Couldn’t have said it better myself

Living in Perth, you really have to wonder about some of the people here. Do they have a warped sense of humour, or are they just incredibly thick? I’m talking number plates, and some of stupid things people choose to have stuck on the front of their cars. I’ve already listed some of the more ‘interesting’ plates that I’ve seen before, but below are a couple that really stood out from the crowd.

The first car I saw in the shopping centre yesterday, when it drove into the car park at a speed only acceptable on the German Autobahn or a race track. Once the lives of passing shoppers had been suitably put at risk, the driver screeched into the disabled bay /taxi rank right in front of the entrance, climbed out of the car and lolloped inside.

I use the word lollop, because for all extent and purposes he had the definite whiff of Neanderthal about him – no shoes, skanky feet, clothes that even the homeless would turn down. His tattoos encircled every limb, his hair was matted and greasy enough to fry a dozen eggs and he had, what could only be described, as the remains of dead rat hanging down his back. Basically he looked like something you might see painted on a cave wall, with a club in one hand and a dead animal in the other.

As he disappeared off to buy whatever it is that modern-day cavemen buy, several words did immediately sprung to mind – but I needn’t have bothered forming my own opinion. With his carefully chosen number plate, he’d already gone to the trouble of describing himself. How thoughtful and spot on. Maybe he was more articulate than first thought.

I didn’t actually see the driver of the second car, but I’m guessing they share many of the same qualities as the first driver.

xfgdfg

In case you’re unfamiliar with the word ‘feral’, it’s one that seems to be widely used here to describe a certain sort of person. The following description is from  www.urbandictionary.com, and I couldn’t have put it better (or more colourfully) myself.

xfgdfg

An individual who usually lives in a housing trust neighbourhood who loves wearing flannel shirts, tight faded jeans, tracksuits (usually FUBU, EMINEM, etc branded). Usually has a pack of smokes tucked under the shoulder of their knitted jumper/wifebeater, and one behind the ear for ‘ron.

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Commonly spotted at shopping malls and fast food outlets and especially Centrelink which is their sole source of income with the exception of drug dealing/manufacture/growing/selling stolen goods. Known to swear a lot and are frequently found not wearing shoes, much like their offspring who are usually dirty looking with snot running from their noses.

“What the **** are you looking at ****?” said the feral female with no shoes with a major muffin top over her 4 sizes too small mini skirt and no bra.“Nothing” replied the man walking by and minding his business.

“Well do ya wanna root? If I have another kid I can start me own footy team and Centrelink will fund it!” Asks the feral skank who can be smelled from 20 metres away.

“No thanks. I’d rather have sex with a garden mulcher. It’s much safer than your diseased, stinky p****” Replies the man about to be robbed by the group of male ferals waiting for him around the corner.

So that said, would you seriously want this word on your car?!

One of those nights

Last night was one of those nights that just makes you want to crawl under the duvet and sleep for a week.

It was one of those nights when your children don’t want to eat what you have cooked and you wonder why you bothered in the first place. It was one of those nights where their bedtime simply can not come soon enough, and then when they are in bed,  you are faced with a counter stacked ceiling high with a days worth of dirty plastic bowls, plates, spoons and beakers. It was one of those nights, when you do summon up the last remaining ounce of energy to empty and reload the dishwasher, you find that it never actually did it’s job properly the last time around.

Yes, it was definitely one of those nights.

So lets get past the bit where I had to hand wash all of the crockery, just to get yesterdays dry, crusted on food off. And lets get past the massive tidy up operation, namely finding, regrouping and re-boxing 40 Thomas the Tank Engine books, re-parking a ride on fire engine in it’s respective corner, rounding up 6 cars (of varying size and spec) that have been hidden behind each cushion on the sofa, and trying to contain at least half the contents of my daughters bedroom, which was by this point, now strewn across the entire dining table, and beyond.

I should say that this type of military operation is all pretty normal stuff in our house, or indeed I imagine, in any house that is inhabited by humans measuring in at 5 feet or less.

Yes, lets get past all of that. There I was, at the end of such a day – a day when for every minute the clock ticked forward, it ticked back 2. I was, to put it mildly, rather tired. So, after spending my allotted ‘me time’ washing my hair, I re-emerged to get on with what was left of the day, namely eating, putting my feet up and watching ‘Greys Anatomy’.

Unfortunately, but hardly surprisingly, this was not to be. Before my soup could even hit the bowl, never mind make it into the microwave, my daughter appeared, scratching her head and complaining of an itch.

Now she had said the same thing the last 2 nights, but being the sometimes unsympathetic and always overtired mother that I am, I had sent her back to bed. The first night I gave her hair the once over and then gave her a spoonful of Claratyne, for the allergy itch that she always seems to get when she doesn’t want to go to sleep. The second night I just sent her back to bed.

Last night however a little voice (that would be the nagging voice sent to reprimand lazy parents) told me to check her head again. So I did. And ewwwwwww. There were nits, or head lice if you want to use the now more politically correct terminology, marching across her head.

Now having a child who has friends who sometimes have nits, this shouldn’t have come as such a shock. In the last 7 years however, she has somehow managed to sail, completely un-infested through every outbreak at nursery, kindergarten and school. I guess I had put this lucky streak down to her either having super resistant hair, or just a very uninviting scalp.

Winning streak obviously over, all the lights came on, the torch came out and I was forced to be the adult. I quashed my inner squeamishness and picked through her hair, strand my strand, until they were all caught, found and squashed in a tissue. My husband had the, I would say, slightly nicer job of going out on the hunt for nit killing lotion.

As I oiked out the little critters I tried to hide them from my daughter, thinking it would upset her. I needn’t have worried. She was, I believe, actually quite chuffed to now be in the ‘I’ve Been Nitted Club’. Children are odd like that. If I’d given her the option she might well have opted to keep one as a pet. She would probably have named it Fluffy.

We on the other hand, spent the evening with an imaginary itch. When we did finally get to sit down and eat, our heads were coated in conditioner and our scalps were on the verge of bleeding, after such a vicious combing with the metal contraption provided.

Like I said, it really was one of those nights. The sort of night you can well do without, especially when followed by one of those days.

Needless to say my daughter is having a hair cut next week, something as she rather smugly pointed out, that she had been asking me for for weeks. Yippee. After the recent hair related fiasco’s with both my son and my dog, I just can’t wait to make it a hat trick.

litt

Here’s some handy INFO on nits, and how to kill the little blighters.

litt

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What IS on the end of your fork?

Of course I have been aware of the food scare crisis going on in China over recent weeks, but I admit it was only last week that I sat up and really took notice. I was emailed a list of some of the potentially contaminated products and was disturbed to say the least when I saw on the list the same Baby Bite rusks that my little boy has been powering his way through for the last year.

Like many people I imagine, I had thought the risk were limited only to certain brands of baby formula. Apparently not, it appears it could even be spreading in far wider food circles than that, even covering Dove chocolate and M&M’s.

With 4 Chinese babies already dead and nearly 11,000 babies and children still being hospitalised, the world is now sitting up and starting to get itself into something of a flap. Dozens of countries, from Indonesia to Kenya to Colombia, have now banned Chinese dairy imports amid fears sparked by the tainted infant formula.

As a precautionary measure, Tesco (UK) removed ‘White Rabbit’ milk sweets from its shelves, a brand that the New Zealand’s Food Safety Authority have now warned contains “unacceptable” levels of melamine – a chemical used in making plastics and fertilizer that can cause kidney stones and even kidney failure.

Of course the Chinese government are busy trying to play down the problem, or in other words stick their head in the sand where no one can ask them too many awkward questions. Despite Xiang Yuzhang, the quality watchdog’s chief inspection official, telling reporters in Beijing that “There is no problem,” the world it seems is just not buying it. Perhaps because another senior Chinese product safety official has also insisted that the problem was “under control, more or less“.

Not the most comforting of words to use really, ‘more or less’. Those in charge of Chinese media spin must be shaking their heads in horror.

It does seem these days, according to the media at least, like the world is forever lurching from one food scare to another. It’s hard to know what’s safe to eat anymore, whether something is healthy or packed full of cancerous additives and which panic reports and urban myths to believe.

A World Health Organization study reported this year that unsafe food is responsible for illnesses in at least 2 billion people.

Of course it’s impossible and unrealistic to expect everything we eat to be 100% germ free. Food now is grown, flown and consumed all over the world and passes through more pairs of hands than you can shake a stick at. So while you may keep your kitchen as sterile as an operating room and religiously and rigorously wash every piece of fruit that you eat, the chances are the food you eat has already been contaminated in some way, long before you even brought it home. Possibly 1000′s of miles away by some backpacking fruit picker who went to use the loo and forgot to wash his hands. What a lovely image as you bite into your Royal Gala.

A long history of food scares, many of which turn out to be completely unfounded are enough to have you turning anorexic with fear.

The outbreak of listeria in 1989 that had customers fleeing from  supermarket soft cheese and cooked chicken. Edwina Curries ‘egg fiasco’ of 1999, when the country stopped poaching, scrambling and boiling their breakfast for fear of getting salmonella. The 23% of pigs taken for slaughter that the British Government then reported were also infected with salmonella in 2000. The BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) and the outbreak of E coli that caused widespread mayhem in 1997.

The numerous links with cancer for a whole host of foods, including salmon, prawns, low fat milk, MEAT, bread, rice and even potatoes. The reports that cling film was dangerous, chickens nursing the flu could kill and swordfish gives you mercury poisoning. The concerns over food irradiation and the ongoing debate surrounding margarine.  The media furore over GM (genetic modification) food and the unknown fear over what long term effect a chemically enhanced cucumber may have on our body in 20 years time.

Even trying to eat your 5, or is that now meant to be 7-a-day has become a mission in staying alive, with recent reports of fresh spinach, tomatoes and peppers all testing positive for salmonella and certain brands of carrot juice (organic no less) being linked to botulism.

When you start looking at your fork and wondering what exactly is in the food you are about to eat and whether it will one day cause you to grow another limb, then you know it’s time to dig out a vegetable plot and only eat what you can manage to grow.

Much like with the everyday products that we use, the medications we pump into our bodies and the diets that we follow, it seems that in this day and age, eating has never been so dangerous.

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