My boss is a singular personality. Brilliant at big picture thinking, sometimes the minor details escape her attention. Often this results in an amusing story.
We are in the process of having a renovation done on our double storey office space. The ultimate aim of the process is to move our workspace upstairs so that the ground floor can be let out to any renter prepared to pay out the big bucks.
Smith Street in Collingwood (where we work) is becoming a very hip shopping zone. We often receive offers to rent out our ground floor. A current offer has been made for a shoe shop to move in downstairs. While having her hair cut at a local hairdressers my boss somehow managed to convey the idea that a ‘Manolo Blahnik’ shoe shop was moving in. Manolo Blahnik? The fabulous (not to mention extremely expensive) shoes featured on ‘Sex in the City’? The shoes as art people? Yep, absolutely.
Much excitement ensued in the hair cutting shop. And much speculation.
Another staff member ventured down to the same hairdressers for an appointment later in the week (yes – we have a workplace hairdresser of choice!) She was greeted with a barrage of questions about the possibility of the beautiful shoes. “Yes,” she agreed, “a shoe shop downstairs would be kind of nice”.
“What about all the extra security you’d need for the very expensive shoes?” continue the girls at the hairdressers.
“I’m sure there wouldn’t be a problem with the security.” (Curious?!)
“But it’s Smith Street! These shoes are art!”
“Which shoes?”
“Manolo Blahnik!”
“Ummmmmmm….”

Sure, a shoe shop might move in. But it’s not Manolo Blahnik. It does start with a ‘B’ but it’s a long way removed from Manolo Blahnik.
A long way.
These shoes are more ‘functional’ than ‘art’. Smith Street is going to be very disappointed.

Working in the education sector can be rewarding. It can also be frustrating. It’s like most jobs. And, as in all jobs, it’s nice to get a compliment for work well done.
This morning someone rang to say that something I’d done was ‘bonza’. No ‘jokeiness’, he meant it sincerely. It was bonza.
And that’s great!

I share a house with my good and dear friend Justine. In fact we own the house together – or are in the process of collectively paying back to the bank a great load of money for it. Ownership is some ways away.
We love this house. It has character. It also has mice (and once, famously, a rat.)
I am a country girl and, based solely upon this criterion, am delegated to ‘deal with’ episodes relating particularly to spiders and mice. Rats! I take no pleasure from setting and emptying traps. It interests me not – although I have found after much experimentation that pieces of Weight Watchers’ Chocolate Chip biscuit are a fool proof bait for the trap. FYI.
Yet, at each mouse crisis my expertise is appealed to in order to get rid of the problem. I am a reluctant fixer in the on-going culture clash between the humans and the rodents.
Unfortunately, I’m developing a reputation – and not for my negotiation skills. I wield the sneaker with a tad too much dexterity.
If more mice were like Stuart Little perhaps it would be easier to come to some sort of compromise position. But no mice – actually not any people I know – have such a natty wardrobe, a fine red sports car and an apartment overlooking Central Park. There are no bargaining chips at my disposal.
Sigh. Today I set a trap in the kitchen. Justine has just informed me that there is, in fact, a mouse in the trap. And there it remains until I get home. Alas, poor mouse….Rats!

These are strange times indeed.
Our federal government exhorts us to “be alert” but “not alarmed”. (I didn’t open the parcel, but I do watch TV). Unless, of course, we see something “suspicious”, something “not quite right”, something “un-Australian”.
Whilst undertaking my regular work-related duties last week, I spotted something which disturbed me deeply. Picture an average suburban dweller in an average suburban street. Nothing suspicious there? But add to this picture a pair of most peculiar pants. They were beige. They were mid-calf length. They were shaped like pantaloons. They were drawn in toward the calf with rouching and tied off with a piece of string like shoelaces. The were teamed with beige, stiletto heeled, fringed boots.
They were TERROR TROUSERS. (I live in fear.)

I have found the World Cup cricket to be incredibly interesting – but largely for completely non-cricket related reasons.
I love the uniforms (especially those orange Dutchmen/Dutch Orangemen!), I love the stories behind the teams of the less well known cricketing nations (again the Dutch and my personal favourite, the Canadians), I’ve enjoyed the ‘will they, won’t they’ intrigue surrounding the wearing of protest armbands (brave men) and also how Zimbabwe has a bowler called Heath Streak and last, but not least, I’m embarassingly entranced by the Warney scandal!! Shane, Jason, Bridget and Keith – I can’t get enough. Did he? Didn’t he? Why? When? Vanity? Over confidence? A solarium in someone’s bedroom? These are the questions.
Shane unequivocally denies taking anything performance enhancing – “Don’t need to, mate”.
This may be true BUT take a close look at Warney’s hair. If that is not a performace enhanced ‘do’, then I’m a World Cup cricketer!!

It is almost two weeks since Valentine’s Day. We are clearly out of the Valentine’s Day zone – after all, the hearts and flowers have come down in the shops. But how maleable is the time zone for Valentine’s Day? If it attaches to a weekend as it did this year, can the Valentine zone extend to cover this extra period? Would a Valentine’s message on the Sunday, for example, count?
I am curious. In addition, how all encompassing is the subject matter? Can a Valentine’s related matter count as a Valentine’s Day message? Particularly if it is received on the day, so to speak?
I ask these questions because I received (1) a phone call on Valentine’s Day on a Valentine related matter and (2) a shouted ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’ late on Sunday afternoon from a leggy, African soccer player in the middle of Footscray Park when I was walking my dog.
I have had some very happy Valentine’s Days in my past. Someone faithfully sent me lovely things for five years in a row before thinking better of it and going and getting married to someone else. Someone once drove to the country and left a beautiful bunch of roses on the doorstep of my parent’s local Catholic Church (sweet, really, not bizarre!) and a series of intriguing messages about where I should retrieve them from. (Unfortunately at this time there was a cricket plague in the area and all the heads of the flowers were devoured by swarming crickets! Maybe symptomatic of the relationship as a whole!? Not sure.) Thank you to all those generous and lovely people (you know who you are)who have thought to bring something special into my life.
But the question at hand?
Ok, so the Valentine’s related matter was a phone call asking if I’d ‘got’ anything before skiting about the caller’s own particular good fortune. And the late shouted message may well have been taking the piss.
However, I choose to interpret these things generously. I will call them technical Valentines and file them away along with my other stories.
Happy (belated) Valentine’s Day to you!! XX

I sit here and ruefully contemplate an uncomfortable case of sunburn. Ruefully?? HA!! (Ouch) More likely, huefully as the upper part of my frame which is exposed to sunlight has attained a pinky glow – something akin to that which is found on a desiree potato if you need a visual pointer. (This, to me, unhelpful – or perhaps a little too helpful – descriptor being provided by an agriculturally minded younger sibling at the event at which I achieved my new skin tone.)
It has been long awaited, but the destruction of my garden shed actually occured on the weekend. Yes, the shed is now no longer inhabiting the backyard – it now resides in the skip on my nature strip!
A, if I may say so, motley crew was assembled on Sunday morning. It ranged from the Very Keen (Andrew arrived early at 10 am replete with crowbar, eager for action/destruction) to the Rather Hungover (Brendan, Nicole and Adrian arrived late at 11 am wielding a saw and the kind of seedy expression which will not cope well with forthright hammering.)
But work began, and while the temperature and the noise levels rose, the shed came down!
After providing some stirling resistance (it was more sturdy than I’d given it credit for), all that remains of the shed with its attendant spiders and cobwebs and metres of mysterious wiring is a concrete slab. I can now set foot on parts of my backyard previously inaccessible to the humans and inhabited solely by big, mean, boy cats (at least, that’s what my nose told me!)
After a double take this morning (there’s something different out here and I don’t like it !!) even the dog has taken much pleasure in asserting her authority over the new domain. (Those wicked, no good cats have lost their asylum in the back corner for good!!)
As I cast an approving eye over my new kingdom, I was drawn inexplicably to the bungalow – now cowering in the adjacent corner, attempting to blend in with the fence and look less like a big shoebox on legs (admitedly a big ask given its actual size and shape!) It has been granted a reprieve at present, but – like the shed – its time will come.
Just by-the-by, use-by dates on sunscreen cream are MEANINGFUL.

And, as such, probably a substanceless entry…
It is not without some prompting and, in recent times, a veiled threat (real or imagined, I’m not sure), that this entry appears.
Rather than a finely honed piece of witty and nuanced prose, this entry has become a leap into the dark, hard on the heels of a week of procrastination thinly disguised as “busy at work”.
Nevertheless, I can now say I’ve written my very first entry on my very own blog.
Thank to Tony and Rae for practical assistance and active encouragement. (Still a bit scared, Rae!!?)