Canoe

Since we live near the water, we have been thinking of buying a canoe for a while - something cheap on eBay. However, I have always wondered how we would get it from our backyard to the water.

This photo shows the way ahead. A bike, a bit of rope and just tow it across the grass.

Near death at the markets

I went shopping at the Flemington markets yesterday. Can't fault the place - I did the grocery shopping for about a third of what it would cost me at the local supermarket.

The only problem with the markets is getting out of them alive. I had a good look yesterday and did not spot a single person with blonde hair. As far as the eye could see, the place was a heaving mass of Chinese and other ethnic types - those that are way to smart to shop at Coles. Good on them for spotting a bargain a mile off, but they should be forced to park a mile away from the place. There are cars constantly on the move looking for a parking spot or trying to get out, and the Chinese drivers just can't drive. You really take your life in your hands everytime you cross a road at the markets.

And never get in the way of a Chinese woman trying to do her shopping. A sharp elbow in the guts will be your only reward.

Filthy poms

I say "filthy poms" in the expectation that Bondi will be overrun with poms celebrating the new year tonight. On the way back from the beach, I listened to an interview with a DJ who was playing at Bondi tonight, and of course he was a pom.

In previous years, the beach and surrounds have been a disaster area the morning after. No swim for me on new years day - I don't fancy walking down to the surf through a sea of beer bottles.

The council has prepared a bit better this year - the sea wall is lined with rubbish skips from one end of the beach to the other. Big bright yellow things. Somehow I get the feeling that they will not be well used by the revellers, who will just drop their crap on the ground where they stand.

New years eve becomes more of a pain in the arse with each passing year.

Take away coffee

On the way to Bondi this morning, I was stopped at a set of lights when I spied a pedestrian getting ready to cross. She was wearing exercise clothing, and was carrying a coffee in a cardboard takeaway container.

That is one bloody American import I reckon we can do without. I don't mind drinking coffee in the car when I'm on a long drive and I need a bit of stimulant, but I don't get this idea of walking around with a steaming cup in your hand. When I drink coffee, I like to sit down somewhere nice and drink it. I like the pleasure of whiling away 15 minutes or so in a cafe with a paper or some friends and just relaxing. There's nothing relaxing about running around with a takeaway - it just exudes "I'm a very busy person", which to me says "wanker". No one is too busy to stop once a day and just sit down and enjoy life.

I would support the greenies if they started a campaign to ban those stupid cardboard cups.

Then again, maybe not. Somehow I think that I don't want to sit in a cafe with the types of people that order takeaway. Maybe it is better to get rid of them and to send them out onto the street where they belong.

My Bondi mornings are rooted

I went back to the beach this morning for another nose clearing episode, followed by breakfast, and had my morning ruined by the Bondi Kiosk. The people running it now have definitely fiddled with things. I eschewed the Spanish omelette this morning and went for something really simple - poached eggs with mushrooms.

Problem number 1 - they were out of turkish toast, so I opted for some multigrain stuff. Personally, I think multigrain is only fit for feeding to birds. But it was that or nothing, so I went with it. The bread came out as a big, inch thick slab of dried ick. On the side was a little circlette of butter - enough to cover about half a slice of toast at Ethiopian diet thickness. The staff were too useless to ask for more, so I just put up with it.

Problem number 2 - the eggs were poached to within an inch of their life. I like my eggs gooey in the middle. When lightly poked, yellow stuff should explode out everywhere. The only way these things would have exploded is if they fell on a land mine. They were as hard as a hard boiled egg with the shell still on.

Then came the mushrooms. The Kiosk used to be the only place I ordered mushrooms due to the special way they cooked them. They used only small button mushrooms, and oven baked them with sweet Indonesian soy sauce and oregano. The result was delicious. The new mob have ditched that method, or the cook took his secret with him, and they are now just sliced and poached in butter. Sorry, but that is not for me.

The coffee was also not that great. The thing I like about lattes is that they are smoothe. They go down very easily. Not so the coffee this morning - it was a bit of a struggle to get it down. I didn't finish it, which is heresy.

So that is my last visit to the Kiosk. Unless it changes hands again, and I will give the new owners a go.

I now have to decide whether I can be bothered getting off my arse and writing them a letter telling them all the ways they have ruined my favourite breakfast haunt.

And to cap it off, there was no surf this morning. But at least my nose was 80% clear by the time I got out of the water. At least they can't bugger up the water.

Crusty pizza

A new pizza parlour has opened up in our neighbourhood - it is called Crust, and it is a gourmet pizza establishment. You can tell it is gourmet by the price - a large pizza is $20.

We decided to try them out the other night. Well, I decided to try them out as it has been ages since I have eaten a smoked salmon pizza. The last one was one I made myself, and I had this idea in the back of my mind that a gourmet place should be able to do a better salmon pizza than moi.

So I drove up to the shop, placed my order and sat back to watch the crew make pizza. The shop layout is quite simple - it is purely takeaway, and the counter that you order at is where they make the pizza. Two blokes stand there behind glass putting on the toppings and then it is fed into a conveyor oven. You can see the entire manufacturing process right there in front of you.

A few things stuck in my mind as I sat there on my trendy red cube watching things happen.

For starters, they had a fancy roller doo-dad for rolling out the dough. One bloke stood there and fed a lump of dough into the top and a lovely round pizza base popped out the botton. I was gobsmacked. Rolling out dough usually takes me a few minutes per base when I get the dough right, which is about 1 in 5 occasions. I don't want one - there is no room for it in our house.

The next step was smearing on the tomato sauce. One bloke was doing that, and he was really working at it. I just spoon a few blobs onto the base and whizz it around with the back of a spoon, but he was concentrating on it so hard that I figured he was a plasterer during the day. Each base was perfectly covered with an even layer of sauce by the time he was finished. When you think about it, he was wasting lots of time. When you eat a pizza, do you really care if the sauce is evenly spread?

After that, it went to the topping guys. They had lots of fancy pizzas, which you can lookup at www.crust.com.au. I watched them make a few dozen, as they were fulfilling orders that were phoned in. One that stuck in my mind was a Morocan pizza. It was topped with spicy lamb mince, and the bloke that was making it layered it on about an inch thick. Then the owner turned up, took one look at it and told the guy off for spreading it too thin! He proceeded to lay on another half inch or so. I was stunned - I think less is more when it comes to pizza, and these guys were totally into more-more-more. My salmon pizza ended up with several packets of salmon on it. It was too much - way too much. I ate half the pizza when I got home and binned the rest.

I also ordered a vegetarian, and that didn't go down well either. The vegies were shoveled on half a foot thick, and they weren't cooked very well.

They did get the crust right though - it was very good. Pity everything above the crust was such crap. Well, not crap, but certainly not worth $39 for two pizzas. I was really disappointed.

I also worked out that something was missing from the salmon pizza - sour cream. Thankfully I had some in the fridge, and that improved the pizza by about 500%. I normally also put caviar on my salmon pizza, but they weren't that fancy.

In the end, I decided that I can make over twice as many pizzas for the same money, and make them better. Which is a bugger, as it means I have to cook them from now on. No more takeaway pizza for us.

Iced coffee

I found out this week how to make a really bad iced coffee.

For months now, I have been making it at home with instant coffee and the results have not been that bad. Not great, but drinkable.

On the way back from the country last week, we visited some friends who are a long way from the nearest cafe, so they have an expensive, whizz-bang coffee maker in their kitchen, and they buy in deluxo beans from somewhere. I was in need of some coffee for the last push into town, so I thought I'd make an iced coffee using a short black from this superb coffee machine as the base.

Well that was a blunder. As it turned out, it made really bloody awful iced coffee, and it needs full fat milk, not the skim rubbish that they had in their fridge. For some reason, iced coffee has to be made with el-cheapo crapo instant coffee. It doesn't even need to be fancy instant coffee. Well ok, I have not tried making it with that really, really cheap muck that comes in a tin, but fancy beans are a waste of time when you are going to ice it.

Who would have thought that?

Saint Bob

I think I will write to His Holiness, The Pope and ask him to nominate Bob Geldof for sainthood.

In Somalia, the recently ousted Islamisists are complaining that the invading Ethiopian Army are crusaders (as they are Christian).

The Somalians have been trounced partly by Ethiopian air power, which includes a stack of aircraft bought from Russia in the 1990's. I read somewhere that they spent $US250 million after being whacked around by the Eritreans.

Live Aid reportedly raised $US280 million. Hmm, I see some symmetry in those numbers. Bob Geldof raises money from the West to re-equip the military of a Christian country. That Christian country then invades a muslim country, sparking off accusations of a crusade. Crusade is quite succesful so far.

In that case, Sir Bob should be made a saint for financing the first succesful crusade in about 900 years. Never figured him for a muzzie whacker.

How should pancakes be cooked?

We have a small difference of opinion in our household about pancakes. If I want to eat pancakes, I have to whip up and cook my own as no one else will eat them. Conversely, if J cooks them, I find them inedible. It's amazing that something made out of milk, eggs and flour could turn out so differently depending on who is making them.

I usually avoid pancakes when eating out. They're usually thick, cold and covered in 10 types of crap that I don't want. I like to nibble on what someone else has bought, but I could never chew my way through a meal of them on my own. Yes, I like whipped cream and berries and maple syrup, but I like them in small amounts. I don't like a huge mountain of the stuff strewn over a pile of cold, rubbery pancakes. It looks good and goes down like a wet dish cloth.

Me, I like them plain and simple. Eggs, flour and milk, beaten to a thin, non-lumpy consistency. When poured into the frying pan, the mix should immediately head for the four corners of the pan (metaphorically). They should be cooked in butter over a medium heat - not so hot that the butter burns, which is just plain yuk. It goes without saying that they can only be flipped once, and I normally flip when the top has dried out (ie, no more wet stuff sitting around in puddles). If the mix is good and the pan the right temperature, bubbles should form all over the surface of the uncooked side.

Once flipped, I don't like to cook them for too long. I hate them to be dark brown. Just a nice, light shade of tan will do me fine. If the mix is not too thick, they will be cooked all the way through. If the mix is like tar and the pancake is half an inch thick, you need to blacken them on the outside before the inner bits stop being raw.

Once cooked, straight onto a plate for dusting with sugar, sprinkling with freshly squeezed lemon and then rolled up and eaten straight away. No pancake should sit on a plate for more than half a minute. Any more than that, and they start to cure like rubber.

The only option for me is maple syrup, and I usually work my way through a stack with 75% sugar/lemon and 25% syrup.

J goes the other way. She throws a stack of cinnamon sugar into the mix, and cooks them in oil. I fry pork chops in oil, but never pancakes. Each to their own. I guess it is like how some people are folders and some are scrunchers. You can never convince someone else to change.

What a way to crap up Christmas

My flu bug finally seems to be on the way out the door. Might even be able to remount the bike next week and pedal into work on the first work day of 2007. Just one annoying thing to get rid of, and that is the bucket of snot that is still stuck up my nose. I have been coughing and sneezing this gunk out for two weeks, and it shows no sign of abating.

So I pulled out the number one ace snot cure this morning - a trip to the beach. The best snot cure seems to consist of getting dumped in a big surf half a dozen times, but alas, that was not to be this morning. There were waves, but the ocean was like a large washing machine and the waves were uncatchable. I had to make do with swimming to and fro in the chop and blowing out hunks of green goo every now and then. I really needed to catch a few waves and inhale some salt water up my nose as I am still a bit clogged. I don't know what it is about body surfing that puts so much water up your nose. Maybe once you catch a good wave you don't notice all the spray hitting your face and going up your snoz. Whatever it is, body surfing is the only truly effective nasal clearance technique.

No swim at Bondi is complete without a good breakfast, and I have been looking forward to returning to the Kiosk for 6 months. I haven't swum since June or July, and I have been missing the place. Last time I ate there, it had just been bought out by a guy who went to my school. I had a long chat with him the day after he signed the papers and he swore he wasn't going to tamper with the place too much. I continued to go back month after month, and the only thing that changed were the staff as they slowly rotated. However, the replacements were a good bunch - friendly, good hearted and chatty. The cook thankfully remained the same, so the food wasn't screwed up.

Then I walked in the door this morning after a 6 month absence and the decor had changed. Some stuff behind the bar had changed slightly as well - but not enough to make a big difference. The big change was the staff - the cook was nowhere to be seen, and not one of the staff was familiar. To cap it off, there was a really thickset older woman doing the serving, and a silly young chinese thing with too much rouge taking orders. If there was one constant at the Kiosk, the staff were attractive. Not stunning, but attractive. Male or female. Apart from the cook, they all looked like they had risen at dawn, run along the beach and then been for a swim. They were fit and toned.

The new lot looked like a bunch of rejects from The Biggest Loser. I looked around in vain for a familiar face, and then noticed that the menu had changed. The items were still the same, but the format was new.

Uh oh.

Ordering used to be easy. I'd sit at the bar and the cook would yell out, "Spanish or eggs", meaning did I want a Spanish omelette or poached eggs with mushrooms. The barista would simply plop a latte in front of me. All that is now a fond memory. After 10 minutes, I finally managed to catch one of the staff and give my order. I sat there reading the paper, waiting for my coffee to arrive. I read the first section of the SMH - no coffee. I read the "Drive" section. No coffee. I read the sports section - no coffee. I re-read the front section, and then breakfast arrived.

Uh oh, fucked it up and got the order wrong. I did not order plain scrambled eggs. Back to the kitchen with that lot.

Coffee finally arrives.

After re-reading some more sections of the paper, my Spanish omelette arrives.

It was dry and distinctly lacking in taste. The coffee was a bit burnt and bitter.

Bugger bugger bugger. The only thing that hadn't changed was the price. And it isn't worth it.

Thankfully, there are two completely adequate cafes next door that I have tried from time to time, so I only have to relocate about 20 feet. I might give them a second go in the morning, since I figure I still have a bit more snot to go. Today could have just been a bad day - Christmas rush and all that.

For their sake, I hope so.

Country salad

Country folk might know how to grow food, but they certainly can't cook it. I find eating in country cafes to be the worst culinary experience possible, and I have eaten in the back streets of Hong Kong and spent many years at boarding school. Country cafes are the epitamy of that old "Odd Angry Shot" saying about Army cooks - they are fitters and turners. They fit food into pots and turn it into shit.

Thankfully, things are changing slowly. Junee now has a place that serves edible food on plates. They also have a burger shop that sells good burgers, but they are sold in paper bags rather than plonked onto plates.

I was so impressed, I had to take a photo. The salad was not going to win any Golden Plate awards, but given that it consisted of carrot, cucumber, tomato, lettuce and beetroot, it was quite amazingly excellent. It actually had a good dressing that didn't taste like oven cleaner. Call me stunned, but it was good.

Clean out your paddocks

I am yet to meet a farmer with a clean farm. There is always a dumping ground somewhere with all sorts of rusting crap piled up gathering cobwebs.

Well, there's money in crap. We stopped at an antique shop at Wallendbeen (of all places) and their front yard was full of stuff like this. Painted on it are two words - "sold" and "$195".

Old rusting tractor wheels were fetching $10 to $40 and an old lawn roller was on offer for $40.

Unbelievable.

It's all thanks to sir Bob

I see in the paper today that Ethiopia has invaded Somalia and whipped the Koran lovers. Part of the reason is that Ethiopia has quite an airforce, mainly equipped with reasonably modern Russian fighters and ground attack aircraft. Apparently they spent $250 million on new planes back in the 1990's.

I guess we can thank Live Aid for that. Good on your Sir Bob - you helped equip a Christian country with the modern weapons that it needs to conduct a crusade against the Muslim hordes.

Hope he chokes on a tofu cake when he reads that.

Too many crystals and not enough deoderant

We've just had a week in the country, visiting the in-laws about 6 hours south-west of Sydney. A normal drive would be six hours, but we took to the backroads shortly after Yass and stuck our nose into all the little country towns along the way. The highway lets you see little but a selection of McDonalds and KFC and advertisements for truck insurance. It's nice if you are in a hurry to get anywhere, but who is ever in a hurry to visit the in-laws?

Just off the turnoff to Harden is a little town called Bowning. It is only about 2 kms off the Hume, and I have been through it many times before on work trips. I normally zip through it at the speed limit as there never seemed to be anything worth stopping for. On the way down, we did pass something worth stopping at - a gallery called "Bigsky", but I was so shocked at seeing something we should stop for, I forgot to hit the brakes and next thing you know, we were out of town. Made a mental note to stop on the way back.

Which we did. The gallery is owned by a yank called Troi. No, I have not mustyped Troy - all his stuff was signed Troi. It's like "Tiffany" with 3 "i's" and 2 "n's". He was a well-inked individual - both his arms were totally covered in tattoos, as was one leg down to his ankle. He seemed like a very relaxed kind of bloke - nothing Hell's Angel about him. The artwork was nice - no skulls with dripping candles perched on them etc. Some of it looked quite Japanese. Interesting.

We ended up buying a vase to replace one that I broke recently. The big selling point for me was that it had a very heavy base, meaning that it is very hard to tip over. I'm sure the colours are nice too.

Next to the vases was a bit of blurb about the artist. I read one paragraph and that was enough for me. It said that he learnt how to paint vases whilst in residence in an artists colony at Uki or Oki in the 1970's. Got no idea where that is - I thought Oki was a brand of printer.

A few words stuck though - "1970's" and "artists colony". A nice phrase for "hippy commune". As Jeremy Clarkson would say, "wierd beards".

J put it nicely - "too many crystals and not enough deoderant".

Il Cortile

Just had a feed at a newly discovered Italian restaurant in Balmain called Il Cortile. It was touch and go for a while as to whether we could go out, given the sniffles and all, but we blew our noses and cleared our throats and made a night of it.

Il Cortile is a bit of a strange "discovery", given that it is right next door to Circle, where I eat once a week. I have been walking past it for a year at least and have never noticed it. So much for making your presence felt!

J found the place during the week when she was doing a walkabout for her kiddies guide book. That involved going door to door to most businesses and trying to get them to sign up for entry in a book that she is publishing about kiddie friendly places in our area. Her work has already paid off, as Il Cortile was a great place to go.

For starters, it is just the right size. Not too big and not too small. There is a nice garden area out the front, but it was too windy tonight to sit there. There is also a nice little courtyard out the back with a fountain and some fish in it, but the place was too quiet for them to open it up. It has a great big fuck-off pizza oven - you could roast half an ox in it if required. It also has an open kitchen, which is great for those that want to see what is going on. Unfortunately, we were right next to it, and my back was to it, and I got pretty bloody hot as a result. However, that did not detract from the night.

The food was very good all round. The wine list looked good as well. I had a beer soaked pork belly on a "crumpet" of kumera and apple, and it was marvelous, swimming in a mushroom sauce. Magnificent. Better than most 5 star restaurants would do. Succulent, tasty and not too much of it.

Between everyone else, we also had a vegie stack (excellent), fish cakes (excellent), callamari rings (very good). The callamari rings came with a very nice little spicy tomato sauce which looked home made, and they didn't skimp on it.

For mains, I had a veal parmigana type thing (I don't think I can spell it). It was very simple, but very good. The best I have ever had. It was a bit of a tester dish - if they could do something that simple very well, then they could cook anything well. It is like testing a place with fish and chips - if you can't fry fish and chips properly, you should be in a different line of work.

The rest had a vegie pizza of some sort (so good, the uneaten half was taken home in a doggie bag), a steak with blue cheese sauce (it seemed to be wolfed down, so it couldn't have been too bad) and a salmon steak of some sort for the "fishy" vegetarian. There were no complaints. The plates were very bare at the end.

I could have called it quits after the main course, but we just had to try dessert. We shared two chocolate mousse between the six of us, and that was probably one too many. The rest of the food must have been very good as the only quibbles were about the mousse - it had been sitting in a display cabinet for a while and had developed a slightly rubbery skin. I didn't mind it at all. It was good mousse - not the best mousse (L'angelo does better), but it was good. Worth having again.

The service was quite good and the staff were more than happy for the little monkey to run around the place causing non-destructive havoc. The nice thing is that it had good atmosphere - Monkey visited most of the tables around us and charmed the pants of the other patrons. One bloke was so impressed at how much fun we were having, he came past for a chat and gave us $2! Unbelievable.

I'm definitely going back. We had a short yarn with the owner, Christine, who informed us that the place had been going for about 10 years and her and her daughter had owned it for a year or two. The do breakfast on Sundays, so we are going back after Christmas for a morning feed.

The entrees were all around the $14 mark and the mains around $18. The pizzas were all about $15 - an absolute bargain for the quality. Dessert was $10, with fancy desserts going for $14.50.

I'd class it as a better than average place with lower than average pricing. The food was simple, but of great taste and quality.

Big thumbs up.

Fucking broken parking meters

Balmain is one of those suburbs where the parking meters are thick on the ground - so thick, they look like an invasion of Daleks. Most of the time though, if you can be bothered parking one street back from the main drag, you can avoid the meters.

When we lunched today though, we found that the backstreet was metered. So I went to the first meter, plugged in some coins and it refused to issue a ticket. It also refused to give me back my $2. It just sat there with a "smart cards now accepted" message on its face and did not respond to any input.

Useless pile of crap.


Knowing how evil the parking inspectors are, I went to another meter and fed it my remaining $3 in change. It seemed to accept it quite happily, but also refused to issue a ticket. Sounded like it was out of paper.

Each machine had a lovely label on it saying, "in case of problems, call this number and quote the machine ID". Of course I had not taken my mobile with me, as I was totally uninterested in taking any work related calls, given that my head was partially splitting from a headache.

It's time like those that I wish I had a large sledgehammer in the car. I was worried that if I didn't call the fault in, some bastard would come past and issue me with a ticket. But I was stuck, so we said what the hell and had lunch.

And returned to find a windscreen devoid of tickets. I think I would have gone postal at the Balmain council offices if I had been issued a ticket.

If councils want to take your parking money, they can at least ensure that the bloody meters are in proper working order.

Useless sods.

Miss Saigon

I find that when I am feeling like crap with the flu, there are two things that give me back a bit of bounce:

1. swimming in the ocean, particularly if it is cold
2. Thai food

I have never tried the two together - ie, having a swim and then some Thai food, mainly because I like to swim before breakfast (when not many Thai places are open) and because there are not many Thai places near where I like to swim (Bondi). Lots of cafes and the odd sushi joint, but not much Thai. Well, okay there is one near the north end of Bondi, but it is crap.

The cold surf is marvelous for getting all the green gunk out of the lungs, nose and throat. Swimming in a pool is no substitute. Good, hot Thai food does much the same.

The last few days have been nasty. Yesterday was spent mostly in bed - 8 Nurofen only sufficed to take the edge off my headache (that included 4 of the Plus variety), and today was looking much the same. The only answer was to either swim, or have something spicy for lunch.

J suggested that we try a Vietnamese place in Balmain. Normally, I hate Vietnamese food. I have always considered it a poor cousin of Thai. A sort of slightly spicy Chinese, or a bland version of Thai. I've never liked it, except for the rice paper rolls - they can be excellent.

So I kind of went along expecting the worst.

We had two types of rolls for entree - a vegetarian batch with tofu and a non-vegetarian batch with prawns. They were good. Not great, but good. Good enough to go back, given that it is the only place for about 10 miles around that makes them. I think the disappointing bit was the peanut dipping sauce. Just not enough bite.

For main, we both had a salad. I had a salad with lots of prawns and chook, and J had a similar salad with roasted chook. Both were very good. I have had better at a Thai restaurant in Mosman, but the Mosman place costs nearly double what Miss Saigon charges, and it is too far away for a casual meal. And the Mosman place is damned near impossible to get into.

I felt much better after lunch - the salad was crisp and spicy and hot enough to really get the glands working again. I felt vaguely human. Only needed two Nurofen and a sleep to make it through the afternoon.

So Miss Saigon gets a thumbs up. I'll be back. However, I'll be careful what I order. Half the menu looks like slightly souped up Chinese (yuk) or bland Thai. I'll stick to the entrees and the salads, which all looked very good.

Laywers

Got a christmas card from my lawyer today.

Wonder if he will bill me for it....

Sunday

I curse this bloody head cold. The guts have cleared up but now my nose is blocked solid and my eyes are puffy and I feel like a different kind of crap.

I would love to jump on the bike and go for a spin somewhere - anywhere would do, but at the moment, I couldn't make it to the end of the street.

So I am standing there in the kitchen this fine Sunday morning, feeling like two kinds of crap when I notice lots of rapidly walking people going by. I am used to seeing people wandering by leading dogs, pushing prams, carrying remote control cars, footballs and cricket bats, but I have never seen people tearing by. Yes, there was some sort of walking race going on, and an official of some sort was stationed just up the road to look for lifting and that sort of thing. I sniffed, and went and took some photos. I like to walk, and walk quickly, but competitive walking to me looks about as much fun as enema races.

To cap of my lack of exercise misery, lots of cyclists started going by. It was a perfect day for it - hardly any wind, temperature not too high, sun poking out from behind the clouds.

I went inside and buried myself in a book. My eyes are so puffy at the moment, I can hardly see what I am typing.

Boohban

Lying on the couch this week in a position designed to minimise the chance of vomiting has introduced me to a whole new world of TV for kids. It's called the ABC and ABC2, and for once, I reckon I got my 8 cents worth.

I always thought that kids TV consisted of Sesame Street, Play School and a whole pile of ads for McDonalds and sugary cereals and plastic toys that choke half a billion kids a year. However, my eyes have been opened.

Some of the shows are dead boring (like "Titch"), but a few are very well made and some are truly whacky. I was quite taken with Boohbah, (more good info via this link) which is a freaky offshoot of the Teletubbies. I have never watched the Teletubbies until this week, and I liked them too. There's something about being sick and watching entertainment designed for tiny little minds.

Boohbah really got me from a technical perspective though as you've got 5 people dressed up in these enormously fat, furry suits. Apart from the fact that their head-disappearing trick reminds me of something that you can do with a foreskin, I was amazed at the stamina of the Boohbahs. I had to wear a Care Bear suit once for a store promotion, and it just about killed me to just stand around in an air conditioned shop for a few hours. Sweat was bucketting off me. These Boohbah guys are doing star jumps, leaping around and generally doing stuff that would turn the inside of the suit into a wet sponge. Considering the suits are wired with little flashing lights, I'd be a bit worried about sweating in one too much.

So I lay there on the couch feeling like crap and admiring these guys as they did starjumps in the equivalent of a furry NBC suit for a few minutes. They must be ex-Marines. If you don't know what I am talking about, watch Jarhead for the scene where they play American football in NBC suits.

I liked the kids stuff so much, I have taped about 10 hours of it. Certainly beats watching the news.