What I Cooked Last Night

Barbecue on a hot night. 1. Roll pieces of salmon through a marinade of soy, ginger and garlic. Wrap in foil adding some of the marinade. Place on grill. Barbecue until the package steams. Serve with coiled glass noodles with sesame oil and stir-fried Chinese broccoli. 2. Lamb chops marinated in olive oil into which you have snipped a handful of fresh rosemary. Serve with cubed potatoes boiled until very soft and then tumbled with chopped spring onion, parsley and a splash of vinegar. 3. Fat pork and sage sausages with a side of red cabbage with apple juice: Fry a couple of chopped medium size onions in oil. Shred one half of a medium red cabbage, add it to the pan and stir gently to coat in oil. Turn the heat down and add a dash of red wine vinegar, a cup of apple juice and a pinch of salt and pepper. Vary the fluid according to the size of the cabbage. Cook 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, reducing a little. When done, top with sour cream and serve alongside the pork and sa...

Happy Christmas or, if you're afraid to offend someone , happy holidays/festive season/new year/Hogmanay/yuletide etc etc. And a peaceful new year. I think that's acceptable.

From today's Herald Sun: While their meat doughnuts completely reimagined this humble snack - paprika sugar-rolled fluffy dough balls with a savoury meat centre - (and which a pork version thereof is also the must-order snack at the very fun Two Wrongs in South Yarra) the "milk and cookies" to finish at Dexter in Preston is a rudely clever, stupidly tasty full stop to a meal. Second prize goes to the same review: This "cheese" course, where a glossy-sheened smoked croissant is served with a round of what appears to be camembert that's actually cauliflower, oozing like ripe cheese, is wildly smart and inventive.

"Please prove you are not a robot."

When you have children, you eventually end up in Healesville, one way or another. One way is the Maroondah Highway. If you tell someone you took the children to Healesville at the weekend, they will ask you two questions: 'How was the traffic?' and, as an afterthought, 'How were the wombats/koalas/numbats?' The answer is always 'appalling', meaning the Maroondah Highway, not the animals; but on a Sunday in December it is even worse, given that half of Melbourne drives to the hills for Christmas picnics, obeying navigators (the GPS ones, not your wife) that push everyone onto the same road when several alternatives are available for old-school Melway-readers. The road is a traffic light-ridden nightmare. Endless minutes crawl by while you wait for green after minutes of red followed by random directional arrows. The motorcade then draws on at snail's pace towards Ringwood past about five branches of Fantastic Furniture, six Barbeques Galore, nineteen McDona...

I don't like restaurants. I don't like the cost, I don't like the noise, I don't like being a prisoner to some idiot waiter, I don't like other people's at-table habits, and I don't like sitting in a place that feels like a nineteenth century workhouse dining room. I'd rather eat at the GMH canteen, or Coles cafeteria; where the dress standard is higher, the customers are more respectful to those around them, the food doesn't cost a fortune, and the serves are bigger. The other week my wife had to go to a work dinner at one of those barn-like renovated pubs where the noise level is like an airport and a glass of wine costs $8.95. Her meal was a pork chop that cost $34 because it had some freekeh and a five-cent-coin-sized mound of smoked onion puree next to it, and you had to pay extra for something called a 'side' which, translated, means the rest of your meal. I ate at home alone that night. We had had corned beef earlier in the week, and...

From the weekend vacant position ads, a job at one of Australia's leading schools, PLC: Director of Innovation The Director of Innovation will develop and execute the vision to re-conceptualise library; space, staff and services, to create an Innovation Centre at PLC. The position plays a strategic and transformational role by providing opportunities for creativity and entrepreneurship through developing innovative and inviting spaces and a range of experiences that delight and engage students and staff as well as offering community building experiences with the wider PLC community. Just read that last sentence again. It is a masterpiece of the genre; an over-long piece of jargon-riddled bureaucrat-speak devoid of any real meaning. Who do they want? An architect? A painter? A set designer? A performance artist? Who knows. Probably they don't, either. On it goes: The incumbent (sic – but they mean the appointee) will ensure the delivery of information learning and literary serv...

IN PART ONE , CREATIVE DIRECTOR JUSTIN IS PRESENTING A BEER CAMPAIGN TO BREWERY CLIENT EUGENE IONESCO (SIC). PLEASANTRIES OUT OF THE WAY, EUGENE ASKS FOR A COFFEE BEFORE GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS. NOW READ ON. JUNE, THE LAST REMAINING TEA LADY IN THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY, CRASHES THROUGH THE DOOR WITH A TROLLEY LOAD OF COFFEE CUPS. SHE SAYS NOTHING BUT PLONKS A LOADED TRAY ON THE BOARDROOM TABLE AND WADDLES OUT AGAIN, SLAMMING THE DOOR. EUGENE: I see June's in her usual high spirits today. JUSTIN: Every time there's a pitch on she gets more stressed than anyone else in the entire agency because it throws her routine out. A presentation with sixty million dollars in the balance, and June's grumpy about ten extra cups to wash up. Plus, I figure she's lost us several new accounts just by spilling coffee on the MD or being rude to the head of marketing. EUGENE: Yes, well as clients we do factor in the quality of service at a potential agency. That's only natural....

Aberfeldie, Saturday 14 November. Left to right: Tom and William. Picture: Gerard Feain (Tom's earlier athletics career here .)

This is probably the best Christmas shopping-for-kids idea I've ever heard. Local bookshop Pictures & Pages is having a grown-ups-only night, during which you get to enjoy champagne and nibbles while you walk around the shop pulling books off the shelf and throwing them in a box. You don't even need your wallet; they give you until December 3 to pay, and after that they will keep your book purchases hidden away out the back until you sneak them home on Christmas eve. That will have the kids scratching their heads after they've searched the house for their presents while you're at work. Interfering little brats. * Pictures & Pages 400 Sydney Rd, Coburg Grown-ups only night 19 November 7pm-9pm .

Victoria Police recently decided that OH&S issues trump pursuing drug-affected criminals in cars. That decision has given licence to the latter to simply drive at or around police to escape apprehension, with predictable results : "The driver of that vehicle accelerated hard towards the police member and ran him down," said Acting Superintendent David Griffin. But may a policeman fire his gun to attempt to save his own life? Herald Sun reporters Kara Irving, Wes Hosking and Jon Kaila (strength in numbers obviously being a necessary requisite for Herald Sun staff at police incidents) ask the question: Supt Griffin ... would not comment on whether discharging the firearm was the best response under the circumstances.

Yes, I watched it. We were up in the hills on Tuesday at a cousin's house for a picnic for the children's grandmother, and after lunch at Belgrave Lake - as pretty a place as you could hope to have a Cup Day lunch - back to the house. The children had drawn horses cut from the morning paper's form guide, and one had Big Orange who led from the start to the 700, and they screamed at the television. Then the field bunched up into a sea of horses, and 300 out a green and purple flash came out of the scrum. We didn't know until the close-up on Michelle Payne's face. Goosebumps. I had earlier read her interview in which she said she had a good feeling about the race. Not the brash kind of good feeling where you're just talking up your chances; but something else. Might have been her mother, or her sister. She lost the former at six months; the latter a few years ago. Youngest of ten, and lost her mother at six months. We didn't know the result until the vision ...

5.30 ON A FRIDAY AFTERNOON. DAVID, THE ADVERTISING AGENCY OWNER, STROLLS INTO THE BOARDROOM, LOOKS AROUND AND SIGHS. HE IS TIRED BUT CONTENT. ANOTHER DIFFICULT WEEK HAS ENDED WITH NO CLIENT DEFECTIONS, NO STAFF TANTRUMS, NO RESIGNATIONS, AND NO FIST-FIGHTS. WHILE DAVID IS THINKING ABOUT WHETHER TO PLAY GOLF AT THE WEEKEND OR SIMPLY HANG OUT AT HIS DOUBLE-STOREY GEORGIAN IN TOORAK, JUNE THE TEA LADY WADDLES INTO THE BOARDROOM. JUNE: I'm closing up in twenty minutes, David. DAVID (THINKS): I own an agency turning over a hundred million a year and the fucking tea lady is kicking me out of my own building. DAVID (SAYS): That’s fine, June. I'll be out in fifteen. WHILE DAVID RULES HIS AGENCY WITH AN IRON FIST HE HAS BEEN SUCCESSFUL IN ADVERTISING MAINLY BECAUSE HE HAS FOLLOWED THE GOLDEN RULE: NO MATTER HOW AGGRESSIVE YOU ARE TO CLIENTS, NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU ABUSE YOUR ACCOUNT TEAM OR SHOUT AT CREATIVE, YOU NEVER, EVER, EVER DISRESPECT THE TEA LADY. NOBODY DISRESPECTS...

THE CREATIVE PRESENTATION FOR A NEW BRAND OF BEER IS TAKING PLACE IN THE BOARDROOM. THE CREATIVE DIRECTOR, JUSTIN, IS AT ONE END OF A TABLE AND THE CLIENT, MR EUGENE IONESCO (YES: HIS NAME REALLY WAS EUGENE IONESCO), IS AT THE OTHER END OF THE TABLE WHICH IS ABOUT A MILE LONG. WHAT IS IT ABOUT LARGE BOARDROOM TABLES? SOME KIND OF STUPID CORPORATE POWER GAME? JUSTIN IS NERVOUS. FIRSTLY, HE HAS TO SHOUT BECAUSE THE CLIENT IS SO FAR AWAY. SECONDLY, THE POWERPOINT PRESENTATION IS ONE FRAME OUT, MEANING THERE'S AN EXTRA PAGE IN THE PRINT DOCUMENT BUT DELETED FROM THE COMPUTER. THIRDLY, THE CONCEPTS ARE NOT MAKING HIM JUMP THROUGH HOOPS TODAY. JUSTIN IS WEARING A CHAMBRAY SHIRT OVER FADED JEANS. HE THINKS HE IS BEING IRONIC ABOUT THE EIGHTIES, BUT HE JUST LOOKS LIKE ROD STEWART. EUGENE IS WEARING A WHITE SHIRT OF FINEST COTTON OVER BLACK DESIGNER PANTS AND SOFT BLACK SUEDE SHOES. A SLINKY ORANGE SCARF IS TOSSED CARELESSLY AROUND HIS NECK AND DRIFTS WITH HIS MOVEMENTS LIKE GOSSAMER. ...

According to popular opinion, 1950s Australia was a cultural, culinary and social wasteland. One of the sub-texts of this misguided belief is that 'multi-cultural' food arrived only during that decade's post-war European migration into Australia. Presumably pasta, garlic, canned tomatoes and other exotic ingredients disembarked alongside the immigrants - or in their suitcases - off the same 1950s boats at Station Pier, to widespread nose-crinkling of the natives. Au contraire, mes amis . The following recipe complete with those same foreign ingredients appeared in a 1930 edition (see previous post) of The Leader Spare Corner Book . Hancock’s Spaghetti Recipe Chop up fowl in small pieces, add two tablespoons of lard, braise well, then add four cloves garlic (or onion), 2 lb of tomatoes, small cup of water, salt and pepper to taste. Simmer until fowl is tender, pour over spaghetti, add grated cheese and serve. Ordinary cheap cuts of meat can be used instead of fowl. Thi...

Roast potatoes are one of life's greatest benefits, especially when eaten hot straight from the oven having been baked with garlic and rosemary. Unfortunately, I sometimes bake too many and despite our best efforts, some remain uneaten. There are many ways to use them up. Pizza restaurants slice them onto pizzas and call them 'gourmet'. I call them leftovers. Beat half a dozen eggs and pour them into a non-stick pan over a low heat. Slice roast potatoes, grate a zucchini, slice a cooked chorizo sausage into thin rounds, cut some black olives into fine slices. Add these to omelette. Place lid over the pan if it has one, turn heat to lowest and let it cook through gently. If brave, make an attempt to fold this monster omelette, otherwise leave it as it is and call it a frittata. Slice into wedges and serve.

Nothing beats putting 'eco-' in front of your product name to generate utterly cynical marketing credibility. The average consumer is presumed to believe that the manufacture and distribution of a product without the eco- prefix has left a trail of environmental disaster in its wake. But add those three magic letters and the marketer conjures a kind of damage reversal; and an enviro-pixie waves a wand of green fairy dust every time you buy it. Eco batteries. Eco downlights. Eco bananas, with machine-dipped red wax tips. Yesterday I saw a product in the bathroom department called Eco-Ply. Enough said. Every time you flush, a forest grows somewhere. But eco- is not new. It pre-existed the green religion. I came across it in an old cookbook. Eco Macaroons. Half cup sugar. ¾ cup dessicated cocoanut (sic). ¾ cup rolled oats. Small piece butter. Mix well with beaten egg, and drop in teaspoonful on baking sheet. Bake in slow oven 20 minutes. From The Leader Spare Corner...

Who needs NASA? Illustration by William, 2010.

At last. Someone has verbally, if not literally, destroyed PowerPoint . I've been railing against PowerPoint for years. Some of my choicer PowerPoint quotes: Thick, steaming garlic bread and red wine. It makes the perfect late supper, unless you have an early meeting next morning. However, if you are being summoned to a powerpoint presentation, go ahead and eat all the garlic you like. Anyone putting on a powerpoint presentation in the morning deserves to be blown away in a garlic gale. I was at my second office reading a forty page powerpoint printout about some marketing genius's idea of what 'sets a company apart'. It was full of words like 'innovate' and 'respond' and 'focus on the customer' but it was devoid of any common sense at all. Yes, it's Bulwer-Lytton time again; the competition that asks you to write the opening sentence of the worst-ever novel. Shouldn't be hard: just read the average corporate mission statement or ...

Somehow we ended up in Cootamundra. I never plan, I just drive and arrive somewhere towards the end of the day. You often discover places you never knew. I had known Cootamundra, of course, having been based there years ago when I was working for a research firm. I had to visit farms around the district and interview farmers. It was slow work. It is a very hospitable area and some days I ate several morning teas and two lunches. This time we drove in before five and I stopped outside the tourist information office. It was about to close. What have you got, I asked the lady. What have you got, she countered. A wife and three children, I replied. Try the Elm and Wren , she said. They'll like it. Here, we'll get them on the phone. They’re very accommodating in the country. Wouldn't happen in the city. They'd throw a brochure at you. Half an hour later. The Elm and Wren was a 1940s red brick two-storey commercial building. They were usually built as banks, with en...

THE SCENE: A GRAND DINING ROOM IN ONE OF MELBOURNE'S OLDEST SUBURBS, WHERE OLD MONEY LIVES AND RARELY VENTURES AFIELD, EXCEPT TO THE BOARDROOMS OF COLLINS STREET AND THE SNOWFIELDS OF FALLS CREEK AND THE SOFT BLUE WATERS OF PORTSEA FRONT BEACH. SOPHIE, TWENTY-ONE AND IN HER FIRST YEAR IN ADVERTISING, IS HAVING DINNER WITH HER MOTHER. SOPHIE (PLAYING WITH HER SALMON MOUSSELINE WITH A CITRUS JUS AND SMUDGE OF TRUFFLE OIL): Mummy, we had a trip to the seaside today. MUMMY (TOORAK DAME, ALL JEWELLERY AND TANNED SKIN): Darling! Was it fun? Where did you go? Torquay? Blairgowrie? Brighton Beach? SOPHIE (SIPPING A 2012 MORNINGTON PENINSULA PINOT GRIGIO, JUST SLIGHTLY CHILLED, IN A CRYSTAL WINEGLASS THAT IS SLIGHTLY TOO LARGE): Frankston. MUMMY (WITH AN AUDIBLE INTAKE OF BREATH): You mean ... you actually went to Frankston? Or you just had a wayside stop on your way to Red Hill or Shoreham or Merricks? SOPHIE (ANOTHER TINY SIP OF GRIGIO, PULLS A SLIGHT FACE, IT'S VERY ACID): ...

Instead, he stupidly gave it to Prince Philip . Janet Albrechtsen : Abbott's knighting of Prince Philip wasn't a big deal - but it was one heck of a weird decision at a time when Abbott was hardly riding high. Once you do something that weird, it sticks. 'Helga Rolfe' should be out the door too. That was too weird as well, a marathon-running, bike-riding Rhodes scholar being shepherded around, like a child by a kindergarten teacher.

When was Kraft cheese (the one that lasted indefinitely) invented? In what decade were the Wizz Fizz, the Choc Wedge and Nescafe launched onto an unsuspecting Australian market? Remember Copha? (It's still around.) When was its name trademarked? When was Australian beer first available in cans? And when did CUB re-release Victorian Bitter in its original packaging artwork? Is Camp Pie Australian? (Or would you want it to be?) When did the iconic 1960s soft drink Passiona enter the market? What was Courage Draught, what was its logo character, and why did it fail? When were Tim Tams invented? Finding answers to these fascinating questions could absorb a lot of time. Fortunately, Jan O'Connell has done the research and placed the results into an Australian food timeline. Visit it here .

Monday's Moreland Leader reports : Coles is looking to increase parking spaces at its Coburg North Village after a flood of visitors in its first month overwhelmed existing facilities. Coles spokeswoman Martine Alpins said customer numbers exceeded expectations. "We plan to increase the number of parking spaces in the coming weeks to ensure customers continue to have a great shopping experience ... " And are able actually to take their shopping home. Unfortunately, some bureaucrats believe that shops would sell more goods if customers did not drive to the shops . How would they get their purchases home? Teleportation? Sydney Road traders would experience an increase in ... spending in their stores if on-street parking was removed, a community wellbeing expert says. Dr Hannah Badland, a McCaughey VicHealth Centre senior research fellow, said research had shown limiting car parking resulted in people staying longer in shopping strips and making more purchases. A chasm the...

767, A320, 747-400, A380 are just numbers. If you want an aircraft with a proper name you can't go past this . Unfortunately only two were built so you won't be able to sample the inflight menu any time soon.

A sultry late-summer night in 1977, close to midnight. I dozed in my chair by the open window waiting for the cool change; book cast to one side. The radio in the corner was low, as if playing to itself. Then the beginnings of a welcome breeze stole in the window. A song came on the radio. 1977 had been the era of disco, and lyrics that could be well described as having been typed, not written. But this was different. On a morning from a Bogart movie In a country where they turn back time You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre Contemplating a crime I sat up, listened. She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running Like a watercolor in the rain Don't bother asking for explanations She'll just tell you that she came In the year of the cat Then the break, led out by cellos and crying violins dripping teardrop-shaped notes, parrying together for a few bars, like lovers parting. Then a searing slide guitar note splits them like a hot knife through b...

Twelve-time Melbourne Cup winner Bart Cummings was once asked to what he owed his success. 'Horses,' he replied.

William and Thomas run out with Coburg captain Nick Carnell in his last home ground game at Coburg City Oval, Saturday 22 August. (His last VFL game will be at Eureka Stadium this Saturday.) More pictures at Coburg FC , Round 19.

The government has released a taxpayer-funded app to assist time-poor-parents in dealing with their children's schooling. Common sense would once have said that an app is the last thing any time-poor parent needed. But common sense has no place in a bureaucrat's vision for insinuating themselves into people's lives, funded by you: Education minister Christopher Pyne said it was designed to help working parents understand how they can engage with their children's education in the small bursts of time they have. 'Help' such as: ... the questions parents should ask at parent-teacher nights.

It was just before nine o'clock on a winter Saturday morning in 1971. I was a teenager. I stood before an enormous old house, a late Victorian in central Essendon, near the station. It had verandahs all round and a soaring roofline, and it was set back from the street behind a front garden lined with mature shrubs. I pushed open the gate, walked up the tiled pathway, took three steps up to the verandah and pressed the bell-push set into the stained glass panel beside the front door. A muffled chime echoed somewhere inside, as if far away. Time passed. Eventually the door opened, seemingly by itself. The woman who stood there was ancient and massive, like the house. She had requested someone to do some weekend odd jobs in her garden, and I had been nominated; but I cannot remember how it came about. It is one those circumstances lost in the mists of time. It was my first job. I announced myself. The old woman led me down a gloomy hallway, through an enormous kitchen that still...

Reed avocadoes are coming into season. Possibly the most voluptuous fruit of all, they are big and almost round; and when ripe, they bulge with creamy young flesh. Are they ready to eat? Cup one in your hand and squeeze ever so gently. I almost regret not including the avocado in my top ten vegetables list (the rule being that if it is used like a vegetable, it is given honorary vegetable status, even though it is a fruit). Last night I made this sensuous* pasta dish using a Reed avocado, a leek and a red capsicum, all of which are plentiful and cheap right now. Rigatoni with avocado, leek and red capsicum. I chopped a leek lengthwise twice, and then across the grain to make quartered rings. Then I chopped a red capsicum into small batons. I placed the leek and capsicum in a pan with a scored clove of garlic, a dash of white wine, a little olive oil, and lots of pepper, and set it on a low heat to steam the vegetables in the wine. Meanwhile, I cooked the rigatoni. When th...

What name will come up? Hitting the 'publish' button now ...

I only wanted to change my name. It shouldn't be that hard. A little background: in 2003, when I started this weblog, you could count Australian weblogs on one hand. It made sense to use an internet handle at the time. The blog was a place to store recipes, online being easier than having a drawer full of newspaper cuttings, pages torn out of cookbooks, hand-jotted notes stained with gravy, and split pea packets (etc) with recipes printed on their reverse side. At the start, the blog didn't even have a comments function. So I chose a name that simply represented what I do in the kitchen, which is mess about a lot without getting get too serious about food. I wanted to distinguish this blog from the rash of over-serious 'foodie' blogs that subsequently took over the world. Now, of course, everyone has their own name on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and dozens of other online time-wasting functions, so I thought, after twelve years, I should drop the 'kitchen han...

I happened to be reading an old (pre-2000AD) copy of Bon Appetit , the US foodie magazine. By 'reading' I mean 'looking at' because when you read a recipe in a magazine, you don't take it in like you do when reading a detective story plot or a football match report. I have proven this theory dozens of times when browsing the cookbook section in bookshops: upon noticing a particularly delicious-sounding recipe and not being able to afford the book, I have attempted to memorise the ingredients. No matter how simple the recipe, I inevitably forget several ingredients by the time I get home. Yet I can always remember the smallest plot detail in a 768 page novel. For example, in which direction does Gandalf turn Shadowfax in Chapter Seven of 'The Return of the King'? The Barrow-downs, of course. Case proven. Inside the back cover of the Bon Appetit was an interview with racing driver Richard Pretty. They asked him about the variety of food on the racing circui...

Aisle one. Seen on a can of pineapple: Naturally Low in Fat . Spent the next two aisles looking for sugar labelled Naturally Low in Salt , spring water labelled Naturally Low in Caffeine and legs of lamb labelled Naturally Low in Fish . Didn't find any, but the shopping trip was a quarter over, and I found myself in ... Aisle five. Seen on a can of tomato soup: Made from responsibly grown Australian tomatoes . Now this was a hard one, and provided enough entertainment to get me through the next four aisles (which also made me forget two items on the shopping list). To start with, since grammar went out with old telephones, people throw words into sentences in any order. Was the adverb 'responsibly' even intended to modify 'grown'? And if so, how do you define responsibly grown tomatoes? Or irresponsibly grown ones? Left out in the rain? Letting cockatoos eat them before they ripen? Or did the manufacturer really mean that all Australian tomatoes are resp...

Tried to call you yesterday and you've obviously ditched the landline, like I did last year. Hope you had a good one. *Rest of the world thinks: WHAT! No Facebook, no Twitter? These guys try to TELEPHONE greetings to each other? Nuts!*

John Lennon never wrote a song called 'Looking Through a Glass Parsnip'. No-one ever wrote a book titled Chokos in the Stew . "He knows his carrots" was never a figure of speech. There was never an online satirical magazine called The Potato . Booker T. and the M.Gs never recorded Green Beans . There is a reason for this. The reason is that the onion is not just a vegetable. It is a cultural artefact. The onion underpins more recipes than any other ingredient. It stars in its own right. It makes grown men cry. If there were no onion, it would be necessary to invent one. The onion is the only vegetable in existence that can literally stop people in their tracks. I have proven this several times, when working on the Bunnings kindergarten fund-raising sausage stall. For some reason I always got to be the cook while the others handled the money or served the customers. This meant I was able to stand behind the grill turning onions and sausages, while gazing out ove...

Never mind the old story about the Italians and the Greeks getting strange looks at their salami sandwiches on one-inch thick peasant bread. We were as Australian as gum trees, but our sandwiches raised eyebrows every day. Baked bean sandwiches. Canned spaghetti sandwiches. Beetroot sandwiches. Cucumber sandwiches. Sultana sandwiches. Some of those I would still eat. The rest, perhaps not. We didn't always take our lunch to school. Sometimes, in junior grades, I went home for lunch – yes, walked the half mile all by myself – and I could scent the aroma of home-made vegetable soup a block away from home. The walk back to school was slower and more reluctant. There was also a school canteen, staffed by volunteer mothers. In those primitive days, fulfilment in the workplace and paying $120 a day for childcare was just a pipe dream; and mothers did nothing all day except dust, and hold lunch parties, and drive their new Volkswagen Beetle to the church tennis club to play tournament...

I went back through the archives. (This blog is just a continuation of what used to be hand-written diaries. I keep them all in a box in the bungalow at the beach house. If fire ever roars through the Mornington Peninsula my life in words will be gone. No great loss. The early ones are just pre-teen terse two-line entries.) I went back through the decades, right back to the early 1970s. I flicked through. It must have been winter 1970. April, May ... there it was: Saturday 30 May, 1970. State cross-country championships at Bundoora. Saw Ron Clarke and got his autograph. I hadn't remembered getting the autograph. All I had vaguely recalled was seeing the adidas-wearing Glenhuntly-singleted Olympian near the finish, face etched in pain as usual. I had joined St Bernard's athletics club the previous month, after reading Franz Stampfl on Running , and Bundoora was my second race after Clifton Hill in pouring rain. I liked running and the rain never bothered me. Two years ...

Federal treasurer Joe Hockey, in a casino-logic moment, says that if you think house prices are unaffordable, just get a better job. See? Simple. Croupier logic. Rake in more money and everything's great. (Incidentally, 'Joe Hockey' could not be a better name for a hustler at a shady casino in a James Hadley Chase novel. But I happily admit that's just gratuitously nasty.) As truisms go, Hockey's assertion is practically an axiom, or even a platitude. I don't know, I'm just throwing words around meaninglessly, as you do in a casino while you're waiting for the spinning to stop. Plenty of spinning goes on in Canberra. It's a money pit. Want a million dollar house? Get a better job. Truism. Of course anyone can buy a house. All you need is a deposit and enough income to service the payments. Guess what? The commentators agreed with Uncle Joe. But they're asking the wrong question, or shooting the wrong fish, or looking into the wrong barrel...

"Any resemblance between pre-war football and today's game," football historian and Truth sports reporter Jim Main wrote in 1969, "is purely coincidental." Main continued: "The old game died bloodily in 1945, when Carlton throttled life out of South Melbourne and gave birth to a professionalism that has matured into today's cold, calculated ruthlessness ... ." Carlton was reigning premier when Main wrote those words; having achieved success by poaching the star player of the League's then most successful club, prompting one of the Sun News-Pictorial's better back page headlines: Carlton Draft: Melbourne Bitter . The act of unsporting bastardry so shocked Melbourne it never won another flag; Carlton blithely piled up another seven during the reign of nine coaches following Barassi, some of whom were summarily sacked - and two of which were reappointed, attesting to the board's erratic vacillations. The word professional is no long...

It was on a can of pineapple in the supermarket. It read: Naturally Low in Fat , as if to reassure the one in eighty billion shoppers who might think pineapple was as fat-laden as, say, a ham and cheese croissant or a jar of double cream. What next? Naturally Low in Nuts on a leg of lamb? Completely Sugar Free! on a jar of salt?

The room was silent. Delegates had voted and were waiting for the result of the first podium finish – third – to appear on a large screen fixed to the wall. The barman moved around softly, collecting glasses. The room was a private one at a rundown hotel in an inner bayside suburb; the kind of place once frequented by car dealers, waterside workers, blacksmiths and horse trainers. To say the clientele had changed would be like saying the sun had risen. Today, the faded curtains, the worn carpet, and the accidentally-antique bar furniture gave the establishment a raffish air that appealed to the inner-urban hipsters who had transformed the surrounding suburb from $10,000 workers' cottages into $1.5 million 'unpolished gems' by the simple act of moving in. Now, the hipsters were happy to mix with the remaining scoundrels of the area and the hotel was the place they did it. Suddenly, a headline appeared on the screen. The Top Ten Vegetables. Silence. A subtitle appeare...

NO. 4: THE MUSHROOM Until the early 1970s, Melbourne was dead on Sundays. Everything was shut. TABs, casinos, $2 shops, brothels, liquor outlets, Kidzone, Domino's pizza, Northland, you name it. It must have been awful. How did people get through the day? My father had a Sunday coping strategy. He took us on what was known as a 'Sunday drive', a quaint mid-twentieth century weekend activity that involved a whole family packing into an FC Holden station wagon and driving into the countryside on mostly deserted roads, although another vehicle might be spotted occasionally, embarked on a similar expedition. He usually drove north-west. We were practically on the urban fringe anyway. West of Essendon was thistle and Avondale Heights, both of which were wild. Keilor Road took us across the Maribyrnong River bridge into Keilor proper, where the road became the Calder Highway. After that was nothing but farmland all the way to Bendigo. We would take an arbitrary turnoff ont...