It’s only a matter of stringing a few ‘Can do in a day’ jobs together with ‘Can do in a weekend’ projects. For example, a brick garage. Forming up for a concrete floor, you can do in a weekend. Concreting the floor you can do the next weekend. Building the walls a bricklayer will string out – literally – for a week. If you’ve got the skills, it would take a weekend, two if it’s big and you get rained off. The roof, if you use timber with aluminium sheeting, a weekend or so. You don’t even have to do it on consecutive weekends. It’s what’s builders call programming, it’s what the rest of us call not biting off more than you can chew. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day...and the Romans didn’t have public holidays and New Year sales to distract them.

 So, your list for the year can be a wish list. Do the ‘Can do in a day’ stuff for a few weeks and you’ll find no task is too scary. And as you stand in your new attic room this time next year, you can gaze out of the window at a weed-free lawn. OK who am I kidding? You’ll have to ask Santa for that one.

All the people I'll never be (online blog entry).

 NO new-year resolutions for me in 2011. After years of thinking of myself as some sort of "renovator's opportunity" DIY project and inevitably finishing up way behind schedule and over budget, I'm taking another course. If, in three decades of adult life, I haven't been able to make any significant personal improvements, I reckon it's too late now.
 This year, I've decided instead to acknowledge everything about me that - no matter how much time, energy and money I invest - will never change. This is my last hope. If I accept my true nature as a deeply flawed individual, I may just find peace in this lifetime. So, here goes:
 I will never be thin. Even at my thinnest, I was fat - and that's because, whether I'm wearing a size 12 or a size 16, as long as Natalie Portman and Portia de Rossi still walk the earth, I'm enormous.
The news is in that Natalie is pregnant and will get a tiny bit bigger, but after she gives birth she will be even thinner than before because, as she will no doubt tell us, she's breast-feeding and can't gain an ounce.
There's only one consolation. I suspect that Portia still thinks she's fat, even though she told Oprah she's beaten her eating disorder and is now a "happy and healthy" weight. (In LA, this is code for "enormous".)
Oprah has enough money not to worry so much about her size these days. So this leaves me fatter than Natalie, poorer than Oprah and marginally happier than Portia. This is about the best I will ever manage.
 I will always hate exercise. I've never experienced the "feel good" endorphins that are supposedly released when you flog yourself into a sweat on the treadmill. Apparently these chemicals, along with adrenalin, serotonin and dopamine, mask pain (!) and get you high. I now realise that I was born without this particular brain function. Those cheery chemicals are released in my body only when I drink.
 I'll never stop drinking. This is a given. I give up trying to give up. My house will never be tidy. I've long nurtured the fantasy of kitchen benches free of the detritus of family life - dumped keys, sunglasses, unopened mail, homework, school notes, sticky, eggy plates and cartons of rancid milk. If I do manage to achieve the nirvana of a spotless bench, it will be a joyous moment, although fleeting, because I will instantly note that the floor needs sweeping. Likewise, the laundry basket will never be empty, the dishwasher will always be full and when I look out my kitchen window, I will inevitably spot a cobweb. The thing to keep in view is that one day my children will leave home and I'll weep with sadness over my tidy bench.
 I will always lose receipts for big household items. I can pin them to the corkboard, file them, even staple them to my arm. No matter. When the item breaks, the receipt will mysteriously disappear, along with its instruction manual and warranty.
 I am destined never to be able to return a faulty item or have it repaired for free. Que sera, sera.
 It doesn't matter how carefully I manage my personal finances, my friends will always have cheaper private health insurance, power bills and bank fees than me. They will tell me, in great detail, of their wisdom and good fortune.
 There's a level of personal grooming that I will never attain. Even though I spend hours of preparation on my hair, outfit, nails and accessories, I always register that the woman standing next to me looks effortlessly flawless while I feel like a patchwork quilt thrown over an unmade bed. I've felt like this since I was eight years old. I'm betting Oprah, Natalie and Portia have too. Compared with Stephen Fry, I'll always be an idiot. Most of us will. He's what's known as a "polymath", (sadly, I had to look that up). It means he's a Renaissance man, a brainbox educated in a wide variety of subjects, an author, wit, scholar and raconteur.
Inspired by the divine Mr Fry, I have tried mastering chess, speaking French and Latin, reading classic literature, studying ancient history and listening to opera.
 However, I haven't managed to put the knowledge I've gained into any coherent order. It's been like chucking rocks down a dark, deep well, and any nuggets of information I have gathered are now irretrievable. Sometimes you have to bow down to genius, so it's heartening to know that Stephen Fry reckons he feels inadequate when he stands next to J. K. Rowling. I'll never be J. K. Rowling either. Enough said.
 I'd like to be demure and ladylike. Perhaps a bit more Olivia Newton-John-ish. But, truth is, I'm more Wendy Harmer-like. I'm loud and say dumb things at the wrong time. I regret it when I've said something really inane, but I'm not sure how to stop. However, when Stephen Fry wrote on Twitter: "God I'm stupid sometimes. What an arse I am", it made me feel better. The only thing I can say is that I now have an affinity with people who are as foolish as me. Is this progress? I can only hope so.
 So, given this list of my personal failings, what's left for me to work on? Not much, I'm afraid.
 Luckily I'm just smart enough to have discovered the inspirational writings of the great and wise Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius Antonius (AD 121-180), who said: "Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it."And so I tumble into 2011. Maybe I'll never be better than I am now, but hopefully I'll be happier.

And, in pursuit of that fine cause, I raise a drink and wish you a happy New Year.

Happy New Year!! Welcome to 2011 :-) xoxo.

 The Harbour Bridge became a symbol of inspiration last night as Sydney challenged the world to make a better future. Around the globe, a record 1.1 billion people watched as a huge red X on the Bridge marked the centrepiece of the most spectacular party since 2000, leading the way into the new decade with a message of hope and excitement. After a dramatic decade that began with the Sydney Olympics and was marred by terrorism, war, extremes of weather and the Global Financial Crisis, Australia's political leaders chose the theme of optimism for their New Year's messages.
 Fireworks supremo Fortunato Foti and his team pulled out all the stops to make their mark on the city's skyline with new X-shaped fireworks, lightning bolts, crescent moons, double hearts, bow ties and a dazzling tumbling red and white checkerboard effect.
 On the water, on rooftops, on the balconies of mates' houses, more than 1.5 million people joined the "biggest party on Earth". Brilliant sunshine encouraged huge crowds to start packing the Harbour foreshore from first light. And they came armed with whatever they could find to make the night comfortable - fold-out chairs, picnic blankets and blow-up beds coming out as people staked a claim on the top vantage points.

Security staff around the Opera House said crowd numbers were unprecedented and they had been forced to turn new arrivals away from 3pm - more than an hour earlier than last year. Bars, pubs, clubs and one of the city's most exclusive cocktail parties were also turning people away thanks to the balmy weather.

 The alcohol ban wasn't enough to dampen enthusiasm at The Rocks, where Ben and Becka Thayer had staked a prime position for their first New Year's Eve in Sydney after migrating from the currently snowbound UK.

Here's a link to more footage of the fireworks: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/sydney-confidential/making-your-mark-as-new-era-dawns-happy-new-year/story-e6frewz0-1225979685027