Cross Dressing suspicions

I’m beginning to wonder about my fellow members of the Lawn Bowls Club Ladies Team.

I read today that the Women’s Dragon-boat Racing Team in China turned out to be men in wigs. It seems the Team was of composed of suspiciously big women with Adam’s apples, and now I’m starting to look at the ladies on the lawn more closely.

Specifically at Beryl who is my new partner in the Doubles Championships. (That’s her on the left)

I’ve noticed she’s very shy in the Change Room and, when she drinks a sherry, she clutches the glass in her fist in a most unladylike manner. And she passes wind frequently. If that’s not masculine behaviour I’ll eat my bowls.

Cross Dressing the way to win medals in China

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The truth about safety pins

Absolutely anything could be inside your kitchen drawers, I had a good look inside mine this morning. For 10 seconds. That was quite enough, thank you very much. I can live with the mothballs and the old cat collars, but it’s the safety pins that concern me.

I have a theory about the safety pins but I’m jumpy in case my Council Home Help Girl gets wind of it and reports me to the District Nurse as slipping into dementia. (She interferes like this all the time).

My theory is that safety pins breed in my drawers. Believe me, this actually happens. The common or garden safety pin is the larval stage of the coat hanger!

For years I wondered why I would have a drawer full of safety pins and nothing to hang my cardigans on, then, seemingly overnight, the safety pins would disappear and my wardrobe would be full of coat hangers.

Check it for yourself. Have a look in your own drawers.

Not cotton-picking fingernails

How do you stop chewing your fingernails, overeating, smoking, and picking your nose? My renter, Ghost Works, has a whole heap of people with questions of this nature. In the case of Lee Redmond, nail-biting should be actively encouraged.

If I had nails like that I wouldn’t be announcing it to the world. It seems she became bored with cutting her nails back in 1979 and decided to grow them just for a jolly lark. “It’s strange how they become you,” she said. “It’s almost like it’s your identity.”. Well it would be, wouldn’t it.

I’ll just have a small glass of sherry and gather the courage to ask my renter a question about long fingernails and toilet paper.

Story Link

By the light of the Moon

So it’s all official now. The Moon drives us mad. I could have told them years ago. Forget the romance, string orchestras and soft moonlight.

My dear departed always went a trifle dippy at the Full Moon. I used to keep a small amount of a cash in a vase to bail him out from the local lockup and sometimes I let him sit in the cell all night if I were a tad cranky. And, to tell the truth, it was a pleasant relief to get a little rest from his endless stories of fighting the Japanese. I would have kicked him in the orchestra stalls myself if I weren’t such a lady.

In 18th-century England, a murderer could plead lunacy if the crime were committed at the time of the full moon. I wish I had known that.

(I read it in the paper this morning…The Lunar Effect)

The Comfort of a Weeping Statue

Devout Catholic Patty Powell picked up a fibreglass statue while passing through Bangkok, took it home, stuck it on a shelf and then forgot about it. But, in the middle of a hearty Spring Clean, he discovered a miracle!

The statue was crying.

Patty, to give him due credit, immediately realised he was witnessing the Mother of God performing a manifestation of rose-scented, oily tears in a fibreglass replica. Someone like myself, a little slow on the uptake in the mornings, would put it down to delirium brought on by the effort of waving a feather duster around, but Patty is made of sterner stuff.

People are queuing up to see the statue. Apparently it’s giving great comfort to the sick and dying.

Mind you, I’ve seen some rather nice bits and pieces from Bangkok in my time, but nothing that would give me much comfort on my death bed. It only goes to prove that there’s no accounting for taste.

She’s back!

The much-travelled Blessed Virgin Mary, fondly known as the BVM in my schooldays, has returned to bring a little light into the otherwise dreary lives of otherwise dreary ordinary people.

This time she’s appeared in the fat, grease and grunge at the bottom of a George Foreman Grill.

John Milanos was grilling a hamburger when he saw the Holy Mother’s face magically begin to form in the slimy scungy bits that drained from the grill. I don’t know about John, maybe he cleans the grill every time he cooks a chop, but my own griller doesn’t receive such meticilous care and it’s normally caked with last week’s lamb and rosemary sausage. (I think it was last week when I had the sausages).

I bet if I pulled out the tray I could find a whole multitude of heavenly figures.

Stretching your mind with new sights

My Lodger Gina thinks things that would never cross my mind. Not even in a fit.

Today it was : Just as we create flexibility in our bodies by stretching physically, we can create limberness in our minds by stretching mentally. We can do this in small ways such as taking a different route home from work ..

Well I’m always on the qui vive for anything that slows down my inevitable slide into the hellish pit of mindless old age, so I thought I’d give it a try.

I walked a different way to the butcher shop, and found a whole new supermarket had sprung up overnight. With bolts of coloured cloth on the footpath, windows full of dead ducks and aisles and aisles of strange exotic vegetables. Not that I look at vegetables much, nor should you, they’re very over-rated.

For a moment I thought I had inhaled some secondary smoke from my Council Home Help Girl.

Just when I’ve learned to distinguish between cappuchino, capocollo and a kreatopita, I have to grapple with a congee and a chua. Quite enough mental stretching for one day.

I had to have a little sherry to recover.

The Raw Prawn

I am moved to speak in defense of the prawn, a misunderstood little fellow, who asks nothing more than to give us a little pleasure when we bite into a scrunchy bit.

Family Says Flying Prawn Killed Jerry — The family of Jerry Colaitis claims he wrenched his neck, and later died because of it, after ducking to avoid a shrimp tossed by a hibachi chef.

They are seeking $10 million in damages, saying Jerry died from complications caused by neck surgery twelve months later.

The flying shrimp incident occurred in January 2001. Colaitis went to a chiropractor, then needed three neurosurgeons, and then underwent surgery in June. The surgery caused complications and, another ten months later, Colaitis suddenly died. Lawyers blame the shrimp.

Can you see the basic flaw here? What’s wrong the young people of today? A prawn hurled across a room didn’t hurt anyone, (apart from the prawn itself which, hopefully, was well and truly dead before its fateful flight).

The lesson here is — stay away from chiropractors, neurosurgeons and surgery. In that order. And keep clear of lawyers while you’re about it.

My lodger

You must have noticed the well-mannered young woman who has taken up lodgings in my front room. A young woman of great good sense (librarian) who eats chocolate teddy bear biscuits when under pressure.

I like the way she has her baby photo blended on her blog. I’m going to ask my Council Home Help girl to ferret out some old snapshots of myself before the world got to me. Maybe there’s still one of me before the school milk changed my appearance (and outlook) altogether.

Free Milk for Schools

Yesterday I touched on a subject which remains vividly in the memory of many readers. The Free Milk for Schools scheme.

I’m not the only one who suffers recurring nightmares of forgetting to shake the bottle before opening and copping a mouthful of warm, lumpy cream, but fortunately no one else endured the horror of Miss Callanan who policed the crates in our school playground making sure no child got free without a bottle.

Even when the magpies had already pierced the top of the lid, there was no escaping the forced ingestion of Free Milk in all its curdled foulness.

It was the defining childhood experience that taught me the absolute necessity of being able to lie convincingly. “That’s mine Miss!” pointing to any old empty bottle in the crate.

It also taught me that some boys will do anything for a dare.