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What fashion trend are you most excited to wear this season?

I am definitely too old to be keeping up with seasonal fashion trends.  However I am relieved that the trend for low waisted pants seems finally over and I can now buy non-muffin top inducing jeans again!

Thanks Kath and Kim for drawing much needed attention to this horrible fashion trend (and for creating a term so handy that it has now been added to the Macquarie Dictionary).

 

 

 

What's your favorite type of donut?
Submitted by tomatshonino.

I love donuts (or doughnuts as we spell it) but try and avoid their plaintive calls.  My favourite would probably be the jam ball ones especially if they are a bit hot.  I remember giong shopping with my dad as a kid on Saturday mornings in the Melbourne suburb of Oakleigh and there was a van there selling these doughnuts in bags of six.  You couldn't escape the smell in any of the surrounding streets and I always to beg my dad to buy some (which he sometimes did).  They were so hot that you had to be careful not to burn your tongue on the jam.  I remember they weren't very nice once they went cold, ie, you could really taste the frying oil then.  I also remember these particular doughnuts from the football. 

 

What did you learn in kindergarten that you wish you did a better job of applying to the way you live your life today?

I started primary school at the tail end of the Australian Government "Free Milk Scheme":

Between 1951 and 1973 the Commonwealth Schools' Free Milk Scheme provided one third of a pint of whole milk per day to primary school children throughout Australia. The scheme ceased in 1973 because of escalating costs,resistance from teachers who felt that the distribution of milk was not their responsibility, and evidence that the protein and calcium deficiencies that had prompted the introduction of the scheme no longer existed.

Source: Powerhouse Museum

There is a fantastic photo of Melbourne school children drinking milk from those little glass bottles here.

 

 

While my memories of the milk are not particularly pleasant ones (can still remember the layer of cream on top and how horrible the afternoon milk would get on hot days), I suppose the lesson that CALCIUM IS GOOD is something I should be applying more in my diet today.

My other memories of Kindergarten (or Prep as we called it in Victoria) are of learning to sing "God Save the Queen" (can't think of a lesson in that!) and using those cuisenaire rods and little plastic counters to do "sums".  I am not particularly maths-literate these days so maybe I do need to go back to Kindergarten to re-learn all this stuff. 

How many houses have you lived in? How is where you live now different from where you grew up?

All up, I have lived in 10 houses and 2 flats/apartments.  These have been in Melbourne, Canberra, Jakarta and Sydney. 

This is what our current house in Sydney looks like from the front (have since finished the painting and no, it is no longer either of those colours):

 

and this is the view from the backyard:

 

Despite what you see in the first photo, most of the house is actually made from brick (the old brown Sydney kind) with sandstone foundations.  It was built during the Depression by a man who had owned a big mansion on the main road going through our suburb.  Back then, the rocky, hilltop location meant that he got the land fairly cheaply but now is it actually seen as an asset - although the blocks still very tricky for building on.  It was originally only a one bedroom cottage.  The front room which is what you can see in the first photo was added on much later. 

Our street is a surprisingly bustling little cul de sac on top of a hill.  We know some of the neighbours but not all (there are quite a few who are a bit nutty or otherwise antisocial).  We are endlessly renovating and think this is the reason we have stayed here for so long (almost 10 year).  This is actually the longest I have lived anywhere apart from the house I grew up in which was a 3 bedroom brick veneer in a quiet suburban street in Melbourne.  My mum still lives in this house and this is a photo from her front garden:

 

And now a word from Madness on their house:

 

What did you do for fun when you were a kid? How is it different from what you see kids doing now?
Submitted by jaklumen.

For most of my childhood (in 1970s Melbourne), I had a really good friend, Karen*, who lived about three blocks from me.  We used to spend most of the weekend wandering or riding our back and forth between one another's house at whim and getting up to all sorts of unsupervised shenanigans.  A few in particular that I remember:

• making a "mud bath" in her father's vegetable patch;
• making our own "swimming pool" by pegging garbage bags into large cardboard boxes;
• constructing a "house of horror" in her parents back shed for the other neighbourhood kids to walk through blind-folded.  This included things like rubber gloves full of water which would brush clammily over the blindfolded one's face, lots of wooo wooo type sound effects etc;
• doing Mythbusters type experiments with all the hazardous chemicals in the garage;
• building cubby houses;
• thinking of new and original ways to torment our respective younger brothers;
• roller skating on the bathroom tiled floor; and
• playing Pong on the TV (this was later on in the early 80s I think - thought Pong pretty boring even then). 

My kids are much more closely supervised than we were and aren't allowed to just roam the streets.  Apart from the increased traffic danger, we just don't know the people in our neighbourhood like people did when we were kids.  My kids are still pretty imaginative and creative and we limit their access to technology so they don't become completely reliant on it.  They don't however have the same access to wide open spaces that we did so a lot of their activities more indoor focussed, eg, cubby houses in the lounge room rather than up a tree etc.

One thing that I remember doing that my kids still do was making up dances to pop songs.  The music has changed but the dances are just as terrible!  

 

 

 

*As for Karen, she went on to have (and is still having) a very creative and adventurous life.  She has illustrated children's picture books and well-known wacky science books (hopefully inspired by some of our garage "experiments"), travelled the world and has just returned from a stint working as an aid worker in Cambodia.   

Or rather, on houses...

Sniders Lane, Melbourne

My husband knows that if he ever wants to butter me up, the best thing to do is to put a Paul Kelly CD on.  I haven't him perform live for years now but hope to again one of these days.  I just get too tired to go and see live music these days.

I am hoping to go and see a theatre show directed by his wife, Kaarin Fairfax, soon (at least I hope she is still his wife).  It is called Mums the Word 2 and is a follow up to another Mum's the Word show I saw when I was pregnant in 1999 (think Kaarin Fairfax directed that one too).  This one is about the trials and tribulations of being a parent to teenagers - something I feel is almost upon me even though Little Miss Hormonal still only 9! 

 

Was going to nick over and see the Archibald exhibition at lunchtime today but saw that the entry price actually includes entry to three exhibitions so thought I might try and go next week when I can take a longer lunchbreak.

Here is the 'Heath' painting by 28yo Vincent Fantauzzo, now of Melbourne but originally from Ledger's home town of Perth:

 

You can read more and purchase a poster of the portrait here.