SHH on HBO
Thought my Australian friends would love to read the overwhelmingly positive reviews of Summer Heights High, which started screening here on Sunday. Click here for a website that will take you to the reviews.
The jury's still out, in my opinion, on the American version of Kath and Kim, now into its fourth or fifth week. I'm never sure if I'm laughing because it's funny, or because I so well remember the original episode being presented. I will keep watching, though,because I really want it to succeed.

Patriotic criteria

My Melbin mate, Sue, sent me this test:

You know you're Australian if....

You know the meaning of 'girt'

You believe that stubbies can either be worn or drunk

You think it is normal to have a Prime Minister called Kevin

You waddle when you walk due to the 53 expired petrol discount vouchers stuffed in your wallet or purse

You've made a bong out of your garden hose rather than use it for something illegal such as watering the garden

You understand that the phrase 'a group of women wearing black thongs' refers to footwear and may be less alluring than it sounds

You pronounce Melbourne as 'Mel-bin'

You pronounce Penrith as 'Pen-riff'

You believe the 'L' in the word ' Australia ' is optional

You can translate: 'Dazza and Shazza played Acca Dacca on the way to Maccas'

You believe it makes perfect sense for a nation to decorate its highways with large fibreglass bananas, prawns and sheep

You think 'Woolloomooloo' is a perfectly reasonable name for a place

You believe is makes sense for a country to have a $1 coin that's twice as big as its $2 coin

You understand that 'Wagga Wagga' can be abbreviated to 'Wagga' but 'Woy Woy' can't be called 'Woy'

You believe that cooked-down axlegrease makes a good breakfast spread

You believe all famous Kiwis are actually Australian, until they stuff up, at which point they again become Kiwis

You know, whatever the tourist books say, that no one says 'cobber'

You know that certain words must, by law, be shouted out during any rendition of the Angels' song 'Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again'

You believe, as an article of faith, that the confectionery known as the Wagon Wheel has become smaller with every passing year

You still don't get why the 'Labor' in 'Australian Labor Party' is not spelt with a 'U

You wear ugh boots outside the house

You believe that the more you shorten someone's name the more you like them

Whatever your linguistic skills, you find yourself able to order takeaway fluently in every Asian language

You understand that 'excuse me' can sound rude, while 'scuse me' is always polite

You know what it's like to swallow a fly, on occasions via your nose

You understand that 'you' has a plural and that it's 'youse'

You know it's not summer until the steering wheel is too hot to handle

You biggest family argument over the summer concerned the rules of beach cricket

You shake your head in horror when companies try to market what they call 'Anzac cookies'

You still think of Kylie as 'that girl off Neighbours'

When returning home from overseas, you expect to be brutally strip-searched by Customs - just in case you're trying to sneak in fruit

You believe the phrase 'smart casual' refers to a pair of black tracky-daks, suitably laundered

You understand that all train timetables are works of fiction

You get choked up with emotion by the first verse of the national anthem and then have trouble remembering the second

You find yourself ignorant of nearly all the facts deemed essential in the government's new test for migrants.

You will immediately forward this list to other Australians, here and overseas, realising that only they will understand!

Icing on the cake
Mum and I were driving through Fremantle in the late afternoon, on our way home from seeing Dad in hospital, when I turned into a street and was stunned by the low, golden sunlight as it hit the wedding-cake facades of the row of late Victorian buildings. I parked and dashed out to get some pictures, and almost ran into two sunburnt young men who were also gazing up at the buildings in rapture, one with a very sophisticated-looking camera in his hand, complete with huge white telephoto lens, which made me feel a bit of a dork with my little pocket Fuji.
Anyway, we got chatting.
'Isn't the light fabulous?' I ventured.
'It's brilliant - and look at that gargoyle up there, just waiting to throw stones at passers-by!'
'You over here from England?'
'Yeah, but we live here now. It's brilliant.''We have the best skies, don't you think?'
'Nothing like them anywhere, is there? Do you live here too, then?'
'No - well, I'm Australian, from here, but I live in America these days. I miss this light and these blue skies though. I read recently that it's hard in much of the US to see the Milky Way, not just because of the pollution, but because there's so much ambient light from all the cities and cars.'
'No problem with that here, is there? We just love it. We're so glad we moved over here. Wouldn't go back!'

Book haul #1
So these were the wonders I picked up on the first of my recent trips to Australia, in February.
The secondhand ones are all from a great bookstore in Albany. It wasn't cheap, but it was well organised with a great selection of titles. I could have spent a fortune there, but fortunately I had to think about the weight of my suitcase for the trip back to the US.
I picked up some great Australian works: a secondhand copy of Land's Edge by our Tim Winton, which I have in store back home but wanted to read again; Grace by Robert Drewe and a volume of short stories edited by him; Dislocations and The Ivory Swing, both secondhand and both by Janette Turner Hospital, whom I only recently discovered when I read Due Preparations for the Plague.
In the 'rest of the world' category, all secondhand, I have three old Virago editions: The Curate's Wife by EH White, Company Parade by Storm Jameson, and The Lost Traveller by Antonia White. Then there's The Winter Queen, by Boris Akunin, which I thought would do nicely for the Russian Reading Challenge that I'm supposed to be reading for this year. I also picked up The Flight of the Maidens by Jane Gardam, whose work I like, and Remember Me by Trezza Azzopardi, because it's set in a fictional version of my old UK hometown of Norwich. I bought the Tracy Chevalier, Falling Angels, because she's heartily recommended in many of the book blogs I read.
On my second trip to Australia, I went with hardly anything in my suitcase, so I brought back an even bigger pile of books, all of them secondhand. But that's for another day!

Triple swans
Here's a pic of Matilda Bay on the Swan River, with Perth in the background. I even managed to persuade a couple of black swans to glide by!
I'm back in San Diego, after a long and wearying flight that included a five-hour stop in Brisbane very early in the morning. I think that was yesterday, but once again I arrived in Los Angeles before I'd left, and I'm still a bit dazed and a bit stiff after the long flight. Oh, my poor old knees!
It was very hard to leave Dad, and we had a bit of a weepy farewell on Tuesday night. He's still in hospital in Perth, but is doing really well and getting ready to move to a smaller rehabilitation hospital where he'll get the constant and intensive physiotherapy and occupational therapy he needs to build up his strength and get home.Though the circumstances were dreadful, we had some great times visiting Dad, and on several occasions he had lots of his family around him. Here's my gorgeous brother giving Dad a shave!
We were lucky the staff encouraged Dad to get outside as often as possible, and they'd hoist him into a wheelchair and wrap him up so we could get out for some air and sunshine. The duck pond on the edge of the hospital campus was a favourite spot, and Dad enjoyed a lot of icy-poles in this spot.Whenever it was too hot, we'd walk the long corridors inside the massive hospital, which has its own art gallery on the ground floor, complete with this cheerful Chagall/Picasso-style mural.We even managed to have a party for Dad's birthday, with a big cake, most of which ended up in the nurses' staffroom, much to their delight.
Dad's nurses and other medical staff have been out of this world. I got pics of only a couple of Dad's favourites. This is Cora ...... who is from Germany and a fire-fighter when she's not on duty at Charlie's (pet name for Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital). She's wonderful - caring and compassionate, and with that awe-inspiring combination of qualities that you see in the very best nurses, of knowledgeable efficiency, warmth and humour.
We also are big fans of Jeremy, Monica and of Hayley and Ben (below). Ben and Dad struck up a great friendship and Ben even visited Dad when he'd been moved to another ward on another floor.
This last pic is proof that Dad is finally and firmly on the long road to recovery...
I always maintain that physiotherapists are miracle workers, and Ben and his student, Saskia are exactly that. They kindly invited Mum and me to watch this session, when, with the aid of the complicated-looking hoist, they managed to get Dad to his feet for the first time in more than three weeks. There were lots of cheers as he stood there, pretty shakily, and viewed the world from this position, knowing he was truly on the mend.

:: And very big and heartfelt thanks to all my friends in Perth, and in blogland, who looked after me and my Mum, cheered me up, fed me, talked to me, distracted me and kept me going with phone calls, text messages, emails and blog comments. Thanks. You are absolutely the best.
More on all that later!

True blueI know we're in California and all, and it's beautiful and on the Pacific ... but here we just don't get skies as blue — as really, really clear and blue — and sea as amazingly, vividly turquoise as we do back home in Australia (above). Just look at all that blue!
I had only a few days in Perth before I returned to Albany to be back with Mum and Dad, and David and I spent them racing about seeing his family and meeting up with friends when and where we could. But before the two of us headed back to Albany, we did manage to squeeze in a weekend at the beach-house down south.It did us so much good!
We forget, over here on the other side of the world, up in the other hemisphere, how stunning Australia is.
This (below) is our dear friend Konrad, coming back from a gentle hour or two fishing at the bottom of the garden, bringing home the flathead and a few herring which we had that night before dinner - so good!

Konrad and Dace put us up while we were in Perth - they are the kindest, best friends. Thanks to them, we didn't feel quite so homeless returning to Perth without a house of our own! Luckily, they were both able to come south with us for the weekend, and we played lots of cards, ate lots, drank lots and generally unwound.
This is the beach ...... and this is the path from the garden. From the house, you get these little jewels of blue between the leaves of the gums and peppermint trees. And you can hear the sea — only little waves lapping on the sand — as you lie in bed at night. One October night a few years ago, I woke up to hear whales singing and cavorting in the water. Unforgettable. We couldn't get Will to wake up and come with us, but Dave and I grabbed a torch and went out in the inky blackness to stand at the water's edge. Nothing to see, but you could hear them out there splashing and breeching.
And while we're talking wildlife, here's a pic of a couple of roos at sundown on the farm up the road.Click on the pic to enlarge it. There are more roos visible through the trees on the left. The two in the middle are studying me intently to check me out! Unfortunately, I was upwind from them and just seconds later they bounded off. Does your heart good just to see 'em!

Due Preparations for the Plague
I'm ashamed to say I'd never heard of Janet Turner Hospital before I found this amazing novel in a bookshop in Perth, while I was grabbing a few Australian books to bring home to the US. Now I'm counting my blessings at all the books of hers I have yet to read.
JTH lives in the US — she's a professor of English at the University of South Carolina — though she was born in Melbourne, brought up in Brisbane and still considers herself a Queenslander.
Due Preparations for the Plague is one of the most gripping novels I've read in years, a very intelligent psychological thriller that is as tautly written as it is tense to read. While the main action takes place over five uncomfortable, claustrophobic days in 1987 — when a terrorist group hijacks an Air France flight from Paris to New York — the narrative shifts and swings dizzyingly through time, location and from person to person, at times as bewildering for the reader as its ghastly events are for the characters involved. And on top of that is the question of who can be trusted, and who's watching whom ...
Like the plague of the title (borrowed from Defoe), terrorism and war are inevitable occurrences, yet how can we ever be ready for them, let alone come to terms with them?
The terrorists are persuaded to let all the children off the Air France plane: 'Passengers reach out to touch and caress as the little ones are pushed down the aisles.' We see them in 1987 and again in 2000, once they've 'grown' from damaged, tortured youngsters into damaged, tortured adults unable to get past the cataclysm that so shaped their lives. They keep in touch via the internet and try to piece together any information about the hijacking they can lay their hands on, in the hope of healing/catharsis/redemption. Or an understanding, at the very least.
But can the truth make any difference to them? As kids, their release from the plane inspired high hopes of a happy outcome for all those left on board. And as adults, they're still clinging naively to hope.
In this novel, published in 2003, two years after 9/11, JTH makes incisive observations about both sides in this drama and draws chilling parallels between American intelligence operatives and the terrorists. CIA recruits, for example, are told by their instructor:
'In our profession (making the world safe for stability, as we like to say; and sometimes, relishing our own esoteric wit, making the world safe for moral systems) it is a given that chaos is all; that order is not only arbitrary but evanescent, and that it is the task of a small strong circle of like-minded people to establish and guard it. Exactly which system of order we sustain — morally and politically speaking — is immaterial. We support the system most likely to stay in place.
'Hence our dilemma. I am not speaking here of personal disintegration, or of that futile and panicked attempt to withdraw from the field ... This is not a field from which you can retire.
' ... Retirement from this career is not an option. We keep your soul in an escrow account. Take note: of the twenty of you in this room, the creme de la creme who have made the cut and registered for this course, nine of you will leave us before the end through one of the two trapdoors I just named. The wages of sin in the Intelligence community are erasure. I know you understand this. If you did not, you would not have reached this class.'
It's suicide on both sides of the equation, then.
JTH sprinkles the text with quotations from all manner of sources and references to others throughout history who were tainted by 'the madness of true believers'. Shakespeare, the Bible, Boccaccio, Defoe, Buddha, the Ancient Greeks and a host of others all get a look-in in this crackerjack read.
Thoroughly recommended.

Albany revisited
Though I was only there because my dad was so sick, I had a great time revisiting Albany, capital of the Great Southern region of Western Australia. It's a beautiful port town of about 20,000 on Princess Royal Harbour, secure from the wild seas of the Southern Ocean — next stop south is Antarctica. The region is famous for wheat and sheep farming, meat and dairy cattle, and, increasingly, wine.This pic (above) is of country near Nornalup, on the coast about 60 miles west of Albany.
Being about 250 miles south of Perth, Albany's weather is a lot milder, with more rain and far more bearable summers.

I was there on Sorry Day, Tuesday February 13, when our new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, formally tabled a motion in federal parliament apologising for injustices and wrongs done to Indigenous people, especially those who were part of, and continue to be affected by, the Stolen Generations. It was such a moving and important day. My brother, Garry, and I assembled with about 500 others near the harbour in Albany ... (that's Garry just left of centre, above, with white T-shirt and long ponytail)

... and we all marched up York Street, Albany's main street (below), to celebrate this historic occasion. On another day, I visited friends who have moved to a beautiful bush property near Albany ...... and after lunch on their deck, ringed by bush, flowers and trees, with birdsong to accompany us, we fed the splendid wrens that came happily in for a feast of desiccated coconut. These (above) are all females, with only a hint of blue on their tails. It's the males that have earned them their name::: The drive from Albany to Perth was, as always, a beauty. I sang along to the entire CD of Attempted Moustache, a fabulous album from the '70s by Loudon Wainwright III (father of Rufus and Martha) and stopped here for lunch:This fabulous spot was just north of Kojonup, which proudly states on signs as you enter the town that it was Western Australia's 'first shire with 1,000,000 sheep'!
A bit farther on, I stopped at Arthur River, a tiny town which is almost exactly halfway between Albany and Perth, to take a look at this little country church on the side of the road.Built by and for old settler and farming families, it was consecrated in 1880 and is still in use today. I was particularly moved by the grave of young Cissie ...
... who lies in the churchyard within view of the golden wheatfields and eucalypts.

:: We had a great sleep last night; first night in our own bed for over a month. I love our bed. And our cotton sheets. And my pillow. We'd stayed up until as late as we could — hey! there's a guy from Perth who's a dead cert for the American Idol finals — and slept really soundly, despite three interruptions from the alarm on David's new bedside clock, which he had inadvertently set to 'sleep' instead of 'off'. Fixed now!
:: With all the comings and goings and toing and froing, I've completely missed Chapter III's first anniversary! Such a fun year it's been, and I'm delighted to have several friends in the US, the UK, Australia and elsewhere who come by often and regularly, as well as my family and mates from back home, who were the inspiration for it all. Thanks, guys!

Happy landings Home to a cool, bright sunny day in San Diego, with a lovely feeling that spring may be on the way down here.
The pic above is the view from the Jumbo just before we landed at Melbourne on Saturday arvo. Nothing to do with today's post, but when I close my eyes, I can still see the inside of a jumbo from row 50 seat F in the centre section ... aaaagh!
We drove south from Los Angeles this morning, dazed and a bit stiff after the thirteen-and-a-half-hour flight from Melbourne and 19-hour time difference which meant we arrived before we'd taken off.
The hills of Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps base, and the only section of the 100-mile drive that is not built up, were a mass of dense green, sprayed with masses of the lime-yellow flowers of wild mustard and clumps of bigger orange flowers amid the yellow that I failed to recognise at the speed we were driving.
Utterly gorgeous. Only a few weeks ago, these hills were brown and parched where the wildfires of last October had burned through, in some places right up to the edge of the freeway.

:: I was unpacking upstairs when Mum told me on the phone that Dad was back in hospital again, after a suspected stroke. Gulp. Now, a few hours later, the news is not so grim: a CT scan proves he has not had a stroke (praise be) but everyone is baffled as to the reason for the symptoms he's showing - dizziness, fainting, and a numb and floppy left leg (not the one with the new knee).
Anyway, let's be more cheerful. Here's a pic of Mum and Dad out for a stroll at Middleton Beach, Albany last Wednesday, my last day with them ...Despite the summer's day, dad is wearing the socks I knitted him in the middle of last year! They've been washed and washed, and have been darned at the toe, but he insists on wearing them.
:: And this is me having a last yummy cuddle with my gorgeous grandson, Mack, just minutes before we left for Perth airport and the plane to Melbourne on Saturday.:: I'm far too tired (trying to keep awake to go to bed at the right time to ward off jetlag) to do more than sign off and watch a taped episode of American Idol - YAY! It's back! So I'll see you later!

In the city
Hi all, here I am in Perth, beautiful, sparkling city on the shores of the Indian Ocean. Also the most isolated capital city in the world; more cut off than Anchorage; almost as close to our national capital as we are to Indonesia. They've been having a sweltering summer here, with a whole month of temperatures that never got below 30 C and were more often up in the high 30s and even the 40s.
But for this visit we've jagged a cool, breezy week, with temps in the high 20s. Brilliant.
All is well in Albany, with both patients on the mend. Thanks for all your kind, good wishes and comments and messages.
Dave arrived from the US three hours later than scheduled on Tuesday, and very happy to be here - as I was to see him. We've seen his mum - turning 80 today - and his dad, and we've been rushing about trying to see all our old friends and catch up.
I'm still not able to get to a Mac and get any pics posted, but what the hey! I've taken loads and will get them upo ASAP.
Tomorrow, after coffee and lunch with friends and former workmates, we're heading south to beautiful, beautiful Eagle Bay, where David's family have a house almost on the beach - the sea is at the bottom of the garden. We shall sleep in our old familiar bed, with the windows open to let in the breeze and the sound of the waves. And you ought to see the Milky Way from down there - wow!
More later ...

On ya, Maxine!


Maxine McKew, a former Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist, stood for election as a Labor (ALP) candidate in the seat of seat of Bennelong, New South Wales. This seat has been held for 33 years by John Howard (Liberal), our prime minister for the past 11 years. But Maxine has ended all that!
Howard I hold responsible for Australia's international reputation as a racist nation. I also hold him and his government responsible for the gradual incursion into the national and local political scene of harmful right-wing Christian fundamentalists. I can't tell you how happy I am he has gone!
Costello will not run for Opposition leader, and we have to see if the trumped-up schoolboy Malcolm Turnbull will have a go. Let's hope so! Labor will win the next election as well, and with any luck we can be rid of Turnbull too by then!
The only shame is that the ghastly Alexander Downer didn't lose his seat. I heard him interviewed about his ambitions after being in federal government, and he was aked whether he would attempt to run for state parliament. "Oh no!' he winced. 'Look! You can't possibly be foreign minister for 11 years and then stoop so low as to enter state parliament, for goodness' sake!' I'm paraphrasing, but I'm not far short of what he actually said, the tosser. He never got it, did he?
Good riddance to the lot of them.
Australia can proudly reflect on the fact that it doesn't have a Liberal government anywhere! Yay!

:: While I'm in celebratory mood, here's a silly little soupcon for you from The Novel, so you can have a giggle. The scene: Massimo and Julia are having an evening picnic in the ancient olive grove beside The Big House. They've been prowling round each other for a few days now, and the sexual tension is stringing them tight. Now read on ...

‘We start with bread and oil,’ he said, holding the loaf to his chest and cutting off a thick slice for her.
‘This oil?’ she asked, reaching for her bottle.
‘Yes.’ He cut off the wax seal with his knife, drew out the cork, then poured the green-gold oil into a bowl for them to dip their bread.
A thick stream of oil slid down Massimo’s wrist as he held his bread to his mouth.
Without thinking about what she was doing, Julia reached over, took hold of his wrist and pulled it to her mouth, licking the oil over the base of his thumb and up into his palm. She did not look at him, but could hear his breathing deepen.
‘Waste not want not,’ she laughed slowly, his hand still in hers. Now, looking straight into his eyes, she took each of his oily fingertips softly, silently, just inside her mouth, one by one, well aware that this time she had stopped his breathing altogether.


Okay - there's a lot more that happens with those two and the olive oil on the picnic rug, but that's all I'm letting you know about for now!
I'm at 32,500 words or so, so I'll be romping across the finish line by Friday, I think!

A new page, a new era: HOWARD HAS GONE! Woo-hoo! Wish I was home right now!

Sea-legging it
Last night, David and I were invited to a reception on board the Australian Navy ship, HMAS Sydney (pic above pinched from the RAN website - sorry, guys!). It was a fab little affair, with drinks and canapes and a great and very funny welcoming speech by the commanding officer in whch he equated his ship - a 134-metre-long guided missile frigate with a crew of about 220 - to a sort of blokey souped-up ute with a great big engine and some really fun weaponry.
The officers were all in their formal blues, having left their hats here ...

... which fascinated me. I guess that left both hands free to hold their beers! There were lots of women officers, which was good to see, and the CO explained that the ship was supposed to come with two helicopters, and he'd asked for them, but the navy had given them a band instead. So they put on a special ceremony just for us ...

... with swords, marching, drumrolls and a gun salute, to strike the White Ensign and announce sunset. Then we all sang Advance Australia Fair, with tears in our eyes, followed by the US anthem. The diminutive woman standing at the microphone on the far right of the pic above is the Sydney's gunnery officer - you can just see (if you click for a bigger image) all the gold on the end of her sleeves.
I found a young officer to show me where the loo was, and he took me halfway to the pointy end of the ship, led me inside the washroom and showed me the actual cubicle. I almost expected him to put the seat down for me. Then, once I emerged, he cheerfully led me back to the party. Such a gent!

:: It was all over at 8pm, so David and I hastened back to the Bondi to join our regular team, the Space Bars, for the quiz night. And one of our team members was a very polite young lad from Ohio, Daniel, who is a enlisted man on the USS Princeton ...

... (pic pinched from the US Navy website - sorry guys!). This is a slightly bigger (40 m or so) ship than the Sydney, a guided missile cruiser with about 600 on board. Daniel has been with our team for two weeks, but the Princeton sails soon, so we'll have to wait for him to get back to San Diego.

:: Thanksgiving tomorrow!

Caps off to the Magnificent Seven

I promise I won't endlessly post video clips from YouTube, but I just had to share a laugh with you over the latest VB ad from Australia. For the uninitiated, VB is Victoria Bitter, one of the best and most popular beers in Australia. Unfortunately, we're not serving it at the Bondi because of distribution problems: we just can't get our hands on it.
After you've looked at the ad, you'll see a row of little screens at the bottom of the YouTube screens, and one of them on the right is all about how they made it.

Gold and then some


Congratulations to my Mum and Dad on their fifty-seventh wedding anniversary!
I took this pic in April this year, outside their new cottage in their fabulous retirement village (Club Med) in Albany, on the south coast of Western Australia. They hadn't been there long, but Mum had already made a start on the rose garden - this weekend she told me she'd actually taken over their neighbour's front garden as he wasn't keen, so this part of the village will be looking pretty lush by now!
Mum and Dad were married in London, at a registry office, in 1950. Soon after, Dad spent two years in hospital, having contracted TB in Malta, when he was in the Royal Air Force on his way to Korea.
Not an auspicious start to married life - but it doesn't seem to have mattered!
Dad is from Norfolk, but Mum is a Hertfordshire girl who grew up in the tiny village of Sarratt. During the war, as a girl of 11 or 12, she was evacuated to Southampton (you do have to wonder why!) and lived in appalling conditions in a house there whose owner treated her as little more than a servant.
Anyway - happy days now in their resort in Australia, with loads of great friends, parties every week, quiz nights, walks with Jenny (the Jack Russell), Sunday roasts and DVDs on their huge wide-screen telly.
I love them lots and wish I was closer ...

On a mission

David and I just enrolled to be able to vote in the forthcoming Australian federal election. Apparently, when you're living overseas and are no longer resident at your previous address, you get put back on the roll in your last electoral division. So we had a lovely letter from the Curtin electoral office explaining that though we couldn't vote at all in state elections, we were obligated to do so in federal ones by applying for a postal vote or turning up in person at the 'nearest Australian Diplomatic Mission'. No worries.
And that led Dave and me to think that perhaps we should apply to have the Bondi classed as an Australian Diplomatic Mission - after all, the consul general drops in from time to time when he's not in his mansion in Los Angeles (it backs on to the grounds of the Getty Centre - to die for!)
We thought we could rope off a bit at the back of the public bar, over near the kegs, and when Aussies come in to vote we could offer them a pie and a pencil, with the promise of an icy-cold one after they'd voted - for the right mob, of course!

:: Halloween's coming (October 31) - and it seems the entire country simply cannot wait! Let's get the cozzies organised, the pumpkins carved and on with the party. It's wonderful - one of the best things about living here.
As a measure of the seriousness with which my fellow Americans apply themselves to this annual brou haha, consider the following: my local supermarket has had cartloads of the most enormous orange pumpkins outside for the last fortnight; 'Halloween superstores' have sprung up in almost every shopping centre; Halloween M-and-Ms are on sale; you can book now for pumpkin-carving lessons and costumes are available at hire outlets - and they're for all ages.

I took this pic of a Halloween store in LA the weekend before last (not even in October!) ...

... not a very good pic as it was late afternoon and I pointed the camera through the car windscreen - but you get the idea.
And then even earlier - in the middle of September - this was a little part of Target in Olympia, in Washington:

It'll rise to a fever pitch as the countdown starts - I'll keep you posted!

:: Went shopping last week at Costco, which is a phenomenon and a half ...

I hadn't actually been inside a Costco store before - though I'd heard plenty about these nationwide retail giants, so Cindy (a fellow Bondite) invited me to go with her when she went to stock up for the impending visit of her in-laws.
You pay $50 a year and get an ID card with your picture on it, and then you are let loose with a mega-trolley. There are no frills at all, but everything seems to come in giant-size jumbo containers and at unbelievably low prices. And you can buy anything, it seems: electrical goods, soft furnishings, household goods, car stuff, hardware ...


... food (including top-quality Australian lamb, c-h-e-a-p), spectacles, clothing, pet food, toiletries and medicines. And - right in the middle, unannounced, I hit the mother-lode ...

... vast tables of books. Yum! There was plenty of kids' stuff, and piles of remainders, but the jewels far outweighed the dross. I picked up four current novels that I'd been looking at in B&N, and the dearest of these was $8.
Oh boy - I'll be back with my fifty smackaroos and some more browsing time!