Courtyard food forest plans

(click for larger image)

It's getting towards tax return time - hurrah - which means it's almost time to put the grey water system in and dig up all the horrible concrete in the courtyard and replace it with a fabulous food forest.





Can not wait. I have been drawing up plans - as you can see - to maximise our space, including espaliered fruit salad trees (we will definitely have a citrus one, and I am tossing up between apples or stone fruit), vines, edible ground covers, berries, two smallish veg beds and a herb garden with asparagus and rhubarb, which are permanent plants.





There will be a small solar-powered fountain in the middle to attract birds and beneficial insects (you can get a small solar kit for a fountain online for $59, or even cheaper on ebay).

We may have some quails living in the bottom of the bunny palace, as apparently they do quite a bit to keep the bottom of the cage clean, plus, well, they're tasty. Or if we can't bring ourselves to eat them, they at least have tasty tiny eggs. The worms will continue to get the scraps the bunnies/piggie won't eat (not much, really - they get onion/garlic peel, citrus peel if we're not making candied peel from it, eggshells, and tea/coffee grinds. The furries eat almost everything else - including banana peels!)

The bunny palace is located under our front window, where they will get winter sun but in summer we can pull our outside blind over them and save them from the heat. And we'll be able to see them from inside! Possibly this will freak the cat out, as she is scared of the bunnies.

The garden will get worm castings, plus bunny/piggie poo and used bedding (they get a mix of hay, which they eat, and sugar-cane mulch, which they don't!) as well as the water from our shower and bath, delivered via an underground system.

If I'm feeling very creative, I might try to bonsai a bay tree, which could live in a pot on the steps. You don't need that many bay leaves really, a mini-bay-tree could be enough! Otherwise I will sneak one into the communal garden - fairly sure no-one will notice!!

Someone else who has actually already made a very small veggie garden can be found here.

Lusting after kitchen things

Some women lust after shoes. Some after jewels. I am currently lusting after kitchen things.

Last week I got something I'd been wanting for ages - poultry shears. I can't wait to get a chicken to try these out on - they're totally heavy duty and should be able to cut a chicken into pieces easily. Hurrah! I'd been doing it with a (bluntish) knife, which sucked.

There are still a couple of things I'm lusting after. One is copper biscuit trays. Huh? I hear you ask? I have two fantastic copper cake tins I found at the op-shop. Copper conducts heat better than steel, aluminium, or iron (due to its relatively weaker electron-phonon coupling, as I just reminded myself thanks to the wonders of google - I remember doing this in chemistry). So it's really good for baking. I currently use two rather beat-up pizza trays for biscuits, which is less than ideal, particularly as one of them is slightly bent, which doesn't make for evenness. I can't seem to find any of the interwebs, but I bet I could get the metalwork guy across the road to make me some.

By the way, has anyone used silicone bakeware? I'm curious about how that works.

Another is a proper roast tray. I am sick of trying to squeeze a roast into a lasagne dish, or using one of the said beat-up pizza trays. Preferably one of these. And a flava shaker - Jamie Oliver is always carrying on about them and they look like fun. A mortar and pestle would be a nice to have, as well.

We also totally need a knife sharpener, to solve our blunt knives issues.

Annoying clankings in the kitchens

If there's one thing about working from home that's thoroughly annoying, it's when Hugo decides to put the dishes away while I'm trying to work.

For a start, he puts them in random spots (the day before yesterday, for example, I found that the forks were all in the knife spot and the knives in the fork spot - why???), and for a middle, he makes the most terrible clankings and clatterings. For an end, he whistles (or as my nieces spells it, wisls).

It's all terrible distracting when one is trying to wordsmith. Yes, that's an all-new verb, right there.

Plus, he's really supposed to be resting.

When I was a child, I spake as a child

When I was a child, I used to sit on the step ladder in my parents' pantry, illicitly eating glace cherries, dried apricots, almonds and sultanas. No doubt this was of considerable annoyance to my mother when she wanted to make a fruitcake or the Christmas pudding, but I used to sit there, savouring the tasty fruitcake ingredients, and imagining what life would be like as a grown up. I would have a kitchen, I thought, with open shelves full of jars of wonderous dried fruits and nuts, that I could eat whenever I wanted, with no fear of discovery and groans of woe over potential fruitcakes, alas never to come to fruition (ha ha).

When I was a grown up, I would still have long hair in braids, I would be elegant in long, witchy dresses, and I would be ever so old.

I used to lie in bed at night sometimes, imagining the incredibly far away year 2000. By then I would be SO old, I would be married, with children (for the record, I was all of 24 when the year 2000 happened!) It would be so strange, living in the year 2000. Like being in the future. No doubt there would be machines that did all the work, and I would drive a shiny car with my children in it.

Possibly there would be a war on, and I would have to thriftily mend holes in my childrens' clothes, instead of buying them new ones. We would have to save tea leaves, etc. I read quite a few children's books set during World War II, in case you are wondering where this strange fantasy came from.

But mostly, I pictured an enormous kitchen that was a cornucopia of plenty. I would make bread - something I saw and still see as a sort of magic. My mother used to let me experiment in the kitchen quite a lot, and I tried and TRIED to make things with yeast, but it never, ever worked. Probably because our house was always cold, my puny arms were less than ideal for kneading, and I was too impatient to leave it for long enough to rise properly. But whatever the problems were, I made buns and loaves that could have been used as missiles, with some sort of sling-type arrangement for hurling them (a favourite activity around the same time was playing WAR with the other kids in our street, and slingshots were a weapon of choice, until Andrew-next-door got hit in the eye with a pitossporum berry and his eye swelled up dangerously - lending new credence to the parental expression "It's always fun until someone loses an eye").

The magic didn't work for me. It was all on a continuum of magical failures. Attempts to concoct pixie dust that would allow one to fly - failure. Attempts to concoct Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde potion - failure (although I must comment at this juncture that I always felt the names were the wrong way around - Dr Jekyll sounds so much more evil than Mr Hyde, which sounds quite innocuous). Attempts to communicate with fairies at bottom of garden - failure. Attempts to turn self into magical talking horse - failure. So it was never entirely surprising that the alchemy of yeast and flour and water didn't work either, and my dough utterly failed to turn into a crusty tasty loaf.

When I was grown up, though, then the magic was bound to work. I would stand in my enormous kitchen, with my braided hair, kneading my dough and producing wonderful braided loaves of bread. They would be light, and fluffy. Between slices of bread, I would snack on a wonderous assortment of fruitcake ingredients. After that, I would ride my beautiful black horse, probably bareback and without a bridle, communicating with it mostly with my legs and partially through my well-developed psychic abilities.

I never imagined having a job, or having to work at anything (strange, really, since all of the women in my family had careers - my grandmother and my aunt were editors, my mother is a lawyer). I don't think I ever pictured the husband I was going to have, at the ancient age of 24. I'm not sure I pictured the children either. I definitely pictured the horse, and the loaves of bread, and occasionally an elegant brace of greyhounds that would follow me around and sit at my feet. Quite often I pictured a servant, who would follow me around and rub my back whenever I sat down, between busily making bread, riding my noble steed and petting the greyhounds.

And funnily enough, although I'd still quite like the horse and the greyhounds, and have recently achieved the alchemy of bread (thanks to the wonders of the no-knead thang), and I do have a kitchen full of fruitcake ingredients to snack on (and at the moment, also actual fruitcake), I don't have a husband and kids. Perhaps we could put it down the powers of visualisation. Only I still don't have a horse or a brace of greyhounds, so perhaps not. And these days, when I lie in bed at night thinking, before I fall asleep, I'm picturing vegetable gardens, chickens and wood-burning stoves. So we'll see how that goes.

The sexualisation of children (so-called)

We watched the first segment on 60 minutes on Sunday (yeah, yeah, quality viewing, I know). It was all about the so-called "sexualisation" of children.

All this stuff in the media about this so-called sexualisation - it's complete bullshit. For two reasons. And that's not to say I think children should be exposed to Bratz dolls in uncomfortable outfits or images of women gyrating round poles - far from it. But people are upset for all the wrong reasons.

Firstly, adult female sexuality is not about wearing high-heels and short skirts, a la Bratz dolls. The patriarchy might like it to be, but it ain't. I am still a sexual being, even dressed in, well,

leggings under my tracky dacks, three layers of jumper and a blanket (it's very cold in the kitchen). I often feel horny, even when I am not wearing lacy uncomfortable underwear, and six inch stilettos. In fact, I have never felt anything other than pain when wearing high heels. For the record.

What young girls who are exposed to these ridiculous and wrong images are being taught is not sexuality. They are not being sexualised - they are being molded into the shape the patriarchy wants them to be. They are being taught that their bodies are hideous, that they need to lose weight, even at a very young age, and that without hair/makeup/accessories/fashion/etc they are not really girls. THIS is what we should be outraged about.

Secondly, the more I think about it, the more these people who are up in arms about the whole thing (for all the wrong reasons) clearly have no memory of what it's like being a child. Children are already sexual beings, on their own terms, not adult terms, but sexual beings none-the-less.

We don't like to talk about it, it doesn't gel with our images of childhood as a time of 'innocence' (whatever that should turn out to be). But anyone who doesn't remember having the horn as a kid, doesn't remember being a kid. There's no such thing as what Freud called the "latency" phase, we're all just too embarassed to talk about it or acknowledge that kids have sexual feelings. That's not what kids do. They have cute hair cuts, and ride bikes, and frolic with puppies, and sell lemonade from a lemonade stall with adorable badly-spelled signs. They don't masterbate, or have sexy thoughts. Or play naughty games of doctors and nurses...

In grade 5 or 6, I can't remember which, we were all reading Judy Blume books like mad for the sexy bits - just like in this article. My friend Pip's mother found the copy we'd all passed around, and, horrified, called my mother to let her know about the salacious literature we were reading. (My mother, to her credit, didn't care). But we were all totally into it, and anything else we could find that talked about sex, for example Dolly magazine, another favourite, and for some time banned literature in our house (more due to the shallowness of said publication than the "sexualisation"). Other than, clearly, our parents or teachers talking about sex in the context of educating us, which was cringe-worthy, embarassing, just plain wrong, and clearly they didn't do IT anymore at their age, so what would they know anyway?

I don't think little girls should be playing with dolls dressed in mini skirts, boob tubes and high heels. But it's not because it will "sexualise" them, it's because I'm a feminist.

I don't think little girls should be photographed for magazines in grown-up poses, wearing makeup and grown up outfits (and by little girls, I mean pre-teen). But that's because I'm a feminist.

Children are sexual beings. But sexuality generally is not about clothes (unless you have a fetish of some sort). We shouldn't be trying to "shelter" children from knowledge of sexuality and how sexual relationships happen (when you're more grown up) and what happens in them. That's just knowledge about growing up. What we should be trying to "shelter" them from, or at least give them context for, is the constant bombardment of media images that tell them they have to be pretty/thin/fashionable to be lovable. That they can't be girls without wearing ridiculously uncomfortable clothes than men are sensible enough not to subject themselves to. That they're "unfeminine" if they don't rip out their natural body hair, and that their natural odours are offensive and must be covered up at all costs. That if they have their period, and happen to bleed a little on their clothes, they will die of shame, because everyone will know they have their period. That being a woman isn't just something you ARE, it's something you have to aim for, by a constant process of "beautifying" and dieting, and supressing all your "unladylike" emotions, and that it's something you really only get when a man thinks you're good enough and beautiful enough to be his girlfriend or, better still, wife (and yes, we should "shelter" girls from thinking that the happiest day of their life is their wedding day, that their ultimate dream should be to be a bride in a dress that looks like a meringue).

It's not about sexualisation. It's about feminism.

Food, not numbers

The one thing that's keeping me really resigned to being at home (who'd have thought I'd actually miss the office!?) is being able to cook the whole time.

I have a sourdough starter sitting on the bookshelf in the living room (first one I've tried, and I'm planning to make no-knead sourdough once it's done). There is chicken stock bubbling on the stove - I generally buy chicken as whole chickens, it seems a bit weird to eat BITS of something. We save all the bones in the freezer, and then I make stock from them (based on the recipe in Nourishing Traditions, with some vinegar added to draw the calcium out of the bones). The stock has been boiling for two days now, and smells amazing. The cat will get any left-over fleshy bits (there are some livers and other 'gizzards' in there that came with their original owners, the cat loves these bits). The rest will get made into soups, sauces, etc. I'll probably freeze it in small containers.

And I am in the process of removing all the pith from a week's worth of citrus peel (quite a bit, as H has orange juice on his muesli instead of milk) so that I can make candied peel, which I am going to use in a fruitcake over the weekend, and roasting veggies and doing baked potatoes to go with our steaks for dinner.

Mmmm.....

Great mysteries of the universe

When I was younger, a friend and I used to keep a list of "Great Mysteries of the Universe" (I had not yet developed my aversion to the random use of capital letters when I was of tender years). The only one I can remember, off the top of my head (although knowing my storage habits, I still have the list somewhere), is the great (and mysterious) question: How can the fridge be full, yet there is nothing to eat?

A question developed, I might add, after many hours of staring aimlessly into my PUs' refridgerator, which always contained a plethora of objects, and yet nothing even vaguely edible. And if there was something vaguely edible, my PU#1 had an unerring ability to detect the fact that you were looking at it, from the other end of the house, and the instant your hand edged towards it, a cry of "Don't eat that! That's for dinner" would emanate from her office. The plethora of objects generally consisted of (a) various pickles and mustards, (b) some very old, wizened cheese, (c) capers and (d) various containers of leftovers so old that they had spawned sentient life capable of developing its own lists of universal mysteries, and thus the circle of life continues, hakuna matada, etc.

Yesterday, another great mystery was added to the mysteries. Going to Mars is really expensive. This is because it is a really long way (depending on where it is in its orbit, and where we are in ours, between about 56 million kilometres and around 400 million kilometres, which is a lot further than it is to the local shops). Anyway, current probe cost $457 million, which is only around $16 a kilometre (using the median point between 56 and 400 million)

By contrast, Melbourne's new public transport ticketing system, the Myki, has cost $850 million. And yet Melbourne's public transport system covers about 964 kilometres (train track, tram track and smartbus routes).

That means Myki is costing $8.8 million per kilometre.

Do admit, it's very mysterious that a ticketing system can cost 55,000 times more per kilometre than a mission to Mars.

A paucity of postings

We had a scary incident over the weekend. We were getting ready for bed, and I was putting things away in the bathroom. I noticed that the thingy I keep all my hair elastics etc in had fallen over (for some reason it's been sitting on top of the washing machine for weeks, and I think it probably got moved while the machine was spinning, but I digress). As I picked it up, I noticed the wall was really, really hot. I then went and felt the wall on the other side of that, in the bedroom. Also really hot. Panic ensues. I switch off all powerpoints in the vicinity, thinking clearly there is something electric going wrong in the wall, and probably the apartment is about to burn down with us in it.

Mentally cataloguing what I need to take with me as I flee smouldering apartment - Hugo, cat, jewellry box.

Decide to call my PU#2 for advice on what to do. Describe situation to him. He thinks could be terrible electrickery disaster, and says he will come over. Ten minutes or so later, there he is, toolbox in hand (sometimes he aks me what I will do when he's dead - terrible thought, will not be able to cope, envisaging huge bills from various tradies, not that that's the main issue with him being dead. Ahem). He feels walls. Says "That IS hot". No shit, I don't imagine hot walls. Hot men, occasionally. Dr Who, naked and sweaty, perhaps. I digress. Anyway, much rushing about feeling walls ensues. Then Dad works out that the wall in question is where the flue from the heater is (having no spacial thingumy, I would have said heater was on completely different wall, which is why I had not worked this out). We had just never felt the wall after the heater had been on before. Which is not all that surprising, because seriously, who walks around feeling their walls?

In other news, there's been a lot of shit going on here, thus the lack of time on the intertubes and no further amusing blog posts taken from strange newspaper thing (Ed, your negative opinion was outweighed by other people wanting more, so feel free not to read it when I post it). Hugo's been sick (in hospital no less, with his ticker being dodgy) and isn't going to be 100% again until he's operated on (he's been VERY BRAVE, despite being stuck full of needles and zapped with electrickery) so I have been busy trying to keep my work shit together, my house not full of dangerous piles of newspapers (I don't want one of us to die when a pile of them collapses), my furry friends fed and us fed. It's a lot of work. I don't know how women whose partners don't do their share of the house work cope. I've been doing it all for two weeks now and I am about ready to sleep for several years, Rip Van Winkle style. But I can't. For one thing, my stupid body refuses to sleep past about 8am.

The thing I am enjoying is the cooking. Much as I love eating Hugo's cooking (partly because, tasty, and partly because, not cooked by me at the end of exhausting work day), he does tend to cook sausages, chops, steaks or a roast. Which although yummy, starts to become rather monotonous. I have been cooking all sorts of unusual delights, and the variety is good. I refuse to cook ordinary things because that's no fun, and I love to save bits and pieces and make thrifty things. At the moment, I'm making a sour-dough starter (with which I will make no-knead bread once it's all sourdoughish), I'm saving all of our citrus peel to make candied peel (this is a tip from my Stephanie Alexander Recipes for food lovers cookbook - you save them in the fridge, then at the end of the week, cut into approximately the same size pieces, boil them up three times discarding the water each time, then boil them in a basic syrup (1kg sugar to 1kg water) for around 45 mins. Keeps indefinitely in a jar in the fridge, and I'm willing to bet will make an AMAZING fruitcake), and I'm going to make chicken stock this afternoon, from the bones from the chickens we ate last week (I stuck them in the freezer as I'd already made one lot of stock last week). If you add white vingar to the stock, it leeches the calcium out of the bones, which is great for people like me who don't eat dairy, and the bones go all rubbery, which is kinda fun for some reason (call me weird).

Hugo, needless to say, keeps requesting lamb chops or sausages, but I think he's coming round. I made risotto on Saturday (using left-over chicken from Friday and home-made chicken stock) and he said it was as good as lamb chops. We don't generally eat grains, but an *occasional* risotto is just so damn tasty.

Mmm. Posting is making me hungry for some reason.

It's also ridiculously freezing in the kitchen (I'm working from home). I am wearing (don't laugh) leggings under my flanelette PJ pants, explorer socks under my ugg boots, a polarfleece jacket over my winter spencer, a polar fleece hat, and have a blankey wrapped around me as one wraps a towel, for added warmth. I still feel like I'm getting frostbite. I am going to go heat up a wheat bag and stick it under my jacket.

Right, have wheat bag now. Need fingerless gloves - I can NOT get my hands warm.

Oh, my other other news is that we now have a scanner, thanks to cousin Andy, who is about to go live in ye olde Englande for two years. So I did a new blog banner. Now that I have this wonderous device, you can expect to see more refashioning of the blog on a regular basis. Scanning rocks. However, since I switched to the new format thingy, I can't seem to get my adsense ads to show up, and it's v annoying as I was making several cents per day (lovely readers, do click on my adsense ads, it makes me happy and will eventually buy me a pig or something when we move to the country). Well, several cents most days. I've added them back in, they're just not showing up, darn it all. Anyway, back to work with me.

Part the turd

More goodness from the newspaper bulletin board:

"style note: please don't use hike when you mean rise - they take the same number of spaces, and style is to avoid hike unless it is accompanied by hairy-legs chaps and rucksacks "

"My surname is Macdonald. Not MacDonald. Not McDonald. I think the onus should be on the journo to at least spell their surname correctly and it should not be changed. "

"a style whinge.we keep publishing that, say, David Attenborough has a fascination for' elephant seals or, today, someone has a fascination for' fossils, this means it is the seals and fossils that are fascinated by Sir David & whoever tis.. I find Nicole Kidman fascinating but I doubt that I have a fascination for' her. I am fascinated by her or with her. and while I'm whingeing not rejoices on' as the other day but rejoices at' or rejoices over' "

"please avoid, even in quotes, "to the best of his knowledge" or "to my knowledge". It may mean "as far as I know but I haven't checked' or "I am certain of this because I have checked ". Always try to find which the person means."

" pls, when writing blurbs for stories based on new books, do not use the words "in a new book""

"I have a vague legal problem with a person mentioned once only, and then only at word 78 of a 101-word sentence. It may prove central to our defence that no mortal could get that far into a sentence, but if so, why do we run them?"

"a reminder, for those who do not read addendum, that "elderly" is restricted to people at least 30 years older than the editor. This year, that's 76. We had a 59-year-old woman described as elderly today. That's hardly middle aged by my rule"

"three things are inevitable, death, taxes and our refusal to publish the scientific and common names of plants and animals the way the world of science does...but no doubt the world of science will come round.A red-bellied black snake is just a snake a lay observer, perhaps the journalist, has noticed is a bit black with a bit of red on its belly. A Red-bellied Black Snake is Pseudechis porphyriacus, the species under discussion.... Anyone who wants to argue for the lower casing of common names should take the Little Eagle test. A little eagle could be any kind of young or stunted eagle...a Little Eagle is a species in its own right... "

"Do not use prior to: use before. Prior to technically means having greater priority, not before, so we will always use before instead. Thanking you for your cooperation in this and all style matters."

More tomorrow... if anyone cares...

More goodness from the factiva feed...

"Yesterday we reported people were working longer hours. How many seconds or minutes do these longer hours have?"

"dear colleagues: xmas has always been banned in our paper; it appeared in smith's column today. and if something ranges FROM something there must be a TO; smith had things ranging from this, this, this and that."

"Memo subs and reporters: In court reports, people plead guilty or not guilty TO charges of naughty things; they plead guilty or not guilty OF the crime. So it is pleading guilty TO a charge or murder, but guilty of murder. Pls amend when you see."

"Yet another victim has been rushed to hospital, in a brief on October 26. Jim's edict that there will be no RUSHING, no MERCY DASHES and nobody being killed AFTER they were in accidents is not being taken to heart. More deaths could occur."

"Nice pic-lists of the new Howard ministry available from newsed for those who promise to eliminate "with' from as many news pieces as possible, except where it means alongside or similar. No sentences to begin with "with' this week. How about it? "

"For the umpteenth time, especially tonight, please remember it is Gerhard Schroeder NOT Schroder. The problem comes from the Brit papers using an umlaut which does not translate to our system. Agency copy gets it correct. And it's Dr Kohl not Mr!"

"SUBS: pls take the time to read stories at least TWICE. also, pls run a spell check AFTER you have written headlines, blurbs and captions. in fact, PLS RUN A SPELL CHECK. some of sunday's stories would have been cleaner had they NOT been subbed..."

"Dr Michael Wooldridge is Dr, not Mr, as changed in copy today. Please, all, be aware of the sensitivities of these people!"

"we had had an absolute raft of a raft of''. Can we give this almost meaningless, not to mention moribund cliche, a rest betwe en now and, say 2001?"

"food and wine. these are words to be avoided in food and wine articles, coming as they do under "food and wine' straps"

"please no more RAFTS. We had a raft of highway improvements breaking the back of a highway this morning....people mixing methaphors like this are skating on thin ice and could lose their bread and butter."

When bad indexing happens to good people...

Thanks to the wonder that is factiva, I get articles from media around the world on various topics e-mailed to me. This morning, something quite odd came through. I received it as a full-text article, because it had the word "Higgins" in it.

It seems to be a discussion of a sort, between the editorial staff at an Australian newspaper (I will not embarass them by revealing which one). I doubt very much it appeared in a print edition, or on their website - my guess is that the file was accidentally included in what they sent to factiva to be indexed. It's a series of gripes about things that were wrong/people putting things in the wrong baskets, etc. It's 51 pages long when I paste into word, so I'll just give you some edited highlights (names have been changed to protect the innocent):

"today we had a phrase "involving he and smith" p3 which any number of readers have humiliated us about. If you do not know the right case for a pronoun, drop the "and X" to see: you would say the matter involving HIM not the matter involving HE"

"There were two references on op-ed last night to border societys in a piece about protecting our borders. I guessed (and phoned writer to confirm) that he meant the broader societys."

"Pls note that state is lower case in this paper. I've just knocked it (and territory) down 16 (sixteen) times in the one article! Cheers! "

Boy do I sympathise with that last one, I am CONSTANTLY correcting that - the only time you should capitalise state is if you're referring to a specific state, e.g. the State of Victoria. Otherwise states and territories.

"I don't think anyone can "suffer smoke inhalation" as a piece tonight, and not so long ago suggests. A person can be treated after inhaling smoke, or for the effects of inhaling smoke"

"Today's P1 sub might also have benefited from reading today's sport story to learn Aust's last F1 pt winner was Alan (one L) in 1986, N O T 1996 as we said up front today. In '96, Jones was too fat to get in a F1 car "

" what's error 21? error 21 is when the message you are sending is on the other screen. neil's suggestions of it being the one either side of 20 and 22 were less than helpful"

"the names of the two obituary baskets are obitsalive & obitsdead"

"Hopefully", in the sense ""it is to be hoped" (if it has such a sense, which I deny) is banned at this newspaper. You can use it, tho I can hardly see much occasion to as "full of hope" as in "it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive".

"we often say someone was released from hospital. discharged is better . hospital is not captivity"

"The oars are dipped, one final shove will see us home where the cold ales wait. Go me hearties go."

"may i remind you while the British Open is on that a player's porter is a caddie. a caddy is a container for tea"

" Idea 2: keep a whiteboard pen in the car so you can write numbers down on the windscreen ...mtc. ... it is safer than a pen and paper because you can see while you write."

"a plea to get rid of the expression self- confessed: No-one but oneself can confess for one. A person may be a self-styled genius, but surely merely a confessed thief."

"MLA Jacqui Burke has asked that she be referred to as "Mrs'. ""That's my title and I love it,'' she said."

(Gag me with a spoon!)

"Nullarbor (with middle R). It comes from the Latin NULL and ARBOR meaning "no trees'. it is not Aboriginal and has nothing to do with NULLA NULLAS. (p1 today)."

"it's PAID, not payed, LAID not layed, for heaven's sake. We will be slaid by a reader soon"

"Defo warning. Governments with their backs against the wall or about to fall are very dangerous on the defamation front. If they get thrown out the ministers often seek vengeance on the media. by all means be critical but also be careful . Journalists coming in for the kill and wounded politicians can make an unnecessarily rewarding feast for the lawyer vultures circling overhead."

"we should take more care to get an opposition/cross-bench view when we have govt hand-out, leak etc and also to get govt view when we have an opposition hand-out leak etc. (then i don't have to fill letters with ""rights'' of reply."

"the siege gunman is said by AAP to ""have a fascination for guns". That means that guns are fascinated with the chap. I suspect he is fascinated [irresistably attracted] WITH or BY guns. "

"Hospice/nursing homes are not interchangeable, as per two headlines today, as any number of interested parties have pointed out."

"Professional sport is flesh for sale. It would be hard to degrade it further.What disturbed me about the article [on the Australian National Women's Soccer Team doing a calendar] was the (repeated) use of the word calenders instead of calendars. The sub-editors must have been too preoccupiedwith the picture to pay much heed to the text! "

"hair-braineds got another guernsey at the weekend, and always will...but it should be hare-braineds as in having a brain like a hare...but I only know this because I was lucky enough to grow up in hare- infested Norfolk and saw hares being silly "

"the editor has agreed to pay the ransom you demand for the editorial teaspoon. use dead-letter drop to specify method of payment."

"Just when the millennium begins [in fact, of course] it is 1.1.01] is a subject on which we are officially agnostic, becoz there is not enough time in the world to explain to those who think that it is 1.1.00. If people make reference to the millennium in terms which imply one or the other, by all means report them if it is newsworthy. But do not adopt their definition if it is other than 1.1.01 and do not yourself write copy which suggests it is Jan 1 2000"

"You get your just deserts . what you deserve . if you are lucky. Desserts are sweet courses. We had desserts in the second editorial today."

"reporters. short intros please. The Tale of Two Cities begins with a sentence of 13 words, so it is not a case of dumming down. subs: if intros are too long cut them into constituent bits. (reporters: better you do it than have a sub do it)"

"could we pls watch out in her (or any) copy for the spelling of "a cappella' (singing without accompaniment). take away one of the "p's and you have created a prostitute"

"I want you all to know that the pseudo verb authored is banned from The Newspaper. Think written, or if that's too tame, look up write in the thesaurus for an acceptable alternative. Don't use it, and change it if you see it in another's copy."

"Yesterday we reported people were working longer hours. How many seconds or minutes do these longer hours have? "

Okay, I am only half way through the 51 pages, and it's time to do some work. I may publish part II later...

It gets worse...

I have now examined in more detail the ACF's farcical analysis that inner city latte sippers=environmental vandals. They've based it on the ABS's household expenditure data.



Looks like they're wrong on several counts.



The main findings report claims bigger households are more "efficient" (never mind that bigger households tend to be people with more kids - shall we have a discussion about the environmental impacts of having kids?). The ABS data clearly shows that single-person households consume the LEAST.



But the main problem is that what they're measuring is raw expenditure. The ABS does report:

In general, the proportion spent on recreation,
household furnishings and equipment, and clothing and footwear rose as net worth
rose, while the proportion spent on tobacco dropped substantially.

But that isn't measuring consumption. If I buy a pair of Manolo Blahnik alligator boots (which, clearly, I'm not, (a) because that would be insane and (b) because high heels are a tool of the patriarchy used to oppress women), rated by Forbes as the world's most expensive shoes (now there's something to aspire to), then my household expenditure on shoes is going to look massive. However, by my calculation, you could buy 116 pairs of these boots for and still only have HALF the household expenditure on footwear of someone who bought one pair of the Blahniks - and any way you look at it, 116 pairs of boots is a lot more environmental impact than one pair of boots.



Similarly, if I have household expenditure of $5,600 on furniture, I might have bought one spectacular late 19th century French Provincial Louis XV style finely-carved oak metalwork, serpentine front buffet d’enfilade. Of good proportions and excellent colour (from Miguel, who is far and away the sexiest antique dealer in Melbourne. You should hear his accent). Or I might have bought 62 Billy bookcases from Ikea. You tell me which has more impact. Or whether you think the checkout folks at Ikea might be hotter than Miguel.

I STILL can't get my head around why anyone thought this was a good way to measure environmental impact!!

Inner city apartment = worse carbon footprint than McMansion?

I don't think so! The Herald Sun today engages in some triumphalism against so-called 'inner city elites' in reporting the ACF's 'Consumption Atlas', which puports to show that someone living in a McMansion in the outer 'burbs has a smaller carbon footprint than someone living in an inner-city apartment.

But the devil, as always, is in the detail. In this case, the rather pertient detail of how the carbon footprint is calculated. It's based on - wait for it - household expenditure.

That's a lovely new suit, Emperor. May I compliment the tailoring, the choice of fabric, the overall je ne sais quois?

Yes, consumption as a general thing = bad for the environment. But measuring pure expenditure? That's freaking ridiculous. Oh look, the Emperor is actually starkers.

Even if they're broken the expenditure down into categories, apples are still being compared with Mystery Mouth Morphers Fruit Gushers Frutonomic Punch snacks™.

$104.40 spent on transport by me is not necessarily the same as $104.40 spent on transport by someone living in a McMansion in the outer 'burbs where the public transport system consists of one bus every three days. My $104.40 buys a monthly zone one metcard. Their $104.40 fills the tank of their overly-large 'people mover'. Once. If they're lucky.

$100 spent on groceries. Are those locally grown organic groceries? Or Californian oranges and packaged junk foods?

I mean, come ON.

Yes, clearly expenditure in the inner suburbs tends to be greater. My income looks pretty darn good compared with the average (although I am still vastly underpaid considering my skills, and am lobbying hard for a BIG payrise as we speak). That doesn't mean that my household expenditure means I am consuming more. Most of what my household expenditure means is that I have large mortgage repayments.

Our largest spend on 'consumable' items is on items that are literally consumable - foods. Once the house has been paid for and the bills paid, the left-over money pretty much covers food. The odd cup of coffee at work is about the only extra on top of that. I'm not crying poor - I think we're exceptionally well off. But there's not a lot of excess consumption going on at our place. There's no longer enough spare cash to cover my previous habit of buying what Hugo calls "pink things" (i.e. new clothes, mainly in pink). I no longer use expensive beauty products (and oh, look, I'm not noticably any more wrinkly/dry/pimply than I was when Clarins were getting a significant chunk of my budget!). My book buying has been severely curtailed, and I haven't bought a DVD or a CD in a loooong time.

We use about a fifth of the average household's electrity (and we pay more for it, because it's 100% wind power - again, what does this do in a study based on expenditure?) - living in a small apartment has benefits. You don't have as much space to light/heat. We use less water than an average two bedroom apartment with a small garden. Our gas use is minimal. We make an effort to eat local food. And we don't use petrol because we don't have a car.

Tell me again how my carbon footprint is bigger than someone living in Caroline Springs? Because I spend more money? Oh, of course. I'll be over here, being an elite latte-sipping eco-vandal in the inner city.

Stupid Herald Sun and stupid ACF for publishing such tripe.