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!!