FUIC me.

I love living in Melbourne, I really truly do.

It's frenetic, interesting, grotty-but-gritty, chock-full of culture, cuisines, crazies, carers and cars and top notch reading materials. It provides great opportunities for those who seek them, transport to anywhere, festivals, noise, traffic, shops, laughs and food to eat and food for thought. Alright? Good: it's now firmly established that Melbourne is a great place to live, work, love, lounge, loaf and sleep.

But..... and this is a really, really big BUT.

BUT, Big M Iced Coffee is an insult and an abomination to this fair city. It is an insult to describe this sickly syrup as 'iced coffee' when it is often found alongside its far-superior South Australian step-cousin (by marriage only), the magnificent Farmers Union Iced Coffee.

How have these gentle, supportive, open-minded Victorians put up with such a below-average beverage for so long?

What does the 'M' stand for, Mediocre?

Muck? Mud? Mess? Malignant? Malformed? Menial? Mirthless? Misleading?

Oh there's so many other words, but I've lost interest in looking in the dictionary after 'mi' because the truth is there: Big M is a mind-numbing mistake manufactured in a midden making mawkish manure now monikered as Big M. Yes, you heard me. Big M.

I even tried it blindfolded to compare it with FUIC and that Rush stuff but when (as discovered later) the Big M was tasted, I couldn't even tell what flavour it was, it was that ordinary. It might as well have been full fat milk with some brickies' spit in it for all that it resembled a decent, well-made and tasty iced coffee.

The irony is that National Foods make them both. I'm assuming that one side of their factory is assigned to staff who've had their salivary glands, taste buds and brains forcibly removed with the dairy's teat suction cups before being shoved like dag-infested sheep into the dank and dark recesses of the factory to use the sour milk slops, septic tank overflow and cow-poo residue to somehow slosh together and pour into Big M cartons.

The other half, on the other hand, are enjoying a pre-work massage, receiving a hearty handshake and an individual message of congratulations by the CEO before walking into the cool and sun-lit work space that is being entertained by a world-class string quartet as they commence their magic work. Like the Oompah Loompahs, what they do is a strict secret, but does involve taking the creme-de-la-creme of Australia's finest milk, some coffee and their mysterious blend of other ingredients together, saying a revered blessing over the drink before gently and respectfully pouring it into Farmers Union Iced Coffee cartons for the delectation of intelligent, talented and good looking iced coffee drinkers everywhere.

Apart from solving the mystery of Mr P, I also intend on confronting the schizophrenic minds at National Foods to find out why Big M is still being shamelessly flung all over Victoria when they should instead be putting all of their efforts towards furthering the FUIC cause instead. Stay tuned dear reader, justice for iced coffee lovers everywhere will one day occur.

Hotter than a Pommy's armpit at the one-day cricket

My ex-home, the city Adelaide is struggling through several days of 45C (113F) summer heat, and we in Melbourne are dealing with a mere week of paltry 43C (109.4F) temperatures in what is currently the hottest week in over one hundred years for both Aussie states.

We're also in a seven-year long drought and are already under severe water restrictions and being urged on TV, radio and in the papers to restrict our water consumption to 135 litres per day, making it now essential to plug up the shower drain and bucket the soapy remains of human filth and shampoo fluff onto what remains of our dead gardens. Yep, life in the big city is getting rather hard and our tiny square of back yard lawn looks like straw matting and is now crunchy to walk on.

As I'm typing this, I see two stressed pigeons (yes, they do exist) drinking out of Milly the pooch's water bowl. That's a pretty brave move for creatures more used to pooping from power poles than dodging dangerous dogs. This set my heat-addled brain to thinking further along these lines whilst my FUIC coffee was chilling in the freezer and while I debated whether chocolate in this weather was worth the sticky-fingered, dropped melted dollops-on-the-crotch effort.* My thoughts veered from my own self-interested snack selections to animals and how much they really suffer in scorching temperatures. We at least, can wear less and laze about inside; they wear a fur coat that is not removable.

Pictured below is our bunny Skipper, taking it easy on our brand new red rug in the middle of winter last year. As you can see, he's rather cute, yet he severely tested the new friendship by proceeding to dig into and eat chunks out of the new rug and peed so frequently on the floorboards that they were stained white in scattered patches all over the house. And it was only when I was sorting through books to donate or keep that I noticed that he'd clearly gotten more than one thrill by scattering the tops of them with his butt-beans as well.

Skipper's salad days indoors soon ended when Love Chunks discovered that it wasn't his bronchitis preventing him from breathing or being able to speak without every second word being punctuated by trumpetingly loud sneezes, it was young Skipper.

LC was highly allergic to our adopted fluffy-puff and so he was banished to his hutch outside forever. In order to evade Sapphire's and my tearful and accusing stares, Love Chunks made a rather nifty little triangular, foldable playpen for bunnyboy to scamper about in so that he had ample opportunities for exercise, grass nibbling and stretching.

Today though finds him distressed and panting way too fast. His hutch is in the shade with a huge golfing umbrella over the top to combat the slanting afternoon rays and I venture out about once every half an hour to give him a few gentle squirts of water from the bottle in order for the evil north winds to blow through and cool him down. This does help him a bit, but it's not too gratifying to see him spy me opening the door, open his tiny little mouth in horror and scuttle into his bedroom to hide himself under the straw and newspaper. He may not have the intelligence to work out that being rudely squirted seems to result in feeling instantly cooler straight afterwards, but I still feel bad about doing it to him, and go to great lengths to explain.

"Look buddy, I know it's annoying for you, but it's helping you stay cool, trust me." God knows what our neighbours** either side of us think. "You're a spunky little fella and I'm just trying to help you stay that way, honest."

When the evening shade covers the lawn, his play triangle comes out again and the grass is sprinkled with the watering can so that he can have a little work-out in relative comfort.

As you can see, unfortunately, he doesn't quite make that connection and isn't overly impressed. Perhaps it doesn't help that Love Chunks isn't allergic to Milly the dog, whom Skipper can see lolling inside the house on her beanbag directly in front of the air-conditioner.

Should I remain being a horrible rabbit owner or sneak him inside and risk killing LC by asphyxiation?

* Of course it is.

** Two cottages on one side with cats that suggestively strut their stuff along the fence and annoy the poop out of our dog and a three-storey block of flats on the other that feature balconies full of heavy smokers, burnt BBQ cookery events and arguing couples.

Delamere is a darling














I've been reading Delamere's blog for a while now. Reasons for my continued readership are varied but include being impressed that she's managing to raise three kids ranging in ages from 6 to 13, has a rewarding career, a nice husband, a brilliant sense of perspective and an enviable way of looking at life and writing about things orbiting her sphere (not that she's spherical in size, of course) in a manner that is observant but not nasty. Oh and she quite likes that little known authoress Ms Jane Austen.

She found me via chocablog and we became fellow lurkers and then regular commenters. Now that we've moved to and ensconced ourselves in Melbourne, it was time to meet the lady in person. We figured that her daughter C could meet my Sapphire and discuss all matters relating to rabbit ownership, the wonders of both Abba and all Mamma Mia performers (except Pierce Brosnan) and whether the Beanie Kids craze was still relevant in the post-Hannah Montana world.

And bless Dela's (yes, I'm abbreviating even her blog name now) sweet heart; the second I opened the door she stood there offering up a fresh carton of Farmers Union Iced Coffee as a greeting. If it had been accompanied with a Lindt Ball necklace, our meeting would have been pretty well perfect.**


I must have uttered these idle thoughts out loud instead of just keeping it to myself because C shyly smiled and said, "I like chocolate too."

"Oh you do, do you?" was my response before I led her into the kitchen to show her what was in my stash for the week. "Would you like to help me taste some for my next review?"
















Would she ever. Delamere then decided it was time to drop me a bombshell. She used to work for Cadbury. Yes, the Cadbury. Home of the Dairy Milk; the original (and most generously-sized) 250g family block; the excellently revamped Old Gold; the solid gold Crunchie; the evil-but-essential Creme Egg.

Plus, she used to bring her 'work' home with her. Regularly. Plentifully. Necessarily. I was so overcome by this unexpected news I slurped down my iced coffee in uncharacteristic silence, trying to digest just how she remained slim, healthy and willing to leave such a place. That is, until she explained how difficult it was to go shopping without bumping into work colleagues and having to disrespectfully shove the Lindt balls, Twix bars and non-Cadbury Schweppes-related general grocery items under the slabs of Rum-n-Raisin, Top Deck, Cottees cordials and jam jars. Yep, that's likely to force any true chocophile to start searching the Work Wanted advertisements - no-one should be made to stick to just the one brand of chocolate in this democratic, 'fair go' brown land of ours. Yes, I do note the appropriateness of living in a 'brown' land.

I was stoked that Delamere 'got' my 'WWJJD' (What Would Joan Jett Do?) t-shirt and noted that yes, she too had Edward DeBono's 'Mind Pack' still in its plastic wrapper on her bookshelf as well. In fact it will now become my 2009 resolution to open it, work through the puzzles and hopefully gain some kind of remedial entry into the until-now completely mystifying world of lateral thinking.




















As for Sapphire and C, they hit it off immediately and spent the afternoon avoiding the heat through systematically going through every item located in her bedroom, engaging in copious chatter, intermittent giggles and joyously scraping their front teeth on frozen Sunny Boy Glugs.

Delamere waited for my reaction when she asked if we'd be interested in going to the Harold Holt Memorial Pool for a swim. Only Australia (or perhaps Melbourne itself?) could name a pool after the one and only Prime Minister known for going missing whilst swimming in the sea.....

Unfortunately, we have to stay near home to await news on a viola, collect some ordered school uniforms and hang around for the delivery of our new BBQ. As we're discovering, 'delivery times' are about as elastic as Pamela Anderson's g-strings and 'morning' has been known to mean any time from 7:00am to, say, 9:30pm.

Said BBQ is a stainless steel behemoth, a veritable kitchen-cabinet-on-wheels that Love Chunks assures me will be:
a) worth every penny;
b) able to be easily lifted into our back verandah by one scrawny delivery man;
c) called into action least five nights per week to cook dinner; and
d) used by him every time.

Well that's all right then.


** On second thought, seeing as it was a sweat-slicked 41C today, perhaps the Lindt ball necklace would have ended up as a oily waistcoat and not have been such an attractive prospect after all.