It is school holidays and it is autumn, here in Australia. So I sit here with a cool breeze wafting in the front window and I have whacked my hair up into a loose bun so that I can feel that breeze caressing the nape of my neck. Such a delicious feeling. So refreshing, so gentle, and so sensual.
There is the sound of children playing in the street. Cricket. The game not the invertebrate. It’s an Australian institution – playing cricket in the middle of the street as a child. It is, after all, the safest place to play. The chances of getting yelled at for breaking somebody’s window are much less. I confess I never did play cricket in the middle of the street as I was hanging out with girls, not boys. But I do have very fond memories of visiting my cousins down in Bendigo, Victoria, during summer holidays when I was a child. Where we played cricket not in the middle of a street, but in a long skinny paddock across the road. A paddock with a horse and a trainline. The trick was to dodge the horseshit and cow patties while we were playing. Which brings up Random Question of Absurdity No. 1 for the day (and I have a few today) …
Why are there always cow patties in a paddock where there are no cows?
The things I wonder about. And of course I need to disclose another Australian childhood game. Put kids and cow patties together and you guessed it – cow pattie fights. My but don’t mothers like those. The trick was to find the best cow patties – crusty on the outside (so you’re hands didn’t get dirty and you could throw it better) but still soft and icky in the middle. So that it made a terrific shitty mess on the person you were aiming it at.
But I digress. What we did do on the streets as children was ride our bikes. We would all meet up with our mates and be gone all day (only to return for lunch) and just … ride. I remember in particular one place we used to haunt – a local quarry that had been filled up with water. The local legend with the local children was that that waterhole was bottomless. No doubt started by some well-meaning parent to frighten children off from swimming in there. It worked. I was asbolutely horrified by the place. Never mind that it had a fence around it so you couldn’t actually get in there and swim (although I’m betting now that the local teenagers used to do just that of a night time).
Now for a couple more random and absurd questions that have been plaguing me for a few days.
- Someone asked this of me a few days ago and it’s been annoying me ever since .. how long do you think the “re:’s” in the subject line of myspace messages can continue for? If you carry on a conversation with someone via messaging here on myspace and you just keep hitting reply to each other ad infinitum …what will happen eventually? Are the supply of re’s infinite? Or will myspace eventually crash under the weight of all the re’s? If anyone has found the answer to this one I would be pleased to hear it.
- Why do flys like LCD screens? I think this is a Dr Karl question (apologies to the non-Australian readers who won’t get that reference). What is it about the glass-like LCD screen on my laptop that makes it a freaky fly attractant? It’s not the light source … I can be sitting here in the house and if a fly makes it’s way in it invariably alights on my LCD screen. Regardless of how many lights are on, the tv is on … whatever. Always my LCD screen.
My what a lazy rambling post this one is. I will now get to the point of what I was originally going to write about. No. I’ll do that separately. This one is too long already. 
