Woolly Mammoth

"Hi, My name is Mike Carmichael and I live in Alexandria, Indiana with my wife Glenda. I'd like to tell you about Alexandria's only ROADSIDE ATTRACTION...the Worlds Largest Ball of Paint. Imagine an ordinary baseball... Now imagine that same baseball with over 19,100 coats of paint on it. Getting the picture? Good, because that's exactly what my wife, Glenda and I have done for the past 28 1/2 years. Now that ordinary baseball that once weighed less than one pound now weighs in around 1,700 pounds!"

Hmmmm, looks more like a deformed Malteser to me, or did Mike's surgeon save the testicle he removed during the cancer scare? This patient and determined couple's story can be found on their website: http://ballofpaint.freehosting.net/ because I wish you to know that I truly did not make the story up.

To be honest, I wish I had made it all up because it is so incomprehensible that an apparently normal-looking couple were prepared to do this for nearly 30 years and that they're proud of it. It doesn't say much for the town either, if this lumpy lovesack is the town's only attraction..... To be fair though, I'm not exactly covering myself in glory because you could also quite rightly ask just what in the hell I was doing that was so important and noble that let me to this item in the first place.

I don't know what 2009 is the Official year of (Twitter? Parsnips? Ugly animals people never visit at the zoo? The Ped Egg?) - but how about we put in a bid for the Year of Useful Hobbies. Ones that have a point and can be discussed with strangers at dinner parties without receiving pitying and bored looks.

My guilt is probably as strong as the paintball people because my unofficial hobby is knitting. No, nothing fanc - all I can do is the basic loopy, crinkled stitch (the name of which escapes me) that my grandmother taught me when I was nine and even then, have only ever been able to knit rows. Scarves aplenty, but thanks to the stitches I dropped the end product was vastly tapered at one end so that it resembled a triangle that had been on the rack and then peppered with bullet holes.

These days I'm trying to put my sheltered-workshop knitting skills to some good use by knitting long scarves that have seven individually coloured segments that are 45 stitches wide and 40 rows long. Mum then gathers seven of these Tom Bakers, sews them up and gives them to the mens' homeless shelter for use in their hostels and as 'sorry, the inn is full, here's some bedding consolation prizes.

I've been bidding for and buying balls of wool on e-bay. Yeah, I know: it's hardly as scintillating as Beatles memorabilia, signed first editions of The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy or toast shaped like Elvis, but it's a way of getting cheap, cast-off yarn in dark, manly colours that hide all kinds of grass, beer, chewing gum and boot stains.

It also means that it's easy enough to do it in front of the telly and convince myself that no, just because I'm wearing elasticated tracksuit pants, ugg boots and am slouching on the lounge sucking squares of chocolate in front of 'The Big Bang Theory' I'm not a sloth; far from it. I'm knitting for charity. The sad thing is, my dinner party companion I'm regaling this to has normally sculled their third glass of sauv blanc by then and is nodding inanely, not realising that it takes me until Spring to knit enough scarves for one measly blanket.....

The shame of my remedial recreational abilities doesn't stop there. I also like to read through home design, food and womens' magazines, soaking up every glossy page and earmarking those take my fancy - recipes, home renovation ideas, decor, photos etc. Some I've used for home-made greeting cards that, quite frankly, haven't sold all that well, not even to the reception kids with snot trails leading to their lips at the school fete. It would probably make the local childcare centre really happy if I just dumped my crummy cuttings in their playroom with some curved-end scissors and pots of library paste and got the toddlers to go for it. Chances are their cards would be more successful too.....

Participators of other less-than-scintillating hobbies include my father who was an amateur beekeeper for many years. Every two months, he'd receive a copy of what might possibly be the world's least exciting magazine, The Australasian Beekeeper. "Whoo Hoo Dad, it's here, it's here!" I'd tease, waving the copy and running towards him like a lunatic. "Oh and look - it's got TWO pages of black and white photos instead of just the one!"

He proudly tells me that the highlight of his beekeeping career was having his jars of honey photographed (in black and white, naturally) for the front cover. Kate Moss hasn't achieved that.

A friend's boyfriend was into the adventures of Ivanhoe, King Arthur and related dark ages and mediaeval pursuits. There were apparently enough fellow fans of this time in history to have a Mediaeval society that met every fourth Sunday for a picnic and get-together. They'd gather to eat huge roast chickens and lamb legs (not sure who had to put them in the wheelie bin after the bones had been thrown over their shoulders), scull down mead (there's a reason we don't drink it anymore) and hold a jousting tournament. Each member was dressed as authentically as imagination and budget would allow - chain mail, coats of arms on jerkins (tops folks, tops), leggings (the blokes), ankle boots (yep, ditto), pointy hats (the gals, or add bells for some of the slightly more outgoing boys) and weaponry. The national parks and wildlife authority did not allow them to have horses at the events, and the mind boggles at what the jousting tournaments must have been like on foot.

My musical husband Love Chunks spent many years during school and in his early twenties playing the trumpet and the guitar. He proudly marched in Port Augusta's town band, played for a jazz group and tootled and strummed for many a local function. When he and I got together, both instruments had long been abandoned. No matter how many times I asked him to play something for me he refused.

The only time he got his trumpet out (ooooooherr, that sounds a bit suggestive) it terrorised the dog who shot outside and frantically started digging a tunnel to Mecca. LC has since strummed his guitar for Sapphire a few times, but clams up whenever I've inadvertently lumbered into the room. Pretty useless having two instruments you don't use, isn't it, but perhaps my mocking singing of "Kum bah yah, my lord, Kum bah yah...." isn't too encouraging. I'll make that a resolution to work on - Don't Mock; Encourage.

An old work colleague - who I detested - used to insist that we have the Christmas function at her place. This was presumably so that she could get outrageously pissed and fall off her high-heeled mules with her bed only several metres away but also so that we could see - and be dazzled - by her various collections and taste in decor. She lived in a mock-tudor Mc Mansion with a tiny garden filled with an above ground pool, two fat dogs and three shy cats. The blue plastic sides of the pool were artfully disguised with strategically placed potplants in which she'd placed some fake budgies.

Inside was the real horror - her duck collection. Pot holders, tea towels, boot scrapers, cross stitched pillow covers, paintings, coffee cups, storage tins, wooden trays and figurines. Lots of figurines, stored on flimsy lacquered telephone tables and inside twee kitchen cabinets that engulfed the house. They were made of china, clay, wood, brass, pewter and crystal with the piece-de-resistance being a stuffed one she'd found in an antiques shop. It left me with not only nausea but a secret prayer that someday that little duck army would rise up and find the collective strength to carry out her not so slight frame to the caravan park and de-tox centre where she belonged.

Love Chunks and I are also guilty of saving the back issues of Gourmet Traveller and Delicious Magazines. They hog up space in our cupboards and not once in ten years have either of us sorted through them or referred to an old recipe within them. Why do we save them? Sapphire has a collection of stones and gumnuts she'd gathered two years ago. The stupid little footy-shaped money box she stores them in gets tipped over at least once a week, spilling out the annoying little pellets. Why does she still keep them?

My mother insists on washing out every single yoghurt and margarine container and keeping them in her already over-burdened tupperware drawer so that when it is opened, they fly out like angry frisbees. Why - when will that mythical group of 79 people visit Mum and insist on taking leftovers home at the same time?

These are all unexplainable mysteries, but do point to most of us having collections and hobbies that are our own personal Submarine Screendoors in terms of usefulness in our lives. But maybe that's not such a bad thing. If no-one dies of stress or boredom then who's it going to hurt?

Maybe Sapphire, who looks to be inheriting a truckload of wool, greeting cards and margarine containers....