Fiction Fridays: Where The Wild Things Are

Where The Wild Things Are

by Maurice Sendak, 1963

this edition: Red Fox, 2000

The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind

and another

his mother called him "WILD THING!"

and Max said "I'LL EAT YOU UP!"

so he was sent to bed without eating anything.

This week Maurice Sendak passed away, so I will be surprised if I am the only one to cover this book in Fiction Fridays this week.

My kids are not so sure about this book, and when I was a kid I wasn't so sure either. It's a fantastic, compelling book, and is part of most of our childhood memories. But it sits somewhere in a child's imagination between delight and nightmares, and evokes complicated reactions.

One of the clever classics.

It's about growing up - striking out, testing your skills and learning your limits.
It's about learning self-control and anger management.
It's about the tension between independence and belonging.
It's about leadership.
It's about taming one's inner beasts.
It's about giving freedom to the magic of the imagination.
It's about the nature of love and control.
It's about family.

And of course, it's about a little boy who is naughty and gets punished, which initially makes him angry and rebellious, until he gets hungry and lonely and returns to the comforts of family.

Who doesn't love that last page about Max's supper:

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Last Week In Photos

Nothing much happened, but one can find joy in the minutiae of the everyday, n'est-ce pas? So here are some snaps from my week last week.

Monday 30 April
Our egg carton had a couple of eggs with little fluffy feathers still attached - ouch! poor hens :( . This was very exciting for the kids because they are city kids deprived of proper contact with nature. They have "collected" one feather each to add to their "collection" of seagull and magpie feathers. These are to be used in the future in some unspecified but no doubt demanding and unrealistic craft project.





As winter weather set in (a bit EARLY thank you Melbourne), I made egg and lemon soup from leftover roast chicken. The bones with a carrot, an onion and some salt and pepper made the stock, then you add arborio rice, and gradually stir in a mix of beaten eggs and fresh lemon juice, and the chicken is shredded and tossed in towards the end. Mmmmm.
Kids wouldn't eat it, but my husband and I love it
: )




Tuesday 1 May
While kids were at Greek school in the late afternoon, I donned my walking shoes and did three laps of the (small) oval at the high school where they go to class. Saw these gorgeous galahs hanging around a discarded football on the field. Tried to think of a funny or profound meaning for this but could not.

Wednesday 3 May
Apart from the RBA slashing interest rates 0.5%, the only thing I have from this day is this hilarious thing on Twitter:

Sam Blackledge@samblackledge

If this doesn't make you laugh you're probably dead insidetwitpic.com/9gaj36

Twitter link

Thursday 4 May
Rain! Lots and lots of rain!

The kids had a school excursion to the Melbourne Aquarium and came back with tales of Emperor Penguins, starfish, jellyfish, sharks, stingrays and assorted other goodies. It makes me want to go. Lucky their school trip came with a free pass each for a future visit - because going there ain't cheap.


Finishing work at dusk, I returned to my car on the rooftop of an unfamiliar carpark to find these beautiful views of the city skyline:

Friday 5 May
Germaine Greer caused quite a kerfuffle on Q and A in March when she had a (yes, catty - OK?) dig at the Prime Minister's clothing. It got her quite a few laughs on TV so she rolled on, starting with "those bloody jackets!" and ending with "You've got a big arse, Julia!"
Absolutely unedifying, and she has been pretty well lambasted since.
So this morning I snorted when I opened the paper to find her new weekly column:

This read like a face-saver to me. Caught out in an anti-feminist rant, she tried to save face by putting a feminist spin on her outburst and dressing it up as something that. it. just. was. not.
Nice try Greer!



Saturday 6 May
At 11am the girls have dancing classes, and for that hour and a half I have started a little routine where I spend 30 minutes walking and the rest of the time sitting with coffee and the morning papers. Two weeks ago my mother met me and we went for coffee at a little Swiss bakery in the local shopping strip, where we had the most perfect lemon cake ever invented.

This Saturday, I got my weeks mixed up and thought Mother's Day was the next day. My mum has always been very insistent that Mother's Day gifts should be "a token". It comes from childhood you see - the gift must come from the child, so should be something small - a homemade picture, some flowers, something hideous from the Mothers Day stall at school. So on Saturday I walked to the little Swiss bakery and bought my mum a delicious lemon tea cake. I was so chuffed with myself. I had nailed it - the perfect Mothers Day gift!

And it was except it was a week early.


Later that day I went supermarket shopping and saw THIS has sprung up at my local shopping centre. Was this really necessary?

Sunday 7 May
The girls and I finished up the week with a craft project, courtesy of Mister Maker on TV.
We (I) collected twigs from the garden, then the girls painted them, and when the paint was dry they stuck them in a blob of play-doh, painted on some glue and covered the whole thing with glitter.

Easy, and takes a gratifyingly long time. (You need that in a craft project, for the kids to enjoy it and for you not to waste time dealing with paint, glue and glitter for a five-minute thrill).

I won't ask what you did last week, as it's so long ago now.
How is your current week going?

I'll Bring the Salt and the White Beans

In the giddy days after finishing work late last year, after ten years at the same financial services behemoth (which got behemoth-er in my last months there, bought by a Large US Bank in the midst of the GFC), I had plans to organise and declutter my home which I listed here.

I did achieve some of those organisation goals: these ones:

• sorted linen cupboard
• sorted kitchen appliances
• cleaned out sideboard
• new curtains for the girls' rooms - also sorted and tidied the girls' rooms
• carpets steam-cleaned
• house sprayed for bugs and spiders

The rest are still On The List.

But the one I achieved which gave me the most satisfaction, was:

• sorted the kitchen pantry.

For something I wanted to do for about a year and a half, it took me one evening to do it. Admittedly, that was one hard-working, tiring evening. But the result has warmed my heart ever since. I feel organised -grown-up - efficient and capable. I feel like superwoman!

Sometimes I still, weeks later, open my pantry doors and just take a little look and sigh in contentment.

I know this is not what life's all about, but it has even so given me great, quiet joy.

For we have gone from this:

To this:

See? Even the LIGHT is better! (like any good before and after shot!)

Yes, it's true - I used part of my redundancy pay-out to buy a hundred plastic containers! And I'd do it again, I tell you!


You find surprising things when you clean out a pantry. For years we have just stuffed things in there and at times I have found myself looking for things I am sure I had, but not finding them - then after a few despairing attempts at pawing through the various packets and containers, thinking "Huh. I guess I don't have that after all," and buying it on my next shopping trip.

Hence in the great clean-out, I found four packets of rock salt.

And my husband has a similar obsession, clearly, with white beans.

Not sure what's going on there, because he never cooks anything using white beans.


But those strange, unorganised and chaotic days are far behind us now. Thanks to my pantry project, we are now completely organised, efficient and healthy, providing lovingly prepared, healthful and interesting meals every night, with time to maintain our active love lives as well as provide quality time for the children.

Ha ha!



What's on your to-do list? Have you achieved anything recently that has changed your life?

Fiction Fridays: The Fairy Dog

The Fairy Dog

by Jackie Andrews

illustrated by Mary Lonsdale

Award Publications, 2003

Jenny found the fairy dog very early one morning before anyone else was awake.

This was one of those picture books you see going very cheap on a trestle-table in the middle of a shopping centre. So you look at the book awhile to try and work out, is it good value or junk?

It seemed OK, so I bought two, one for each of my girls. At that stage (about a year ago) they were still very much into fairies and we had recently acquired our dog, so they were into dogs too.

Both girls loved this book, but we hadn't read it in awhile. This week A. re-discovered it. She asked me to read it to her and she has since been leafing through it each night before sleep. We are finding that now that they can read a little better, they are starting to re-visit their favourite picture books and read them by themselves (or read what they can), which is great to see.

In this story, the little girl is awoken one morning by a little lost fairy dog at her window. She brings it inside and takes it to her brother, and together with the help of the dog, they work out how to get him home, all before their Dad wakes up.

I like this book for the lovely pictures and the novel idea of a tiny fairy dog, but also there are a couple of subtly unusual things about it:

• There is no Mum in the picture. The only adult who features is Dad
• Dad works late and is often tired; there is an impression that things have perhaps been a bit difficult in the house

This is also one of those great books where the story line can be read as a daydream or wish in the mind of the child protagonist, or read literally as a magical story.

• The fairy dog to me is a figment of the little girl's imagination, relieving her anxiety, fulfilling a wish ("we don't have a dog"), and giving her and her brother control (an adult-free adventure before Dad gets up)
• The fairy dog to my daughters is a magic fairy dog who appears to the kids in the book and grants them a magical gift at the end (their Dad gets a better job unexpectedly)

So all in all, this was $8.00 well spent!

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My First Award

Last week I was utterly chuffed and honoured to have been given a Liebster Award by the wonderful Dr Bron from The Modern Family.

The Liebster Blog Award is an award given to bloggers with less than 200 followers who are an inspiration to others.

This was very pleasing to me for two reasons: (1) someone likes my blog! and (2) OMG that person is Dr Bron! I love The Modern Family which mixes research in family psychology with funny personal posts and bloggy community goodness. Dr Bron wrote an excellent piece about the difficulties faced by at-home mums and employed mums here - this piece was, and still is, very inspiring to me.

The rules of the Liebster Award are:

1. Copy and Paste the award on your blog

2. Link back to the blogger who gave you the award

3. Pick your five favourite bloggers with under 200 followers who deserve to be recognised and leave a comment on their blog letting them know they have received the award

4. Hope the five chosen bloggers will continue to spread the blog award love (but no pressure).

So here are my five:

Kath from Blurb From The Burbs. So many people read and love this blog that I am surprised it still qualifies for this award! Kath writes personal and family stuff with a difference - funny and profound, illustrated with her own lovely/funny photos, her posts usually have me snorting with laughter or smiling wryly in recognition, like a crazy lady at my computer. And they always make me think.


Pandora from Princess Pandora - Queen of Denial. Okay, honesty time, Pandora is a friend of mine - but I do find her blog inspiring. She writes stories of personal journeys and contemplation, lovely gems from her travels, and assorted funny bits like this one.


Single Married Mum. I can so relate to this blog, as a mother often parenting solo while husband is working. Okay, my husband is not overseas for long stretches, so I guess I am pushing it - but I still relate. Wonderful reading about someone else's views on things I can recognise, all with a positive and optimistic slant.


Meggsie from AMFYOYO. Not only is Meggsie very funny, and writes about a world I know very well (family life and corporate life), but she is a beautiful writer who deserves much wider readership. I found her blog through Twitter and I love it.


Melissa from From Boardrooms to Babies. Melissa has swapped a high-falutin' fashion career for parenting at home, and writes about the transition and about family life in general. Her posts are thoughtful and inspiring. She is also building a lovely little community over there, so go and join in!



Now I know not everyone wants to participate in these things, so to all above I say, sincerely: 
no pressure! 
You are free to pass on an award OR to bask in the glow of this one and do nothing!


Thanks for inspiring me.


Jackie

Sex, Politics and Religion

I'm going off topic. We'll resume the usual programming about parenting and working and nervous breakdowns shortly. Meantime, what are your top "versus" topics?

Here are three of mine:

1. Religion vs Atheism

Religion provides valuable cultural and psychological benefits. If it didn't, it wouldn't exist.
Yes, it is associated with much repression and misery within cultures. But that's not the religion per se doing that, it is the way it is used by the powerful. Similarly, religion is a pretext for wars, not a cause.

I have no actual problem with religion.

I send my kids to RE at school (with some guilt and misgivings - but I still think I'm doing the right thing). I am helping them get the experiences and the tools to help them grow in their culture, understand human knowledge and experience, AND question beliefs. We discuss Jesus and God and Heaven sometimes, and where it is appropriate, I am starting to let them know, gradually, that these are not fixed, settled realities. More will follow as they get older.

It might be my 200-years-ago anthropology degree speaking here, but I really believe what works for kids is integrating them into the culture they live in. Give them the belonging and the frameworks and the community. Sow some seeds to allow questioning and rebellion, but let them go either way.


I am, however, a HUGE fan of Richard Dawkins. Some find him smug or snobbish, but what he really is is just relentlessly logical. The God Delusion was a strong, minty breath of fresh air. Remember, Dawkins made atheism okay. That's huge.


[Oh - and while I'm on The God Delusion - for an example of how religious and atheists can discuss these things in a respectful, open-minded way, see this blog: http://isitadelusion.blogspot.com.au/ ]

2. Left vs Right

Photo by bitterlysweet via Flickr CC

I've always been left-leaning myself. My dad and grandfather used to call me "the Communist" when I was a kid, which, all respect to them, is not saying a whole lot. Or I thought it wasn't, until the day my rabidly, cringe-inducingly Far Right grandfather told us he had been a member of the Communist Party when he was young. The shock and merriment this news produced in our family is hard to overstate. Pop explained it with his variant on the Winston Churchill quote * : "If you're not a Communist at 19, you have no soul. If you're still a Communist at 29, you have no brain."

I love that quote because it says a lot about my grandfather, and also it's just funny and true in the way it depicts youthful righteousness slowly morphing to centrist pragmatism with age and experience.

Now there are many things on the right that I dislike. But I have to say the one thing I most dislike on the left is smugness. I hate that whole thing the left tends to congratulates itself with, that being left makes you a kinder, better person.

It's true there are horrendously cruel and uncaring philosophies on the right. The callousness and lack of charity on the American right never fail to take my breath away. There are close-minded, unthinking people who refuse to credit anything outside their own skill or persistence in their success or affluence. So yes, that's true.

But many on the left are not open minded either. They think they are, but they aren't. Open minded doesn't mean adopting every liberal stance going and knee-jerking snarky abuse at other options. Open minded is not rejecting every public utterance of someone because of where they sit politically. Even if they happen to be (gasp!) Tony Abbott or Andrew Bolt.
                But, but... those guys are close-minded!
                               So what?  Be better.  Be open minded.


In Australia up to half the population votes Liberal. Hey, I voted for them once! (I call myself a swinging voter, but I don't actually "swing" so much as consider swinging, most elections).

To dismiss half the population as stupid and greedy is insulting, but more than that - and I think this annoys me more - it is illogical. It is ridiculous to imply that such a large proportion of the population is bad.

There are unthinking, close-minded voters on both sides.  There are people who vote from their hip pocket on both sides. (As Lee Iacocca said in his autobiography, "When we were poor we voted Democrat; when we were rich we voted Republican.")
And there are thinking, caring people voting out of belief for what's best for the country, voting from all sides.


*Winston Churchill quote:  “If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”

3. Marriage Equality vs "Marriage is Between a Man and a Woman".

Well, marriage equality, absolutely. FFS, if nothing else, it's time. I feel the tipping point on this was reached a couple of years ago. So what are the objections?


"Marriage is between a man and a woman." 
C'mon. That language was drafted in the ancient past when homosexuality was unknown to many and taboo to everyone else. We're not in that place anymore.

"It disrespects marriage." 
We have been doing that for ages without help from gay folk. Unhappy marriages, forced marriages, marriages of convenience, marriage for money, political marriages, separations, the divorce rate, people who marry four times... Please.


"What's wrong with a civil union that confers the same legal benefits?" 
Well, I don't know. Let's see: Did you choose a civil union, or marriage?
People want what people want. There is no "real" reason for marriage as such, but people continue to want it. Everyone should have the same access to it.

Photo: Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures 

Your turn!
What are your top "versus" topics?

Fiction Fridays (Saturday Edition): In A People House

I meant to post this Friday. I started it on Friday. I thought about it on Friday afternoon, and I intended to finish it Friday night.
But then Friday evening my daughter A. had a meltdown of gargantuan, exhausting proportions, and as soon as I got the kids to bed I flopped straight into bed and straight to sleep myself. (She's fine now, thank you).

So anyway....

In A People House

By Theo LeSieg

Illustrated by Roy McKie

Random House, 1972

"Come inside, Mr. Bird,"

said the mouse.

"I'll show you what there is

in a People House..."

Dr Seuss wrote as Theo LeSieg on books illustrated by others, and when I think back as a kid I probably liked the Theo LeSieg books best. Dr Seuss was a genius, but his illustrations could be a little creepy.

Re-reading Theo LeSieg books now what I like about them are the really simple illustrations - few of which, I think, would pass muster in a new book today.

Story synopsis:
The mouse takes Mr Bird through a typical middle-class house in 1970s America, and shows him all the things there are:

A People House has things like chairs, 

things like roller skates and stairs.

Banana, bathtub, bottles, brooms,

that's what you find in people's rooms.

As they go through the house the pictures show them using or playing with the things they find, making more and more of a mess and having more and more fun, until a pile of "doll and dishes, teapot, trash" being balanced by the mouse comes crashing down, bringing forth the people who live in the house to toss the animals outside.


Why it's good:
It's a fun book to read because the rhythm is so good, and in usual Seuss/LeSieg style it's funny too. The use of household objects means that kids can talk about which things we have at home ("big blue ball") and which we don't (piano, stairs). The pictures also tell a huge part of the story. As the animals go through the rooms, it's the illustrations that tell the story of the fun and the mess. And the story is from the animals' (i.e., little kids) point of view, in that the people (i.e., parents) are not shown except as disciplinarians at the end (and you don't see them in full). You know how much mess a small wild animal can make if it gets in your house - this story is cute because it imagines that happening because the animals are curious and having fun looking around.

And of course, what kid can't relate to being curious about objects, playing with stuff they're not supposed to, making a sudden mess and being shunted out of a room by giant grown-ups?

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Top 5 Wishes For My Children

This post is linking up with Kate Takes Five: Listography. These are so much fun!

Disney Clip Art

What "inner gifts" would you bestow on your child, if you had fairy godmother powers like the fairies in Sleeping Beauty?



Here's what I would bestow on my daughters (and my nephew), if I could do it with a wave of my wand:




1. Optimism. Very helpful for a happy and productive life. It's not critical, but it helps.

2. Patience / Judgement. Sadly this is one that most of us only acquire with experience (the wrong sort of experience). But if I could bestow it, I would. Not at the expense of some crucial thrills and spills in their younger years, mind. Those are part of a good life too.

3. Empathy / Kindness. I know, we teach our children these, and we model them, and we don't really need a magic wand to bestow them. But they are that important.

4. Middling Beauty. Not raving supermodel good looks, which (I imagine) bring their own kind of pressure and problems, but simple "attractiveness" which is not disruptive and goes far.

5. Friendship. Not just a circle of friends, but the delicate and crucial art of making friends and maintaining friendships.

What would YOU bestow?

For more Listography, look here.

In Pursuit of a Good Commute

Working in stockbroking for the last 15 years, I have long worked in the CBD.
Living in Suburbia Superbia, this means commuting.

PART ONE: In The Olden Days

In my life BC (before children), I took public transport to work: the tram back when I lived in "Zone 1", and the train once I moved to the 'burbs.  I used to enjoy the train because it was roomier than the tram, air-conditioned, and I could sit and read a book.  (Anyone living in Melbourne will recognize this was some time ago, as the trains during rush hour are no longer roomy, and it's rare to find space to read a book).

When I returned to work after maternity leave, having to drop off and/or pick up the girls from daycare (open between 7am and 6pm), starting work at 8am and finishing at 5pm, the train was no longer an option. I wouldn't have got door to door in time.

And so began my life as one of those horrible, selfish, stupid single-occupier car drivers who congest the freeways, hog our city's resources and increase our carbon footprint.

PART TWO: When I Had A Watertight Excuse

Photo by Nationaal Archief via Flickr CC

Where we live, public transport from our house to the train stations is patchy. There is a bus that goes on the half-hour, between 6am and 6pm. I used this approximately two times, because: (1) I could only do it on a day I wasn't doing drop-off or pick-up; (2) I had to get up at 5:00am, then (3) I had to walk a kilometre to the bus-stop, which meant (4) I had to wear comfortable shoes and walking clothes or carry change of clothes/shoes with me, and despite all that (5) I could never catch the bus home from the station anyway, as the last one left at 6pm, which is later than my train from the city would arrive, so (6) I had to pay $12 for a taxi home from the station, thus wiping out the cost benefit of not driving.

All this is not a complaint you understand - we chose to live in a 3-bedroom house in the 'burbs (the audacity!) rather than squash our family into a flat closer in, or spend half a million on a townhouse in a sustainable urban village on the city fringe. I don't expect the government to underwrite my lifestyle or put on a million more train lines. I don't expect my employer to pay me to work half-days, work from home or set up branches in the eastern suburbs.  I don't expect to find work close to home paying the same money or offering the same career opportunities. I don't expect daycare centres to offer 24 hour service or schools to look after my children until evening.

What I would like, if it were a teensy bit possible, is for media types, urban planners, public commentators, inner-city dwellers and bicycle riders to STOP vilifying me for driving to work!!

PART THREE: Current Day

As Tom Vanderbilt points out in his excellent and compulsively readable book Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do (And What It Says About Us), the reasons people commute and their relationship with commuting are complicated.
For example, who can understand this picture?

Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 1971 -
State Library of NSW

But also, consider these points about my own driving habits:

• At some point during the childcare years, we worked out that I did not have to be solely responsible for drop-off and pick-up, since my husband works closer to home than me, and sometimes starts work later. So he started taking them and picking them up 2 days, and the other 3 he dropped them off and I picked them up. This gave me 2 days where I did not have to drive to work. I did "try" to take the train on those days, but my efforts were sporadic. The main reason was time, or more accurately a bit of time and a lot of convenience. If I drive to the station and take the train, going to work takes an hour and twenty minutes. Coming home takes longer - I would not get home until 7pm. In comparison, driving takes 45 minutes. That's a BIG difference. Because as any working-at-the-office mother knows, the later you get home in the evenings, the more shitful the night goes for you and the kids, with the knock-on effects bleeding into the next day (kids are grumpier, mum is more stressed, dinner is rushed, everyone gets to bed later, prep is curtailed for the next day...).  So even when I "should" have used public transport, I usually drove, despite the cost and sometimes the guilt, because that half-hour difference was worth it.

• Currently I only work 3 days, and on 2 of those my husband is at home (he works weekends); which means for two of those days he looks after the kids, gets dinner, etc. As I am home more with the kids I don't feel as guilty about making sure I squeeze as much time as possible being by their sides, plus I am no longer exhausted every day. All of this means that the extra half-hour commute using public transport should no longer bother me on those 2 days, and I should easily be able to take the train to work. But.... I don't. I've got used to the comfort and convenience of driving my car.

Missouri W.P.A. Art Project, 1943
(Library of Congress) - via Flickr

• I have a love-hate relationship with my commute. I wish it was shorter. I am not the world's best driver and am aware that the risk of an accident soars on the days I am run-down or just tired. I know all the costs - petrol, tolls, city parking, risk of crashes, extra wear and tear, and the impact of less movement on my fitness. But I love listening to the news and talk shows on the radio, the familiar banter between Red Symons and Jon Faine, AM with Tony Eastley (and the thoroughly excellent PM with Mark Colvin on the way home) and even (when I am running late), guiltily catching the beginning of the Jon Faine show during the time I should be at work. I like doing my make-up sitting in the carpark five minutes before I go up to work. I like being able to cart stuff in and bring stuff home. (Compare coming home on the train with dry-cleaning).  I do miss walking, which I used to do a lot of. When I do take the train and walk the 2 blocks to work, I notice and enjoy interacting with the environment (pavement, air, sights and sounds) the way you don't in a car. On those days I wish I could walk to work, or catch a tram or a train from walking distance to home.  But I think mostly I am like the commuters mentioned in  Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do (And What It Says About Us), who name the daily commute as the worst part of their day, but when asked what they would like instead, nominate "a shorter commute", rather than "no commute". 

TRAFFIC: Why We Drive The Way We Do (And What It Says About Us)

Here are some excepts that stood out for me from this totally fascinating book:

"98% of US commuters favor public transportation for others." - Headline in The Onion

"As [traffic increases], things get worse for everyone, but as there is still a gain for each driver (getting to work, getting home), that exceeds the gain from not driving, and as the loss is shared by all, people keep joining the freeway."

"...once you have shelled out for a car, the comparatively marginal cost of another trip is barely noticeable - in other words there is little incentive not to drive."

"...a half-mile is as long as planners believe the average person is willing to walk."

"The reason we see so many people on the roads, getting in our way, is that so many of them are doing things that used to be done at home. This, too, is a function of affluence, but it's a complicated relationship. Do we drive to a restaurant for take-out food because we can afford it or because we are so busy trying to make money we have little choice?"

"One study that looked at the working poor found that those with a car were able to get around three times more quickly than those without one. Even people who do not own a car are more likely to commute by car than public transport."

"Trying to crack the commuter psyche is rather bewildering work. On the one hand, people seem to hate commuting.... On the other hand,... when people were asked to name an 'ideal' commute time, their mean response was not, as you might expect..., 'no commute', but sixteen minutes."

And finally, just because it's so good, enjoy "Mr Walker and Mr Wheeler" in Disney's Motor Mania (made in 1950, watched and loved by my family in the 70's, and still so relevant!)

How do you get to work? Do you commute? 

Do you hate it or is it not so bad?

Fiction Fridays: The Bravest Kid I've Ever Known (and other Naughty Stories for Good Boys and Girls)

Hooray! My wireless is back up and at last I can return to Fiction Fridays.
(Blogging anything other than very basic formatting is too hard on an iPad - or at least it is for me).


This week's book - or actually, a story in a book:

The Bravest Kid I've Ever Known

and Other Naughty Stories for Good Boys and Girls

by Christopher Milne

Hardie Grant Egmont, 2010

A Very Naughty Boy

Neil Pike was a naughty boy.

A very naughty boy.

You see, Neil did smells. All the time. Rotten, disgusting smells. On purpose.

According to the blurb at the back, this book was born when the author ran out of stories to read his kids and started making up his own, and found the more "pooey, rotten, disgusting things" in the stories the better they went over.


We haven't yet read all the stories in this book, but THIS story was a huge success with my girls, and no doubt would be with your kids too.


Neil is a chronic and disgusting farter, but manages to save the day when his whole school is swept out to sea due to some very heavy rain (??? the physics are not clear). The save involves the use of many pieces of cloth tied together and strung up on the roof to make a sail, and Neil providing the required ... propulsion to blow them back home.

Miss M. in particular laughed herself so giddy she nearly fell off her bed.

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