Hating with Honesty Part Three

To be honest, I don't think I'm a really vehement 'hater' and this is only my third Hating with Honesty post in seven years: the first one was published in 2007 and the last one in 2008. However, a few niggles have started to emerge beyond the obvious ones such as why is Kim Kardashian the most Googled person for 2012 and are we allowed to punch anyone who says 'for the win' yet?

Here are the things that make me want to whistle air through my imaginary dentures and waggle my crab-like finger in the air.....

Ryan Gosling















I honestly don't see the attraction.  I even - and this causes me no small amount of shame - found a second-hand copy of The Notebook; read it to find out what the big deal was and suffered for my curiosity before suffering again through the exrementally soppy movie. What is the magic oestrogen-luring essence that this man has that I can't perceive?  He looks like he should be decorating the top of my latte, not headlining movie marquees....

Boston Terriers

I'm a dog person. When Milly's with me, I have to provide a wide enough berth so that she doesn't snap at her fellow canines in jealousy, but when she's not, my trips are always made longer due to the need to stop, ask 'Is he/she friendly?' before having a pat and a chat. But Boston Terriers repel me. They seem to have scored all the leftover body parts of a Corgi, Pug, Bulldog and the many unwanted mutant features of inbreeding, put into a fur-lined blender and tipped out with an unappetising 'glug' onto the ground with the final humiliation to be left without a tail.  Like X-Factor contestants raving on about how much they love their mothers, Boston Terriers always leave me shuddering slightly.

Apple tarts / Tarte Tatin

Cake. Cake. CAKE. The French Suisse seem to believe that everything tastes better in, on or under flaky pastry. But a dry croissant for breakfast or a sheet of pastry with some apple slices pressed into it gets boring very, very quickly.  Without moistness, self raising flour, chocolate, icing or custard it's just a brown rectangle of over-priced snooze; the Tom Cruise of bakery produce. 'Oh, goodie. Here's the eleven hundredth boulangerie selling tarte tatin. How exciting and creative.'  CAKE!

Channing Tatum



















I haven't seen any of his movies but even in my advanced state of ageing I'm not unaware of the various swoonings and droolings over this bloke that occurs with sickening regularity online.

He's sort of musclier and chunkier than Ryan Gosling, but the question is the same: Why? What is this flesh and bone replica of Mr Potato Head exuding that brings all the cerebrally-challenged chickadees to his chippery?  Shouldn't he be putting on my winter tyres and topping up my antifreeze?

Zombies and vampires

Buffy whooshed by without a glance. Twilight books were endured when my eleven year old was reading them and quickly summarised as cold blooded Mills and Boon for virgins. Vampire Diaries and the plethora of zombie telly shows and movies leave me about as excited as seeing tarte tatin on long haul economy flight menu.  Why not be done with it and have the vampires (sexy, boring and murderous), zombies (irretrievably stupid on all levels) wage war with the ridiculously cartoonish Marvel characters that also seem to hold so many movie-goers' attention?  Winner is the last man (or half robot or undead corpse in love with a wolf) standing!

Bushy beards on young blokes

Fellas, most of you, when you're in your twenties, are lovely to look at.  However, when the hipster urges take over and you decided to grow a bushy beard, you take me back to those oh-so-steamy photos of 1850s gold prospectors, upstanding Victorian philanthropists and men who ate each other when lost on expeditions.  Having to hold a brief conversation with a bearded bloke with cappuccino froth dangling from his Dastardly Dan moustache was not a heavenly moment for me last week.

Land agents to renters

We pay a small - no, large - fortune to rent an apartment that has not been updated since 1970.  The balcony turns into a small swimming pool when it rains and has since flooded the apartment downstairs. Sapphire's unused bidet develops a strong ammonia and mouldy pong that permeates the bedrooms at least once a week and we were sent three angry letters (in French) when our rent payment was not processed by the bank and was subsequently five days overdue.

So, with fairly frequent contact between my good self and the man who manages the property, it was a big surprise when he wrote back to my email last week requesting that someone come and look at our stove top (two out of the four hotplates have decided that being 'hot' is no longer their bag) and announced that he didn't know how I was.

"Pardon me, monsieur? YOU and four other men knocked on my door yesterday to come and see la piscine (the pool) that was my balcony for yourselves, checking the drain and taking photographs. Have I so little charisma that you have forgotten me already?"

But you are not in my records, he wrote back.

"Erm, I must be, buddy - because you send me rent slips every month with MY NAME on them and we've been transferring you money for over eighteen months now...."

Let me check, he replied, suspicion oozing from every keystroke.

"So, about the oven and the enormous whistling draft that blasts through our living room from the sliding door..."

Yes, you are on our records, he wrote, as though he was informing me of that fact.

I KNOW THAT, stupid rental man!  "So the oven...."

Please email me tomorrow when I'm available to read through tenant's concerns before forwarding them on to the owners for consideration.

Horrible ugly stupid rude rental man!  I decided not to email that as my reply.

BBC News channel

The Beeb is mostly known for being a stalwart for consistency, fair-minded reporting and for looking beyond their own borders.  Having a news-only channel would, we thought, be a brilliant way of keeping up with current events all around the world in a language we could understand (unless the story came from Wales).

Sadly not so, unless you are only capable of absorbing three stories at a time.  Even then, those three stories are repeated over and over and over for at least two days, so that breakfast time on day two will see the same video footage from the day before. No, not overnight so that muesli munchers can come up to speed with things that occurred while they were still snoozing in their doonas, but the day before.

Sometimes, the typer of the ticker tape thingy that runs along the bottom of the screen can only be arsed to write a single sentence on a single story that rolls by at a snail's place ad infinitum.  Surely, if sending reporters to all corners of the globe and footage and editing is prohibitively expensive, Tony the ticker tape typer can pop in a few more sentences for us to read?

'Rate me' Facebook photos



















Erk.  Any photo where the subject matter is one's self, especially holding an iPhone where the subject can gaze at one's self during the taking of it, is enough to make all prospective viewers want to heave and (fairly) surmise, "No wonder he's single, he's already found his life-long partner in love."

And the girls ...... oh dearie, dearie me.  Being friends of friends with buddies and acquaintances of Sapphire has shown me that the cleverly angled iPhone photo that enlarges the eyes, gives the duck pout credence and recedes the chin into the far distance - all done while pushing the shoulders unnaturally forward to produce a credible replica of cleavage - makes up approximately 98% of all photos loaded up onto Facebook pages by girls aged between eleven and twenty nine.

"Like my new winter hat," asks Bubble, which is sitting so far back on her head in order to show off the pulled forward shoulder length hair, off-the-shoulder tank top and double-handed upside down peace signs.  Or, "I'm so ugly today," says Twinkle, leaning forward in her black bikini, fluttering her kohl lined enlarged eyes and pouting in pink frost lip shimmer.

If I wasn't so old and supposed to be a role model or sensible mother or some other such tomfoolery thing like that, I'd say, "Yes, you are. No go and put some clothes on and turn your account off."

Nicki Minaj / Kei%$#a / Rihanna et al

Notes for all of you:

If you need auto tune, quit the business.

If you can sing - then for Lindts' sake go have a good scrub in the shower, put on some clothes and stop putting out videos that ram it down young girls' throats that it's only when you behave like nymphomaniac pole dancin' gang molls does your 'song' hit the itunes charts. Please.

Kate Moss interview in Vanity Fair

Ah, the chat that was going to reveal the secretive, never talkative Ms Moss. The one that would delve deeply under the surface to find out how she thinks, what her motives are, the life lessons learnt.  A quarter of a century in the spotlight; she must have some witty anecdotes to share. Vanity Fair will make sure that we find out what charitable causes are close to her heart; how she priorities her time to develop her skills as a responsible parent; the contribution to society that drives her to unselfishly devote her energy to further her knowledge and understanding of homelessness/poverty/discrimination/disability and people with bad dress sense.....

Hah!  The majority of page space was given to Kate's topless poses generously peppered with glowing quotes (in bold type) from various fashionistas and around six vaguely coherent sentences uttered by Kate herself. The end result was about as revealing as my triple-pile, 180 centimetre blue beach towel.  The much-touted hidden depths were the equivalent of the film that you peel off between a boiled egg shell and the egg itself.

Muesli bars

Why do they insist on calling them 'bars' when, unwrapped, they're about the equivalent of two teaspoons of sticky oats?  Why are they 'breakfast for busy people' when people usually like more than 21 grams of solid food to satisfy their hunger?  Why are the packets 15 centimetres long, but the 'bar' only eight?

Cup cakes

Like low rider jeans, saying 'swag' and Lady Gaga, you've had your fifteen minutes of fame, cup cake.  This obsession has escalated to ridiculous levels where icing has been pooped out from a great distance and is, in fact, larger than the dry/boring/tasteless cake itself.  Maybe the next craze will just be the icing and decoration without the cupcake underneath?

How I Met Your Mother

This show is on constant re-run on one of the British second-tier freebie channels, so even when I try to avoid it, it is manages to wedge itself into my consciousness at least once a day when I'm channel surfing to find things to record for later.  The lead guy possesses the same amount of charisma that I clearly do for my land agent and the little red headed girlie who used to be in American Pie is one of the worst actresses I've ever seen. No, cuteness doesn't make up for lack of talent.  The irony doesn't escape me that Neil Patrick Harris (Dr Horrible) plays Barney who, if the world was fair, would have his own sitcom and leave the other four 'characters' in the Seasons 1-8 remainder bin.

Fingernail 'art'














Apart from endless iPhone facebook 'selfies', nothing says 'I spend too much time on myself' than fingernail 'art.'  Painting cartoons, logos, flowers, stripes or dress-matching designs onto (usually) fake fingernails also implies that the owner of such tacky travesties does very little work.  Nails with mini sequins embedded into them are not going to be much use when zipping up a small child's winter parka, popping open a long life milk box or scrubbing off the scum around the plughole.  Oh, and they don't distract the viewer from less desirable body parts either.

There. That's enough for now.  Time for a trip down to the Dog Forest with Milly.

Long socks, yellow shoes and elbow covers

If you understand the title, then you'll know that today's topic is the Olympics.

Living in a country not my 'own' has given me a renewed interest in this four yearly event as the two television channels we get access to feature Brits (yes, push aside the guy who broke the world record and interview the sixth-placed Londoner) and everyone else (freebie Eurosport channel interspersed with adverts for colleges in Qatar and the Russian railway system).  Aussie jingoism is non-existent and the only glimpses we get is what we glean online or if they make it into a final.

Still, I'm addicted. Seeing the best in the world get their ten, twenty seconds or three minutes of fame is intoxicating and I'm a sucker for any medal-winner who cries with joy, is related to a zany parent or demonstrates an unusual display of humility.

Apart from an interest in honed bodies and zero percent body fat, I've noticed that, similar to the big label fashionistas, athletes too have their fads and looks they follow. In 2012, it seems to be knee socks for runners and anyone throwing things along with fluoro yellow as the predominant colour of choice for sneakers. 

No-one in my 'real' life (ie Love Chunks sitting next to me on the sofa) or any 'expert commentators' on the telly have been able to explain what those elbow glove / sock / warmer thingies are about. An American runner who resembles Beyonce - Sanya Richards-Ross - seems to like wearing them and considering she's won herself a few medallions to pack in her hand luggage on the trip home means that they must help in some way.

Time will tell if these Big Three Athletic Items stand the test of time or be proven to contribute towards an improvement in performance. Cathy Freeman's head-to-toe bodysuit (and head snood) didn't sweep the world, nor did Serena's all white tennis catsuit - but I'm prepared to hazard a guess that Australia's uniforms did nothing to help their performance.  Rather, they helped hinder it.

Our flag may be red, white and blue, but so are many other countries' flags. The green and gold of our floral emblem, the beloved wattle, was a fair alternative. Certainly better than Pigface, Dicksonia or Bladderwort but - it must be said - also presenting an enormous challenge to design a uniform featuring those colours that won't result in something eye-zappingly appalling, gaudy or both. 

Some Olympic kits have been better than others but this year.... well, from an outsider's perspective (a hemisphere separates us), they're soul suckingly awful. Google images has only shown the tracksuits on the Gold medal-winning ladies' relay team, so you're spared the horror of seeing them worn by individual swimmers as they sauntered out - presumably in embarrassment or shame - to the starting blocks. Baggy and dowdy, they looked as though they'd been reluctantly picked up off the floor of my Dad's squash club, circa 1977. How can an athlete perform in an outfit that is so butt ugly? 

And speaking of butts - or the fronts of butts - the cyclists caused me to shudder and change the channel. "Oh Love Chunks - they're four lemons wearing button mushrooms as helmets!" Sun yellow lycra around the penisticular area is so obviously a no-go that the decision to use this - and apparently embrace it by adding a mesh shape to subtlely POINT OUT the jaundiced jatz crackers - was a crime against all things athletic and aesthetic, surely?

Nineteen year old Steven Solomon made it to the final of the men's 400 metres. A stunning achievement by anyone's standards. And what was the poor bugger required to wear? A harry high pants onesie presumably designed by someone picked last for every sports team, coming off a cough syrup and pop rocks bender and still clearly harboring a crush for Craig McLachlan during the Neighbours years.  Sapphire was passing by and groaned, "Oh geez - what is he wearing?" Couldn't have put it more eloquently myself.

Solomon came last but is still the eighth fastest in the world. But, for anyone watching who possessed a shred of empathy, he was a winner.  He had more guts, determination and bravery than the other seven runners in front of him.  He wore the outfit, knew that it would be seen by a billion people and still managed to hold his head up and run. Like crazy.  

BOGUE

As a cash-strapped lowly-paid freelancer living in the third most expensive city in the world I'm grateful for any freebie beyond muggings and the flu.

A French Vogue magazine from August (Aout) 2011 was lurking in a pile of English 'Hello' glossies given to me by Anne, a terrific Kiwi nurse living seven floors below. Both types of magazines were gratefully received but just as incomprehensibleas each other. 'Hello' features British celebrities that are unheard of beyond their post-Coronation Street stint in rehab and/or broken engagement to a soccer player and, to me, French Vogue is, well, French Vogue.

However, I did still flick through it and noted that the glossy advertisements comprised over three quarters of the pages. The remainder featured models in poses so ridiculous that I showed a few to Sapphire.

An idea was born.

Could this 43 year old farty pants replicate any of those poses in real life?

Let's try this one:

Fabric inexplicably sliced off her left shoulder but thankfully allowing her unfettered public access to her left boob.

Very practical Versace, and a pose I adopt quite often myself:

Exhibit number two sees a woman in danger of having her face eaten by a hoodie exit her huge home; hands on hips and looking determinedly to her left.

Yep, I can do this when Milly next needs to head outside for a whizzer in the Dog Forest:

This one is clearly your typical supermodel-with-a-handbag pose. Sultry, saturated and sort of slumped. 

Perfect when waiting for the bus.

Ah, Chanel. How do we love thee?

..... about as much as I love my greenie grocery bags.

I knew an ex-model in Adelaide who told me that they were always instructed to walk with their arms well behind their shoulders. "It looks good in photos but is hell on your back, which is why no-one does it in real life," she said.  A Posh Spice-alike is demonstrating it here:

And my Adelaide friend was right. It DOES look and feel mighty stupid when done by someone wearing a Target Top from 2009; Levi's purchased during a Singapore trip, Diana Ferrari factory outlet boots and Marks and Spencer sports-strength underwear.

But why is this chick so annoyed? Surely she got paid $10,000 to get out of bed?

...unlike my good self, who is nudged awake by a wet nose and dog breath (and I don't mean Love Chunks) and is surely more deserving of a sulk?

Hot model; check. Sitting on a retro American car; check.  Looking 1970s steamy; check.

"Go outside and sit on the car, Mum," said Sapphire, now rather into her role as fashion director.

"No love, I'll dent the bonnet."

"OK then, but you have to look really sexy and not smile."

"Check."

THIS one takes the cake - not that she'd ever have come close to inhaling cake - for it's sheer lack of sense.  Was she shot in the stomach during an acid flashback?

We'll probably never know.  What we DO know is exactly who does love eating cake. And bacon. And cheese. And chocolate....

Inevitably, the physical, mental and emotional strain of holding up enormous 29 kilogram bodies on 6 foot-long legs gets exhausting, especially when sugar levels drop and brain cells die:

I did empathise; and was grateful that Lyndon had almost finished BBQing the steaks just out of shot.

Sensual telephone services or Bogan Vogueing - just two new career choices to ponder.

1984 and 2012

Kath’s mother Pauline circa 1984: 
“So what is it you’re saving your babysitting money up for, again?”

Kath (patiently)
“To buy a ghetto blaster.”

Pauline
“That’s a tape player, right?”

Kath (taking a deep breath).
“Yes. But it needs to have detachable speakers so that I can really enjoy the full on sound and must have a double tape deck so that I can tape tapes.”

Pauline
“To tape tapes?”

Kath (sighing)
“Yes. Not like how you did it in 1979 by putting your reading-for-the-blind cassette machine flat on the carpet next to the radio gram – in glorious mono – and then pressing down the play and record buttons.”

Pauline (bristling slightly)
“Well, we all managed to hear Neil Diamond and Roger Whittaker clearly enough on our Queensland holiday and you used to sing the entire Sesame Street cassette tape soundtrack word for word....”

Kath (interrupting)
“True Mum, sorry about that. What I meant was that I really love listening to music but Robert has other tapes that I’d like to tape and I just realised that the public library has heaps of cassettes that we can borrow and copy and----“

Pauline (interrupting)
“----Cassettes are tapes, aren't they, not records?”

Kath
“NO, not records, Mum – records are so out of it, they scratch and they’re really big and you can’t put them in a walkman, can you?  Tapes are IN, Mum and they're here to stay.”

Pauline
“Oh. So when are you going to buy your (pauses to align fingers into the newly-learned quotation mark gesture) ‘ghetto blaster’?”

Kath
"Grandpa’s going to get it for me."

Pauline
"Grandpa?"

Kath
"He and Nanna are off to Seoul next month and he said if I wrote down all the specifications, he’d take it into the Duty Free and get me one. I trust him.”

And I did.

AND he bought me back a gold Sanyo ghetto blaster with double tape-to-tape dubbing with variable speeds, detachable speakers, bass and treble knobs, FM tuner and – as an extra cool bonus – a graphic equalizer. I loved that beast! (and Grandpa too.)


2012

Sapphire
“Mum, you know how my birthday is coming up really soon?”

Kath
“In around two months, you mean?”

Sapphire
“Er, yeah. Anyhow, I’d really like Spotify.”

Kath
“What’s that, a stain remover?”  (Put hands on hips to laugh at own joke).

Sapphire
“Oh Mum, you’re hilarious. No, it’s an online music system that’s better than i-tunes because you can listen to entire songs not just snippets, create playlists, send them to your friends who are on it and find everything ever. And my iPod has somehow gone weird and the only music left on it is Enya and Katy Perry for some reason and it goes flat if I take it out of the docking station for longer than five minutes.”

Kath
“Oh. Can’t you get Dad to put it on your iPad as one of those app thingies?”

Sapphire
“No, Mum, because we don’t live in Australia any more, everything defaults to Switzerland and denies us access to lots of really cool apps. It has to be set up as a new and separate paid account which will then mean I can use it on my iPad and not just sit at the desktop all the time as the only place I can listen to music.”

Kath
“Oh, OK. So you want this account for your birthday?”

Sapphire, brightening in relief that her meat-headed mother finally understands.
“Yes, Mum! It costs about the same as it does to get Dolly magazine every month but I’ll also be able to create an account for you and for Dad and recommend you songs and you’ll get to see what I’m listening to and you can ask me for playlists that I can set up on your treadmill by plugging in my iPad to the control panel and----“

Kath (overwhelmed with techno-talk).
“Fine, fine. Chat to Dad when he gets home.”

Later, on Sapphire’s facebook.
“Have Spotify. DAD IS THE COOLEST GUY EVER.”

Kath, sticking her head into Sapphire's room.

"Er hey, grateful girl, I just read your status update.  Remember it was me that spoke to him about Spotify."

Sapphire

"Er no, Mum, au contraire, tu vache.  I could see that you had no idea so I showed him the site, we searched for the app together and he did the downloading and registration."

Kath

"Oh."

Sapphire, seeing her mother's transparently crestfallen face

"But Mum, there is something else I need..."

Kath

"Yes?  Those Hungry Games books?  No Direction album?  'I love blocks' Minecraft t-shirt?"

Sapphire thinks about mocking the glaringly obvious ignorance for a moment, but decides against it.

"No, but some headphones that are more than just foam circles and fly wire would be nice."

Kath

"Yeah, I could think about that. What sort are you talking about?"

Sapphire

"'Beats' ones by Dr Dre."

Kath

"NO WAY Jose. I know what they are. They cost three hundred francs and everyone walks around looking like they've got cheeseburgers on their ears!"

Sapphire

"But my friends have them and the sound quality is really, really good. Plus they eliminate all external sounds and you can select white or brown noise when flying and..."

Kath

"How about Sony ones, for one sixth of the price, and I'll give you my own version of brown noise for free?"

Sapphire pauses, torn between mocking her mother's naked uncoolness and bad sense of humour and considering the reality of getting some still-good headphones.

Eventually, she utters what Kath knew - deep in her muddled mother's heart - she was going to say.   

"I'll talk about it with Dad."

Rita the non-ETA Eater

Brought to you once again by the collection of magazines hidden in my study

In 1976, nothing said creativity and sophistication like a Sunbeam electric frypan. Mum used ours to, well, fry everything she could lay her hands on which was lamb chops about 80% of the time. Even the Sunday roast lamb was done in it with the lid on and the potatoes and onions swimming around the outside in a pool of hot fat, their bottoms getting stuck to the element for me to pick off and eat hours later.

Here though we have a Masterfoods Three Bean Mix Egg Combo which is eerily ahead of its time in that it is designed as a huge cross, indicating "NO! Just don't try this at home if you wish your corduroy slacks to stay in one piece and your net curtains to remain white. NO!"




















Clearly too, such an artistic design is meant not just for the kitchen bench but to be brought directly to the table so that all eaters could see just what a treat - visual and oral - they were in for that night.




















Later that same year, Streets icecream brought out the Toffee, er, Log. This brown barrell featuring swirls of cream and light brown pretty well echoed the decor of a million kitchens around the country and if served in burnt orange melamine bowls (as ours were) the look was complete.

The taste, on the other hand, was significant only in that it was insignificant. Still, it did help get the Stainless Steel Sunbeam Three Bean Egg Mix combo to slide down.

In keeping with the fashions of the time, you could also opt for Brown done three ways with a pot of pus - sorry, sauce - to dip your meats into. Mmmm hmmm who needs any other colours when you can do like you did in kindergarten art class and mix them all together and arrive at wonderful, delicious and complete brown.




















In 1977, Coles had created a New World. No, not one involving the eradication of deadly diseases or the end to all war and conflicts, but the introduction of Farmland Meat. 'Farmland' presumably meant a factory location where animals were dragged in and killed, cut up and placed on styrofoam trays covered in gladwrap rather than a sunny shop filled with rolling paddocks, gently lowing cattle and milking sheds.




















And look at how excited Trevor-the-neckless is to be featured in this advertisement. It was either this or be handpicked for the Yorkshire Ripper police line up and at least here he was able to wield a knife without being violently thrown to the floor and read his rights.

Thankfully there were other options to beans, Brown and Trevor's rather slapdash and very fat-laced meat trays - Kentucky Fried Chicken.




















Colonel Sanders was still alive at the time and stuff such as raging obesity, sky-high cholesterol and heart disease were still faint enough to be ignored, as was trying to hide 'Fried' in an acronym. What could out-do beans for sophistication and refinement than a grease-spattered cardboard box of unrecognisable chicken pieces? Yep, that's "real goodness" for you!

We had to settle for that until 1982 brought about a revolution. No, not just the official end of Adam and the Ants as a viable form of music but - steady yourselves - the introduction of sliced cheese.




















When Mum bought these - Dad would turn his nose up and announce they tasted like flat soap - we kids would hoover them up like after dinner mints (same shape). The old one kilo block of Coon was left languishing, getting blue spotted and sweaty in its plastic coat as we pushed it to the back of the fridge and instead ate slice after slice of Kraft. I can't remember adding bread or anything else to it too often but yes, this changed the way we ate, thought, sang, worshipped, loved, grew, progressed ..... Heady times.




















A year later when wearing plastic maps of Australia for earrings was considered de-rigeur, McDonald's decided to tell us that meat potatoes and bread were healthy, especially when reconfigured as a Big Mac. "Have some wholesome McDonald's meals and you're well on your way to a balanced diet." Yeah, in HELL. Even reading this tripe the first time around as a fourteen-and-a-half year old in my mother's Womens' Weekly I knew that I'd rather eat another frypans' worth of three bean egg mix.

All was calm by 1988 when the humble Jatz Cracker was the Easy Entertainer.




















I've studied the photo for a while now and can't for the life of me work out what's on those easy entertainers - turkey kidneys? Cat tumours? Tree fungi? Hippo snot? In our day it was French Onion dip or some good old Kraft cheese cunningly ripped into four with a thin slice of gherkin on the top, ready for a raging night of Porky's II on beta video or some games of Pong on the black and white TV in the pool room.....

Rita here perhaps sums up the effects that such foods had on the bowels of those who willingly ate it.




















The poor love was out of routine. It was either her diet or her busy busy life. It sure as hell couldn't have been those 23 cheese slices and Kentucky Fried bucket, could it? Or three wholesome Big Macs and a bowl of three been mix?

Ford Pills would set her straight; help her back out a toffee log of her own one of these days. Then she'll be able to do a semi plie without frightening her students or shattering the mirrors.