And a very happy birthday to you too

It's my birthday today. Share it with me?

Part one:

While there are many people who love to get the most out of each and every birthday, I'm probably ok not starting mine at 4:30am.

Thank you, dear son, for gifting me a full two hours more 'awake' time for this year's birthday. Really darling, you're too kind.

Part two:

One of the best bits about rolling onto the anniversary of your birth is that you get to choose 'special birthday food' all day.

Today, for a special birthday early lunch/late over-sized (savoury) morning tea I selected home-made pizza with glasses of milk and Berocca. Why? Because I can, that's why.



On reflection, it wouldn't have killed me to use a slightly larger plate. Oh well, next year.

Parts three through five:
...involve the fish tank at the chemist's, Eastgardens Westfield, rhubarb and polenta.

Suffice it to say they were all very good, and sometimes I worry I'm a partial bogan trapped in a social democrat's body.

Part six:
Dinner and a movie. Still to come...

Thirtysomething blogger realises chance of becoming Senator 'slim to non-existent', returns to blogosphere for comfort, companionship

Ah time; where have you gone?

It's been a goodly while between postings, so a hearty thank you to the four dear people who have persisted, like kind parents, checking in each day. If you are not already Australians of the Year, prime ministers or MasterChef finalists you deserve to be.

What has the space of two months brought? Many a goodly thing:

1. I have started a collection of miniature driftwood. This piece is currently my favourite:



Sorry about the blurriness at the centre of the photo; I think my camera has glaucoma?

Anyway, this delightful piece of driftwood is sitting on the kitchen windowsill. I have chosen to present it, in this installation, next to that fine example of twentieth century technology, the 'rubber plug', for scale.

There are other pieces of my miniature driftwood collection rattling around the glove box, and others still in the cupboard under the fish tank. I haven't so much told Mr Kettle about my new collection yet as not told him, but I'm sure when he does finally realise all the shitty bits of wood around the place are *precious* to me he'll be stoked.

2. I have survived my histrionics about having the 'flu.

3. I have partaken of the berry of the mulberry bush (which isn't a euphemism for anything; I actually tried mulberries for the first time).

4. I made it all the way through Wuthering Heights again without wanting to kill myself.

5. I have discovered The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain (but not, unfortunately, purchased my own ukulele yet).

6. I have spent a few giddy moments wondering anew why my letterbox is shorter than a standard letter.

7. I have listened to some very, very good music and wondered anew (again) why I bought tickets to see Holly Throsby this Friday night.

8. I decided I wanted to write a libretto for a rock opera then woke up the next morning with a hangover and realised it was just a hideous drunken dream.

9. I have spent innumerable happy hours imagining what the builders responsible for the renovations in the three houses across the street can do with their freakin' sanders and grinders.

10. I have learnt that 'landfall' does not mean the moment your boat or space ships lands on Terra firma (which I have been espousing energetically) but the moment a storm reaches the shore. Who knew? Not me. But now I do.

But I go on. Tell me, what's been happening with you?

All things cat

Some families are pet families. Some others, the sad, lonely minority, are not.

We were not a pet family. Sure I had fish, and at one point a rabbit (Mum and Dad, what did happen to Jenni the (male) rabbit?), but I never had a dog, or a guinea pig, or, for shame, a cat, all those perfectly normal pets every child at primary school has.

This absence of furry creatures (barring Jenni the male rabbit) from my life lead, inevitably, to an obsession with such creatures, and so it was that my best friend in year five, Katrina, and I performed 'Mungo Jerry and Rumpletezer' (from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats, of course) for the 1985 talent quest at my primary school. Ahem.

Fast forward to September 2010 and I'm happy to report that quite the opposite is now the case re: furry cat things. I find myself today fairly inundated with cats. Sure they're less in the physical form than the poetic form, but cat-related they are nonetheless.

Here is a marvellous cat poem by the very fine internet poet, Mad Cat Lady:

I have a cat
She is fat
so fat,
she broke my hat
which I'd careless left lying on a mat
and as is commonly known, cats
are much attracted to sitting on mats
and the combination of hat and mat
was too much for the cat
to combat
she squashed my hat flat
its now rather like a hat shaped mat
so sod her if she thinks shes going to be getting any pats
feckin fat cat

Marvellous, Mad Cat Lady! Your poem (and a bottle of shiraz) helped me remember a childhood effort of my own, entitled 'My Neighbour's Cat'. It read:

My neighbour's cat
Is rather fat
For he loves his food.
He's white and black
With a high-arched back
And he gets in a fiery mood

When his owner is late
To bring in a plate
Piled with steamed and smoked fish.
When I come to play
He stalks away
And curls his tail with a swish.

T.S. Eliot's Book of Practical Cats probably comes close, quality-wise, to Maddie and my poems, don't you think? If you too have a cat poem that you feel would be right at home here please do send it to me.

Squib, Ramon, Ms Catast, Words and Wine, I have no doubt you have extraordinary cat poems just waiting for an appreciative audience; that audience is here! That audience is now. Let's hear your feline lines.

Serving suggestion only. Product may not actually look/act/taste/smell like this.

When I was a kid, I loved the serving suggestions on Salada boxes. Growing up in Canberra, I had never seen such exotic things as smoked salmon, asparagus and red onion yet there they all were, laid out for me in all their food-based technicolour glory atop the full range of Salada biscuits.

They were magnificent, those serving suggestions, and far beyond what any actual parent would create for their child, regardless of how much they loved said child. I became convinced, over the course of the eighties, there was nothing you couldn't achieve in life with an olive pinned delicately to a fold of prosciutto, provided that it rested upon a bed of goats cheese and sat atop a Salada and was arranged just so.

What I liked so much about the Salada serving suggestions was that you knew they were the creme de la creme of cracker flavour combinations; they were the Julia Gillard of the biscuit world; they were the best there was.

Knowing this about cracker serving suggestions, when a CD of images for non-verbal communication that I ordered finally arrived today I figured the images chosen for the CD cover were similarly the creme de la creme of non-verbal communication images, representing the best and most complex sentences that can be communicated with such images.

Here is the cover:


If we take the string across the top we have:


Which I take to mean:

"I want, most in this world, to put on my grey t-shirt with the picture of the fusing/exploding atom so that my sweaty back will stop sticking to the vinyl couch I've been sitting on for a large part of this unseasonably warm day so that I may continue playing video games upon my video game system and become the ultimate lord and master of Toggle Quest, which I would like to achieve before my harp lesson with Mr Jeffries at the Con at 4pm."

Cool. That not only makes sense to me but impresses me as a very fine example of just how much can be communicated by such a pictorial communication system.

If we take the string of images across the bottom of the disc cover, we have:


Which I think you would use to say:

"Remember that big storm we had last week? Well the power went down and everything in my freezer was ruined. Thing is, I haven't just got one freezer: I've got two. One of them is a separate extra storage one, which I probably use most at Christmas, and the other one is part of a fridge-freezer combo which is more for everyday food. Anyway, so I found out later that the storm was caused by global warming and you know that Ross Garnaut fellow? Yeah, he lives down the road from this church which is in the same suburb as where that idiot on the bike knocked me off my scooter when he swerved to miss that pothole. Bastard. Anyway, so I was listening to this podcast on the bus of Ross Garnaut and I had my headphones in but seriously, the guy behind me was going on and on about pomegranates, my GOD he wouldn't stop and he was so loud and I couldn't concentrate on the podcast so I listened to it again when I was at yoga."

Again, that not only makes sense to me but is clearly another fine example of the complexity of thought that can be communicated with this system.

Here, now, is a string from the back cover:

I don't think we need to go through this one; it's pretty clear, isn't it? Ahem.

So my finding for today is that there really is no product that can't best be demonstrated with a 'serving suggestion,' an example of the product showing it at its very best. I can't wait to see what the hemorrhoid industry comes up with for their packaging.

Does Australia Have a Government Yet?

The answer is just a click away:

doesaustraliahaveagovernmentyet.com

10 Very Good Things About People You Like Very Much Getting Hitched

We went to the wedding of our dear friends, the German and the Dutchman today and it was a freakin' fine affair; you two rock.

And since we're still waiting to hear who will actually govern the country and thus have so cruelly and unnaturally been denied the opportunity of sharing a late-night, post-wedding, pre-Father's day political rant I have chosen what I'm sure you'll agree is the next best thing: a late-night, post-wedding, pre-Father's day list of ten very good things about people who you like very much getting married.

So here we go:

1. You get to see your pals all dressed up/wearing shoes/using serviettes.

2. You get to do a reading as part of the ceremony that starts: "Marriage: why bother?"

3. You get to dance to The Village People and the soundtrack to Grease without appearing mentally unstable.

4. You learn stuff (I had not heard the term 'fluffer' before tonight).

5. You get to eat all the things you bought for the babysitter that she didn't touch.

6. You get to add items to lists that are wholly unrelated to the topic under discussion: I'm very much enjoying The Avett Brothers' albums Emotionalism and I and Love and You at the moment.

7. You get to bail out of a list early if you're too tired to write anything else and just want to post one of those cacky "Let's take a photo of ourselves with my phone, yeah yeah! Because that'll be hilarious" kind of photos:

Mr and Ms Kettle, looking decidedly dishevelled and ready to go home to see what the babysitter didn't eat.

Oh, and if you're wondering whether our 'new' government is sorted out yet, this site will keep you up to date:

doesaustraliahaveagovernmentyet.com

Wish you were here...

I had a long-weekend in Melbourne last weekend, by myself, bit o' Independent Ms Kettle Time. My lordy it's a top city, shits all over Sydney (classy, eh).

Here are my top six Melbourne discoveries, made during my weekend sojourn:

1. Melbourne trams have absolutely no suspension. Gave me a new understanding of how my son experiences the ride when I plonk him in a shopping trolley.

2. People in Melbourne have some kind of magical waterproof covering. I saw not a single person with an umbrella during my stay, despite what felt to me like mid-scale torrential rain.

3. Owners of wine and cheese bars who let you sit inside and read your book when it's cold and raining and windy despite the fact they're officially closed are very good people indeed.

4. Calling a laneway or side street a 'hidden treasure' then referring to it in every tourist brochure and guidebook means it's not actually hidden.

5. Discovering a wacky vegetarian restaurant you've been looking for all long-weekend while you're on the tram on the way out of town is less useful than discovering said wacky vegetarian restaurant on the way in to town.

6. Having twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep is freakin' awesome regardless of the city you're in.

Ah holidays: better than real life any day.