how many toasters does it take...

Some many months ago, I was (unsuccessfully) attempting to combat a bout of insomnia with repetitions of On Ilkley Moor Bar t'at, and its theosophy.

Last night, it was economics, thanks to 24 Hours from Tulsa.

In the mid-1980s, a petrol, or possibly oil, company had a tv advert to promote its reward card. Everybody used Green Shield Stamps back in them days, so although the reward card scheme was identical to that, racking up points in return for paying for petrol, there was obviously some need to preach to the suspicious who were not sure about a plastic card versus tiny slips of gummed perforated paper that you were supposed to lick and stick onto a cardboard...card. (In reality Green Shield stamps just got lost in the glove compartment or were whipped out of your fingertips by the wind as you crossed the garage forecourt to your car. As a kid, I found it hard to get a handle on the Green Shield stamp. It was so important, because it was like...money. But they were always crushed and coated with mud in the footwell, or dinged to shreds in the ashtray, and the card was never about, and then sometimes you would find one among the pile of parental pocket change on the sideboard, and...wonder).

So. The petrol company (I googled it; it's Mobil) did this advert about the things you could get with your points, and the song went: "I was only 24 toasters from Scunthorpe. Only 6 double beds from Torquay".

Now, we all know, until very recently at least, supermarket points things - aside from being calculated to confuse foreigners - buy practically nothing until you have been accumulating them for four hundred and ninety years, and then your options are an acrylic tumbler with the supermarket logo on, or a keyring. (The reason they are meant to confuse foreigners is the way you are asked for the card relating to a particular points scheme when you try to pay for things. It's not a quesion, as in, 'do you have a Nectar card?' The cashier just says, 'Nectar?' - or here, 'Optimum?' If you are confused, or are foolish enough to ask for elaboration, it is customary to simply repeat, 'OPTIMUM?').

So to reach even ONE toaster, even a hundredth of a double bed? You would surely have to drive a considerable distance. Yet the singer is in a car, 24 toasters away from Scunthorpe. And six, count them, six double beds from Torquay.

You're wide awake now too, aren't you?

The furthest point in the UK from Torquay has to be John O'Groats. Torquay is way in the south west. It's only about 100 miles from there to Land's End. The driving distance from John O'Groats to Torquay must be something just over 620 miles.

If I can earn 6 double beds from driving 620 miles, then...I can get a bed for going about 100. I could drive to London from Leicester, and I wouldn't even have to go back.

Conveniently, probably the furthest point from Scunthorpe is Land's End, since Scunthorpe is in North Lincolnshire. It can only be about 400 miles. That's 17 miles for a toaster.

Mobil, I didn't take A Level Economics. I didn't even take GCSE Economics. But even I can see that's financial suicide on your part.

This song was written before the Channel Tunnel existed. I guess you could allow for car-ferry transport to, say, Zeebrugge, or Ostend, thus opening up Europe and a much greater distance for the 24 toasters and six double beds to cover, but I don’t think that’s really in the spirit of the song.

However, since I still was not asleep at this point, I decided to allow for that Channel Tunnel they’ve got there, and assume Mobil must mean a much greater distance than the UK could offer.

Since I was in bed, I made some guesses about reward-points-to-litres-of-petrol ratios, and random looking-it-up after the fact bore it out – a litre gets you a point. 4.5 litres per gallon = 4.5 points (can you keep up with the maths?).

A nice economical little car like the Micra (I wish they had them here, but can you imagine driving on the Prairies in one? The people in their monster trucks wouldn’t even see you as they chewed you up into their front grille) gets about 50 mpg when driving long-distance. 4.5 points for every 50 miles.

Now, points-to-pounds. I don’t live in England any more but I’d say you could get a decent toaster for fifteen quid. (Not one that does eggs, probably, or has a muffin-or-croissant cradle on top for when you want to defrost pastries. But one that toasts.) The best-known supermarket points scheme gives you £2.50 for 500 points. 3000 points for the toaster.

Times 24.

72,000 points.

If 72,000 points gets me 24 toasters, and 50 miles gets me 4.5 points..then...16,000 miles. 16,000 miles for my 24 toasters.

As the crow flies, that’s beyond New Zealand. Driving distance, overland and through the Channel Tunnel (remember that far back? Still with me? Getting sleepy? Good) it’s got to be somewhere in Asia. Mongolia, maybe (I’m adding miles to detour through Iran around... that sea there, above Iran. My geography is about as good as my maths. The Black Sea? The Caspian?)

None of this, though, approaches the question of why, if you had 16,000 miles worth of points under your belt, you’d think of getting 24 toasters. I hear you can get some really good stuff from those points things now. There’s more to rewards than acrylic tumblers and multiple toasters.

Unless.

Unless you have a large extended family in Ulaanbaatar who all really enjoy breakfast, and you are looking for holiday gifts to take them, I suppose.

taken for questioning

I buy soap and shampoo from a particular shop for a particular reason. They sell solid shampoo, which means it doesn’t come in a plastic bottle.

I hover around fifty-fifty on whether it’s preferable to avoid plastic or palm-oil when it comes to soap and shampoo. I don’t know which is worse – buying things with palm oil in them, or buying things in plastic bottles. Each as bad as the other, probably. However, at the moment it is certainly easier to avoid the plastic bottle (soap and shampoo-wise) than to avoid palm oil. Even fair-trade places like Ten Thousand Villages still use palm oil in their soap.

I’m not sure if the particular shop has palm oil or not.

Okay, I just looked it up. Apparently not, so there’s another reason for me to keep going there.

Anyway I was lucky enough to receive a gift voucher for this shop, and was almost out of both soap and shampoo, so today I went.

I headed straight for the shampoo, and picked up the one I always get, because it’s meant to be good for if you swim in chlorinated water a lot. Immediately, a sales assistant appeared. ‘Which is your favourite shampoo?’ Um, this one. The one I’m buying. She fetched me a little paper bag to slide it into and I carried on. Another assistant asked if she could help me. I asked her to cut me a piece of the face soap I use. ‘Have you used this before?’ Yes. A third assistant then approached to ask if there was anything she could help me with and if I’d seen a particular product, the one she was holding. No, I said, because I hadn’t. Then she told me all about what it did. And then, shampoo assistant came back, and, wondered ‘Do you know that buying two shampoos would mean you get a free tin?’

I’d been in the store about a minute and been asked six questions already.

At that point the second assistant came back with my soap and asked if I knew about their promotion. I could get the same amount of soap again – of any soap – free! So I set off to look at all the soaps and choose one. Then, the first assistant came up again. ‘How long have you been a (our product) lover?’ I blinked. Caught off-guard, I actually started explaining how when I first moved here I’d fly home to England through Toronto airport and there was a shop there, and then when I came back I…

Then I stopped. You know, I finished vaguely. She nodded receptively, but I managed to hold my tongue and turned back to the soap.

‘Have you chosen your second soap yet??’ I jumped. Second assistant was back. No, I’m still looking. She slipped away again. Each time I reached for a soap, I could feel her inching back towards me. I backed off and took a turn around the shop to steady my nerves. And, in honesty, to see if I could do it without getting questioned.

With a deft two-step I made it back to the soaps and grabbed one of approximately equal size to the one I already had. I stepped smartly to the cash desk to pay, congratulating myself on avoiding having to parry a single enquiry.

‘Have you seen our (these products on the counter)?’ This time, I went for yes, because they were technically in front of my eyes and I had, in fact, seen them. ‘Would you like one?’ Not today. ‘Have you received our newsletter??’ No, I said, again truthfully, and watched as one was put in my bag while I paid. ‘Have you signed up for our email newsletter???’ Just for a moment I almost told the truth, but caught myself in the nick of time. I straightened my shoulders, got a grip and, Oh, yes, I said sunnily, signing the slip with a flourish and picking up my bag, escape now firmly in my sight.

One soap was left on the counter. The sales assistant picked it up to put in my bag. ‘Ah, you chose that one?’ she said encouragingly, and unable to stop myself, I said, I once got a lip salve thing in the same…flavour, and I liked it. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, ‘we don’t have the lip balms in that line in our stores any more. You must shop online. How long have you been visiting our online store?!’

I eyed her for a long moment.

I haven’t, I said. But I begin to think I might start.

got my Ls

At the bus stop. Youngish guy rocks up carrying an open bottle of some fizzy thing (asti spumante, or something, with the foil peeled back at the top) in a paper bag, and a slab of stubbies.

GUY: (sings) Wha-aaa-t are YOU dooo-ing the re-EST of to-o-o-DAY?

ME: Going home and working. How about you?

GUY: (still singing) Con-TIN-yooooouuuu-ing to drink, then going to see my friends, and dri-i-i-ink....ING. (looks at me quite closely) I know!!! I don’t look the type, do I?!??!

ME: On the contrary, friend. The only empirical evidence I currently have is that you are, in fact, The Type.

GUY: I mean, ok, I haven’t achieved everything my friends have. One of them, he flies jumbo jets!! I don’t even have my driver’s licence.

ME: Not ambitious in that direction?

GUY: Nooooo, man! I hate cars. Hate ‘em. Never been interested. (nanosecond pause) I could buy a house in Brazil.

ME: Well, Brazil. Naturally.

GUY: This bloke I know has one there, right, and it has, like, everything. A kitchen, a whole school!! A four-car garage.

ME: What do you want with a four-car garage? You can’t drive.

GUY: *blinky blink*

ME: *eyebrows*

GUY: Yeah, got my L plates, though, ay.

In other news: climbing up high things in the vicinity of Sydney, and looking down.

memo

Dear Google Chrome,

I love you very much. You are much friendlier than Explorer. You are very helpful and speedy to deliver me webpages.

It’s nice that you notice things, too, and give me a popup saying ‘This page is in French! Would you like to translate it?’ I click ‘Nope!’ every time, but you do like to check. Even, I feel bound to point out, when the page is not in French at all. You just did it on my email homepage, actually. And your helpfulness seems to be influencing other websites too. Youtube has permanently affixed itself into French for me now. I think it’s mostly to enable you to put your jaunty popup line over the top and ask me if I want to translate it back again. Are you perhaps in cahoots? I suspect it.

Love,

Amber

p.s. the answer’s still no. But thanks for offering! Really.

p.p.s. actually, if you want to tell me what ‘in cahoots’ is in French, I would be cool with that. Perhaps when you pop up to tell me this page is in French, which when I last looked it still wasn’t, I will hit translate, and then I’ll find out.

in the soup

Because if I didn’t mess everything up much of the time, there’d be nothing to write about, right?

Yesterday I bought a big ole handful of fresh prawns, and thought, I’ll do this properly, and use the shells and legs and brains and stuff to make stock for soup.

Quite why I decided to undertake this shortly before I was to leave to get the bus to get the train into the city for a friend’s Very Massively Important exhibition opening, I do not know. Anyway, I threw the shells and legs and brains into a pan and started boiling away.

After a while, I removed the shells and legs and brains, and put potatoes into the stock to boil. Then I took the shells and legs and brains outside to the bin.

It was when I came back inside that I realised the whole house boomed with the smell of prawn shells and legs and brains.

Didn’t think this through.

I had that moment of...can I get away with it? Because what with the fourth-quarter decision to start the prawn peeling and stock making, I was already in a might-need-to-put-your-foot-down-a-bit place vis à vis getting myself out of the house in time to make the bus.

Good sense, in the form of realising I’d be the person on the bus and the train and in the gallery about whom people whispered, ‘Crikey, that woman reeks of fish’, prevailed. I poured the stock and potatoes into the blender to soup them up, and hopped in the shower.

Tick tock, tick tock. Out of the shower, poured the soup out, filled the blender jug with dishwater to soak. Sat the blender jug on the counter.

Aha! I see you got there before me! If only you’d been here at that moment, instead of now, to remind me blender jugs don’t have a bottom. The blender blade bit just sits underneath with a seal. Setting the thing down on the blade bit makes it pop up inside the jug. A tidal wave of fishy water slapped into my front in the manner of a perfectly executed Soak the Bloke booth at the village fete.

Tick tick tick tick tick.

I wiped down, dressed up, threw towels over the fish-flooded floor, and got the heck out.

I’d checked my route on the public transport website. I’d typed in the street the gallery was on, and it told me which train station was closest. At no point in the process did it occur to me to think, “Gee, I wonder if Aberdeen Street is by any chance the longest street in the city, encompassing two different train stations?”

It took me ten minutes (with two false starts; I have no inner compass) to walk to Aberdeen Street from the station. I reached it at number 189. The gallery was at number 12.

TICK TOCK.

I missed the speeches, but on the plus side, nobody was heard to remark that there was a strong smell of prawn shells and legs and brains in the vicinity. And today, I’m having soup.

And washing the towels.

the weight of worry

Flipping out today; thanks for checking.

It’s the weight limits.

I don’t go over luggage weight limits for flights, because I don’t. 20 kg is a lot of stuff. I don’t want to be carrying around 20 kg of anything.

But - especially when it comes to big moves, like, oh, like the one just over yonder the other side of Yuletide - I always flip out about them.

20 kg is the limit. You can, if you wish, pay some cash to go over the limit. It doesn’t appear to be all that much cash. It wouldn’t matter much if I had to pay a bit extra.

And in fact, I know with almost deadly certainly when I show up at the airport, if my bag is over 20kg, it’ll be, like, 22 kg. And that will be fine.

But I am flipping out. Because I flip out about luggage weight limits. Always.

I think it is the uncertainty. If you get to the airport and are over the weight limit, and suddenly they’ve changed the rules and decided nobody is allowed any extra, or it is actually going to be a thousand dollars a kilo, there’d be nothing you could do except throw stuff out. And when you are carrying everything you need for a year, you’ve already made damn sure that all of it is pretty important. Including – perhaps especially – the large numbers of hardback picture books and chocolate for gifts. I do not want to have to choose between having shoes and having candy.

I have to get a handle on the flipping out, pronto, because it makes me do ridiculous things, such as convincing myself that being the bringer of maple syrup is more important than being the owner of any pants.

Wait. Maple syrup IS more important than pants. Right?

on the road again

Insistin’ that the world be turnin’ my way, I have quite literally been on the road. Again.

Being On The Road, as Canadians will be aware, involves Eating At Tim Hortons.

The background to this tale is that I do not like sandwiches all that much. I don’t mind sandwiches, but they don’t exactly stop my clock. They are massively handy, though, and since this past two months there has been a lot of On The Road-ing, they have featured quite strongly in my daily menu. It means that by this point in the game, I could probably be quite happy never eating a sandwich again. Especially not one with a slice of (insert name of processed meat) and a slice of (insert name of sliceable hard cheese).

So, it used to be that if you just wanted some salad between two bits of bun at Tim Horton’s (because of the issues vis-a-vis Ham and Swiss) you had to ask for a ‘garden vegetable sandwich”. It also contains cream cheese. I learnt this through practice. I am able at learning by doing.

However in recent visits, asking for a garden vegetable sandwich has met with uncomprehending stares. I have had to describe the way in the old days they used to take that to mean lettuce, cucumber and tomatoes with cream cheese. Between two bits of bun. Once it was described, they caught on very easily, but it was a bizarre turnaround from not being able to use any other phrase than ‘garden vegetable’ to suddenly ONLY being able to use a phrase that WASN’T ‘garden vegetable’. (Either way, the servers look at me as if I have just got off the crazy train carrying a bag of mothballs and wearing half a Tunnock’s tea cake on my head, because NOBODY ever just wants a salad sandwich, but anyway).

So, armed with my description, and On The Road, I hit Tim’s.

ME: Could I have a sandwich with salad and cream cheese in it, please?
TIM:(for it is he): You want a bagel with cream cheese?
ME: No, a sandwich. With the cream cheese and salad.
TIM: An egg salad sandwich?
ME: No. It is the same salad you put in your egg salad sandwiches, the lettuce and cucumbers and tomatoes. But with cream cheese. In the sandwich.
TIM: So, do you want an egg salad sandwich or a chicken salad sandwich?
ME: Well, quite honestly, I don’t even like sandwiches.
TIM:(trying to be helpful) on a bagel?
ME: No. No. It is two bits of bun, and on one of them, you put cream cheese. And on top of that, the salad items heretofore described, and then the other bit of bun.
TIM: Madam, I can only assume what you mean is a GARDEN VEGETABLE SANDWICH.
ME: Oh good heavens. Thank you. Could I also have a receipt?
TIM: Indeed.
(The sandwich comes)
ME: Please could I have my receipt?
TIM: Sorry. I forgot. Now it’s not on the register any more.
ME: Well, but I know this seems a little much, but the thing is, I am On The Road Again, and that means I should really by this point be getting’ the world turnin’ my way like a band of insistent gypsies, and it also means my organisation buys my lunch, which is basically the biggest solid it has ever done me, (the tears begin to well) and if I don’t get a receipt for this sandwich I don’t even want or like, that is literally four dollars and ninety seven cents that I WILL NEVER SEE AGAIN.
TIM: Oh good heavens.

Dear Author

Welcome to our Society! We are thrilled to have you as a member.

The Society for People Who Write Books About Things They Did For a Year is a thriving organisation. Since its inception in 1991, when our esteemed chairman, Peter Mayle, took off to Provence, we have been growing and growing!

You may wish to look through our catalogue. It includes titles such as Eat, Pray, Love (spiritual journey); Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously (cookery; and now a major movie!); The Year of Living Biblically (following the Bible’s tenets to the letter), and Just Do It (an inclusion that divided the admissions committee, as the author had sex every day for only 100 days rather than the traditional 365). We will shortly be admitting the previously-rejected Sean Aiken, as his One-Week Job Project (doing 52 different jobs for one week each) is finally due to be transferred from an organic endeavour of youthful idealism into the proper print format recognized by the Society. We also have high hopes for the Around Oz On A Battered Fish bloggers, who drove around the coastline of Australia in an environmentally-friendly car powered by waste vegetable oil (except when they had to use diesel!).

Our selection process is a rigorous one, and we are proud to have rejected My Year Of Just Doing My Job, Raising The Kids, Getting Groceries, And Looking After My Mum Etc.

Forthcoming titles include Underequipped and Ridiculed: A Year Painting Rowboats In A Landlocked Finnish Village; Living Canadian: 365 Days, Eh?; and Twelve Months of Relentlessly Quoting the Goons.

You will be pleased to hear that both of your proposals have been accepted by the Committee! Your initial idea to take a year off to write a book, and then write a book about the year in which you wrote a book, is inspired. And your second, to spend a year reading 365 books people have written about things they did for a year, and then write a book about it, shows admirable commitment to the Society’s cause, alongside a healthy grasp of a very comical metatextual conceit! Dear Author, we are impressed. A position on the Society’s Steering Committee for the Promotion of Doing Things For A Year seems likely to be in your future.

Membership expires on an annual basis.

Sincerely,

The Society for People Who Write Books About Things They Did For A Year

it's time to play the music

Sometimes, there is quite simply nothing in the entire world that is better than the Muppets.

too much to ask?

Yesterday, this happened. All in one go. It was so quick and fun and easy. Start to finish, straight through.

(I can't foot model, because it's sized for an eight-year-old. Although it looks a bit bootie-ish, when it's on a foot, the foldover top does that very shallow ankle sock thing that is very cool. Also, I was accused of buying horrid plasticky yarn because of the candy colour. I am here to tell you not only is this lovely lovely wool, but it has aloe vera magically infused into it by the aloe vera pixies, so it is a Good Thing and Nice Yarn and you can throw it in the washing machine to boot).

So today I started the second sock.

Now some people, when they use these self-striping yarns, don't see a need to match stripes; stripes fall where they may. I am not one of these people. Socks gotta match. They're socks. Matching is what they do. They're called a pair of socks. And the truth is, a self-striping pattern on yarn repeats itself, so all you have to do is take the trouble to find where the repeat is, and start there. Which I did. Light pink bit, followed by red bit, dark pink, light pink. Cast on.

Yeah. You see it too, right?








I didn't see the red bit didn't match until I was way down. But, I thought, must be me, because look - further down the pink bits match up perfectly:








So, I thought. I can just unwind a bit of the top to shrink the red bit, because the rest clearly matches.

Then I got to the pale pink bit here:

So, I thought.

So.

So I picked the incredibly wrong bit of the pattern to start at. I unwound the ball to find where the repeat really started, so I could just start again there.

I could not find it. I decided to just continue knitting, because then I would see where the repeat was, and I would make that the start, and undo the inches I already did, and carry on from there.

Dudes, there is no repeat. I have knitted a thousand yards of sock, and the pattern hasn't repeated. This is completely inexplicable to me. I even turned it upside down, because I thought that might make it match. It doesn't.

Socks match.

What is going on?

What am I to do?

je me souviens

O, friends,

I have truly seen the best Sydney has to offer. The quality of awful souvenirage is high. The term 'Authentic' is employed both widely and inaccurately. The best of the best? You decide:

1. Kookaburras-in-a-can
2. 'Convict soap' (no, I don't know either)
3. Ned Kelly action figures
4. Authentic dot art oven mitts
5. Anything with the word "g'day" followed by the word "mate" embroidered on it

(Writers' Festival by the numbers, for those who are interested? Number of times I have moved my own weight in books in the last four days: fifty-nine million. Also, Morris Gleitzman? happily bears out the rule about the loveliness of bald men.)

lucky Rachel

Joan points us at this BBC report about a new book that says Van Gogh didn't cut off his own ear in a fit of crazy after all.

The Beeb says:

"[The writers] looked at witness accounts and letters sent by the two artists, concluding that the row ended with Gauguin - a keen fencer - cutting his friend's ear off.

Van Gogh then apparently wrapped it in cloth and handed it to a prostitute, called Rachel.

Mr Kaufmann said it was not clear whether it was an accident or a deliberate attempt to injure Van Gogh, but afterwards both men agreed to tell the police the self-harm story to protect Gauguin...Gauguin later moved to Tahiti, where he produced some of his most famous works."

VAN GOGH: Rachel, honey, you are both bewitching and awesome at your job. Please accept this gift as a token of my affection for your services.
RACHEL: Well, you didn't have to...I mean, the invoice is in the mail as usual. (opens it) WTF is this?
VAN GOGH: It’s my severed ear wrapped in a hanky. Buddy here just cut it off, but we’re keeping it a secret.
RACHEL: …
GAUGIN: Last one to Tahiti’s a lemon!
VAN GOGH: This world was never meant for one as beautiful as me.
RACHEL: Dude, y’all are a pair of freaks.