Originally published by The Clifton Courier, September 15, 2021

I just had to throw a whole kilo of yoghurt in the bin. 

Now, before you go painting me as one of these big city, yoghurt wastin’ folk, hear me out. I’m not just frivolously buying yoghurt and then not eating it. I usually burn through the stuff. 

I mean, you can do so many things with plain Greek yoghurt. You can dollop it on nachos or dump stewed fruit on it for a dessert or drizzle it on most lamby-dishes or you chuck in a few herbs and use it as a salad dressing or use it to tenderise a chicken or, even though we’re getting past porridge weather, I will say that stirring in a glob of Greek yoghurt into a saucepan of porridge just before it’s ready will make for a creamy, creamy breakfast slop that I would heartily recommend. 

Plain Greek yoghurt is good stuff. And I usually throw so much of said good stuff down my gullet that buying just a single, one-kilo tub at a time seems quite restrained. 

But I recently bought a tub that wasn’t right. 

Like, if you were going by the use-by date, it’s still edible. But when I opened the tub, it looked very, very runny. Sometimes there’s a bit of whey that collects on the top, so I stuck my finger into the tub (this was my personal yoghurt tub, mind you, I’d like to make it very clear that I’m not jamming my hands into communal dairy products like some kind of maniac) to check if there was any yoghurty thickness underneath. 

But there was none. 

It was just a tub of chunky milk. 

And maybe it was still fine to eat – in terms of it not giving me food poisoning, anyway. I’m no expert and I didn’t run any scientific tests on it, so I can’t say for sure. But there’s something threatening about dairy that makes you not want to second-guess it. Like, you can take your chances on a lot of things, but dairy isn’t one of them.  

Maybe it wouldn’t have killed me, but the mouth feel of chunky milk would not have been pleasant. And maybe this makes me a bit of a diva, but I just don’t think the benefits of using up all that watery yoghurt juice were worth the gamble of spending an entire night with my head in the toilet. 

In the end, I made the decision not to eat the yoghurt. It’s called self-care. 

But what does one do with a whole kilo of dairy water? How is one supposed to dispose of such a cursed substance?

I’d have like to have sent it back down to the underworld (it clearly came from there because it obviously curdled in the ambient heat – the underworld is no place for dairy products) but you really shouldn’t be pouring such things down sinks. 

I don’t have a dog, so I couldn’t just leave it in a dogbowl and wait for the problem to take care of itself (but I just Googled whether dogs can have dairy products and one website told me that, actually, most adult dogs are lactose intolerant so it’s probably quite a good thing that I’m not in charge of keeping one of them alive).

I wasn’t just going to tip the yoghurt out in my garden, setting fire to it wouldn’t work and I had a feeling that starting a waterbomb fight with milky missiles would be an unsuccessful way of making friends with the people who live in my street.  

The only way to get rid of it was via the wheelie bin. 

But, I tell you what, I really don’t feel good about it.

It’s a waste of my hard-earned yoghurt money. It’s a waste of yoghurt. It’s a waste of all the time and resources that went into making that yoghurt. And the guilt about that wastage makes me sick to my stomach. 

Well, that and the thought of a litre of milk water sloshing around in a garbage truck, that is. 

Originally published by The Clifton Courier August 25, 2021

I recently lost a thong. 

That’s not to say I lost it in that I misplaced it. I know exactly where it is. It’s in the front passenger side of my car.

When I say I lost it, I mean, it’s gone in the proverbial sense. Its time has passed… as it no longer can be useful to me in the context of footwear, for the strap that went between my toes was ripped out of the sole and is beyond repair. 

It’s always a humbling experience, when a thong breaks. This was especially the case with me, because I was foolishly wearing it in the sand. I knew that was a recipe for discomfort, if not disaster, yet I did it anyway because my hands were full of fish, chips and ginger beer and I didn’t want to have to bend over, place my greasy bounty on the ground, remove said casual footwear, and figure out a way to carry everything. I thought I’d just plough through – it was only a short distance, I could make it work. 

But apparently I have quite a stompy gait, so when I planted my feet with each step, they sunk into the sand. Too much sand got between my foot and the sole, so when I yanked my foot up to take another step, the weight of the sand held the sole under and the power of my extremely strong, forceful stride ripped the strap from the sole. 

Who did I think I was, walking through sand with thongs on?! It was my own stupid fault. 

I was left with one fully-thonged foot and a flappy slap of rubber limply clinging to my ankle, dragging along the sand.  I looked ridiculous. And, when I had to go back to my parked car, I had to carry my thongs in my hand, completing my walk of shame for the whole world to see. 

I chucked the thongs in the passenger’s side and drove off.

And the thongs are still there. 

Because I can’t bring myself to throw them out. Not because they were a particularly sentimental pair of shoes. It’s not like they were that expensive. And replacing them would be an irritating trip into a surf/ski/skate shop, but there are plenty of other thongs in the sea. 

But it seems a bit rough to completely discard this pair when only one of the thongs is broken. The other one is completely fine. 

It’s not faulty. It didn’t do anything wrong. It didn’t ask for this. It just wanted to keep on going being a wearable pair of thongs and then everything blew up and now it’s all over. 

It seems unfair that, just because the other thong broke, its partner is destined for the bin before its time.

But I don’t think I’d be able to pair the existing left-foot and left-high-and-dry thong with a brand new one.

Because I could find a right thong easily enough, but it wouldn’t be the right thong. The left has seen wear and tear. It has been through things. It’s been worn to a point that it moulds slightly my foot. It’s got a lifetime of experience that, paired with a brand new thong, just wouldn’t feel right.

Ideally, this would be the kind of situation crowd sourcing and technology could assist with. There must be thousands of other people who have been through the same thing. Maybe they have a perfectly good thong just sitting in the bottom of their wardrobe, yearning to be worn again. 

If there was some kind of app that paired them with someone with the same foot size, the same style of thong and roughly the same wear and tear, two lost soles could come together to form a new partnership. 

I mean, the technology is there and the whole let’s-not-mess-up-the-planet-any-more-by-throwing-things-away-that-can-be-reused vibe is getting stronger lately, so surely it should be a thing. And, let’s not underestimate the power this could have in bringing people together; the friendships that could come out of having a left thong and a right thong! Call it fate, call it a powerful algorithm, but it could change things. Imagine two people putting their two surviving thongs together like Lindsay Lohan’s character and Lindsay Lohan’s other character in The Parent Trap putting together a the two ripped halves of their emotionally-immature, divorced parents’ wedding photo. It would be a beautiful moment. 

This really seems like a win-win-win situation. 

I guess the only problem would be negotiating the joint custody arrangement.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, August 18, 2021

I’ve been wearing a mask a lot lately*.

Yeah, look, this was written a couple of waves ago, back when masks were more of an optional thing and masks were still a bit of a novelty.

Of course, I’m talking about a literal mask one straps to their face to cover their nose and mouth, and not the figurative mask that we all wear to hide the horrors of our true selves from wider society. 

However, this mask does help with that, in some respects. 

For example, if you’re wearing sunglasses and a face mask, you can cry in public virtually undetected. And all that cry-snot that comes out of your nose can flow freely, because it’s all caught by the mask. I mean, you do have to keep your sobs to a minimum to avoid drawing attention to yourself and you do have to eventually wrap it up because otherwise too much cry-snot builds up in the mask and you’re at risk of drowning while on a moving train – but between silent sniffs, you can enjoy the complete freedom of a public breakdown. 

However, despite what that previous anecdote would suggest, I’m generally a pretty smiley person.

Call it small town charm, call it performative politeness, call it being desperate for human connection (which, might I just add, is far from being something to be ashamed of. I mean out of all the things a person can be desperate for, a yearning for love and connection is the most natural and rational and I think it’s really strange that we use the term “desperate” as an insult in this context because no matter how much we pretend otherwise, people need other people) – but I’ve always been the kind of person who smiles at people as I pass them on the street. 

Obviously pick my moments, because in big city settings it’s very difficult to turn and lock eyes with everyone who passes. I feel like it would give me a neck injury. 

But when you’re wearing a mask, the action of facing someone and shooting them a smile hits different. Especially if you’re wearing sunnies. 

Because instead of them seeing that you’re making eye contact and smiling, all the other person sees is you turning your head toward them, devoid of emotion. 

Because the mask hides not only the smile, but the movements of the cheeks that comes with a smile. And the sunglasses cover the crinkling of your eye skin that  suggests you’ve just cracked a big old grin. Not only that, the sunnies also hide where your eyes are focusing, so the other person doesn’t know if you’re trying to make eye contact or if you’re boring into their jugular. 

It doesn’t look like a friendly gesture, it looks like you’re staring them down. And depending on how long you hold the gaze, the other person would have every reason to expect you to start barking at them.

This, of course, is the opposite of what I’m aiming for. 

A friend from work told me about going with an AusLan sign, which is where you outstretch your index finger and your thumb, holding it up in front of your mouth as a proxy smile. Another method might be just a casual little flick of the hand as a wave, or possibly bringing back the hat dip, popular with dapper gentlemen of centuries past. 

But often my hands are full or I’m wearing a cap that’s so tight on my head I can’t lift it. And I’m far too awkward to be able to pull off a cool wave without fumbling it into something that looks like I’m flagging down strangers for help. 

So I’ve devised a simple hands-free, no awkwardness alternative: a short, sharp nod. 

I mean, don’t make it too short and sharp, because you don’t want to make it look like you’re a spy about to drop off an anonymous briefcase. 

Just tilt your head slightly to one side, dip your head and come back up again. 

I’ve had a very high hit rate of getting a hello nod in return. I haven’t conducted any surveys or anything, but people seem to love it. 

I mean, the nod greeting far from new, however, it probably isn’t the standard for everyone. But even if the other person isn’t in on the nod greeting scheme to begin with, you’ll soon convert them. 

I think it’s because humans tend to mirror each other subconsciously. I’m generalising here, but there’s something about our innate need for connection that drives us to do this. Plus, in a time when lockdowns and social distancing forces us all to be more socially secluded and insular, I think a lot of us could do with a bit more human interaction.

Either that, or there are just a lot of spies running around, waiting to pick up briefcases. 

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, August 11, 2021

I think most people would class crumble as a comfort food. It’s fairly uncontroversial categorisation. It’s sweet. It’s warm. There’s a jumbled homeliness to its construction. And it’s eaten out of a bowl – and it’s pretty hard to not be comforted by eating something out a bowl (not that I’m anti-plate by any means, but scooping something out a bowl just feels more warming and cuddly, even if you’re eating something as cold as ice cream. Like, the fact that the sides of the bowl are there to stop your food from sloshing out affords you a certain sloppiness that you couldn’t get away with when eating off a plate – bowls take you as your are and are typically more casual and forgiving, while plates demand a certain formality). Crumble ticks a lot of comfort food boxes. 

But I haven’t found that I turn to crumble when I’m in the darkest patches of my metaphorical troughs – those are the times when melting cheese into Vegemite toast is the most I can muster up. When it’s really bad, something as delicious and tummy-hugging as crumble seems impossible to stomach.

I’ve made crumble a lot over the past few years. It became my go-to dessert for when friends came over, family got together and I was settlinging in for snuggly nights in with my housemates. It was never anything fancy but was always made with love. It’s a very comforting dessert, but it’s the kind of thing I just can’t make well if I don’t have the heart to make it. It’s a happy food.  

I made it for the first time in what felt like forever when I was staying with some friends up north last week.

I keep trying to jot down the exact ratios of ingredients so I can keep a record of how I make it. But every time I make it, I inevitably end up shaking extra bits and pieces into the mix and it becomes impossible to quantify each ingredient in grams and cups. 

And I know this sounds wanky, but because this is such a hands on recipe – you must mix with your hands – it’s intuitive. Using precise measurements is too clinical for something this… good lord, brace yourself… organic. 

I realise how annoying this must sound. I remember asking Mum how she made her spaghetti bolognese and was infuriated by her inexact measurements and roundabout instructions. So I’ve tried to put together a basic scaffolding of a recipe that, while it won’t get you to your desired destination, it will put you on the right track. Besides, it’s the journey that really matters, right?

Step 1: In a large bowl, mix about a third of a cup of brown sugar, half a cup of flour (wholemeal is probably better because the flakiness offers more crunch options, but whatever you have), a half a teaspoon of ground allspice, a pinch of salt. Fork this together so all the powdery stuff is thoroughly mixed before the chunkier bits go in. 

Step 2: Roughly chop half a cup of walnuts (or almonds or pecans – whatever nuts you’ve got will probably be fine), maybe three quarters of a cup of rolled oats and half a cup of shredded coconut. I don’t want to be demanding, but it really does have to be shredded – desiccated is so fine that it essentially disappears and flaked is overpowering and too aggressive size-wise. Add this to the bowl and stir through. 

Step 3: Chop about 100 grams of cold salted butter into little cubes. Again, it has to be the salted butter in block form – you can use that “spreadable butter” garbage in a pinch, but the humble, salt-of-the-earth butter gives you a better texture. 

Step 4: Using your hands, scrunch the butter into the mixture so it squeezes out through your fingers. Do this over and over until it’s all combined. 

Step 5: Assess. What you’re aiming for here is a bit of a gravel – something between wet sand and a cobbler. You want there to be clumps of mixture nuggets, but only little ones. Sometimes you need to add extra sprinkles of flour, oats and coconut to achieve this goal, so keep adding according to your whims.

Step 6: Dump on top of the stewed fruit of your choosing. I prefer a rhubarb and strawberry mixture but, honestly, the fruit really is incidental here. You could probably just tip it over a slather of jam and it’d be alight. 

Step 7: Bake at 180 degrees for between 15 and 20 minutes, depending on how thick you’ve layered it. 

Step 8: Serve warm, with a generous glob of dollop cream or vanilla ice cream, to the people you love. Make sure you take a second to appreciate it all before diving in. 

End of year update: I gotta tellya, I am far from thriving right now. But I’ve made three crumbles in the past month, so there’s promising signs there.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, July 28, 2021

I’m well aware that most of my comfort foods are carb-heavy and depressing. I’m also quite aware that me chronicling my comfort foods might suggest I am, as they say “going through some stuff”. All this combined with the fact that we’re in the pit of winter during the plateaus and troughs (the “peaks” part of “peaks and troughs” didn’t seem to apply here, hence the “plateaus”) of a pandemic makes this whole series quite grim.  

So, to perk things up a bit, I’ve decided to chuck in a recipe that is significantly less concerning than me trying to convince you that of a mug full of cereal for dinner is not the culinary calling card of someone who has lost their way, but the evening meal for the gal on the go who never says no to a fibre boost. 

This is an actual (well, kinda) recipe. It has more than five ingredients and none of them are butter. There’s more action required than pushing down the lever on the toaster. And this actually requires you to get up, put on shoes and go to the grocery store.

I make varied mutations of this pasta regularly, but I’m going to go off the most recent strain – which came into being after a deep conversation with my townhouseguest that ended in us vowing to spend more time listening to the timeless classics of Simple Plan and Avril Lavigne. She went off into the night and I drank some red wine, made myself some pasta, and settled in to watch The Red Shoes. 

Here’s what I did:

I warmed some garlic infused olive oil in a frypan and added a few anchovy filets from a jar. Now, pop culture would have you believe that anchovies are disgusting, in the same way we’re told that Brussels sprouts and broccoli are disgusting. But, to quote one Darryl Kerrigan, it’s what ya do with it, darl. If you’re given a piece of broccoli that’s had the arse steamed out of it, you’re going to think that all broccoli is a watery mush of misery. And if you’ve only ever had the crusty rust scrapings of anchovies on a soggy pizza, you’re going to assume that all anchovies are bad anchovies. But anchovies are like people – most are intrinsically good, they just need a little love and some gentle guidance.  

And after spending a lot of time with Nigella Lawson (which is to say, after obsessively reading her books and watching her reruns) I’ve learned you can use anchovies as a salty base for a pasta sauce. 

All you do is warm it gently in oil and squish it around with a spatula and eventually the fillets will start to disintegrate into a paste-like, flavourful substance. Then you can add in more of the good stuff. 

At this particular juncture in my life, I had an obscene amount of sundried tomatoes, given to me by a friend. I could estimate the weight, but I think it’s more accurate to say that I have a couch cushion case full of sundried tomatoes that need to be used, so I chucked a handful in. Then I added about a teaspoon of dried chilli flakes and half a tin of diced tomatoes and the thick goo in which they’re suspended. 

Then, because the garlic oil wasn’t enough, I grated a fat clove of garlic into the mix and added a splash of red wine, just for fun. 

I then realised I hadn’t cooked the pasta, so I had to turn the frypan off, hastily heat a pot of water and boil the pasta. I used pappardelle, which is probably my favourite form of pasta because it allows you slurp it up like spaghetti, while having the comforting flat wideness of a lasagne sheet. 

During this time, the sauce I’d made had solidified into a thick paste, which looked like a failed attempt at gravy (a sight I am very, very familiar with). But I’d had enough wine by this point not to mind so much. 

I tipped in the pasta with a splash of the cooking water into the frypan, then threw in about three quarters of a bunch of flat leaf parsley, grated the sharpest cheese I had in the fridge over the top and added the zest of a lemon I had sitting on my counter for decorative “oh yes, I often cook with fresh lemons!” purposes. 

I mixed it up in the frypan then tipped the whole thing onto a single plate, earnestly believing I could eat it all in one sitting. 

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, July 21, 2021

I’m on a bit of a comfort food journey right now. 

And thanks to a combination of These Uncertain Times and the usual crushing realities life, I’ve not been getting out and about all that much lately. So I don’t have any vomiting at Splendour in the Grass stories to regale you with. And, come to think of it, I don’t even have any grass in my backyard so I can’t give you any stories about anything in the grass right now. 

So, with the absence of anything to rant about or retell, you’re going on this comfort food journey with me too. We’re going to churn through the starchy, sad meals that I turn to when I’m in need. And I can’t go down this road without touching on the spaghetti and bacon muffin. 

Obviously this is not a recipe. This, if anything, is a justification for my choices. An explanation, of sorts.

Because I could sum up this dish in one sentence: bacon and tinned spaghetti on a buttered English muffin. 

But it’s like I always say: why simplify things when you can over-complicate them with trivial anecdotes and unnecessary, self-explanatory instructions? Why say something in nine words when you can do it in more than 600? What else have I got to do with my spare time?

And so, let me take you on a culinary journey into my childhood. 

Baked beans, while a much-loved staple in my cultured, grown up townhousehold, was not something I got around as a child. I mean, perhaps it was because the “beans” element was too vegetable-y for my seven-year-old palate. But I think much of my aversion to the tinned treat was related to Dennis The Menace. I have very strong memories of the robber in that movie – who I think we can all agree is the most terrifying villain in any film ever made – heating and eating tinned beans over a fire which clearly left some mental scars. So spaghetti was the tinned food of choice. 

Tinned spaghetti is extremely soggy with quite a mushy texture. You don’t have to chew the stuff; it just kind of disintegrates in your mouth. In fact, it’s so soft that you could probably chug it like a liquid, but I certainly hope I don’t hit that level of rock bottom. And I suppose this is comforting. Because if I can be in this deep of a trough and the idea of skolling spaghetti straight out the tin feels beneath me, it’s clear I still have some standards and, god willing, some hope. 

Here’s what you need:

·      While I’m not usually one to promote certain brands, I think it’s important to get the Heinz tinned spaghetti here – it has a better flavour than the generic brands and when you’re turning to this as an adult, you need to hold on to the faint glint of glamour that a name brand brings to the table (however, purchasing a tin marked “spaghetti for one” does take the shine out of it).

·      Olive oil

·      English muffins – because the real joy of this ‘recipe’ is in the squishy, sponginess of the muff, something you can’t get with just toasted bread or even a bread roll. You need that almost crumpet-like texture to achieve the effect I’m going for here

·      Bacon, preferably the shot cut kind so you don’t even have to waste time cutting your bacon to size – you just want the circular-ish bit to cover the surface of the muffin and nothing more

·      Salted butter

Here’s how to assemble:

·      Warm a drizzle of olive oil in a frypan over a medium heat, placing the bacon in when the oil gets warm enough to run freely when you tilt the frypan. You don’t want the bacon to sizzle – we’re not going for crunch here. This is about warmth and easy chewing.

·      Once the bacon is warmed on one side, put two heaped tablespoons of spaghetti into the frypan. You could microwave this, but that’s another dish to wash and you’re not up for extra washing up right now. Plus, the frypan cooking means the excess “sauce” from the tin thickens. I’m not sure what the “sauce” is, but I assume it’s somewhat tomato based. Also: you might not think this is enough spaghetti, but it is. You don’t want too much, otherwise it all leaks out as you bite into it and it burns your hands. Trust me. I’ve been there. 

·      Now’s the time to pop the muffins in the toaster – by the time they’re done cooking, your bacon and spaghetti will be ready. What you’re aiming for is warm, soft bacon and a thick spaghetti mash.

·      Slather a thick layer of butter on each muffin half, spooning the thickened spaghetti on one side of the muffin, balance the bacon on top the bright orange mush and then close the whole thing off with the second muffin half.

·      Eat carefully, gently squishing it together so you can hear the delicious squelch of butter and vaguely tomato-y goo.

Originally published by The Clifton Courier July 14, 2021

For months now, I have had a gaping hole in my life. 

Something that was once my consistent companion was now gone. It was a dependable source of warmth and offered a sense of stability that rarely wavered. It never occurred to me that it wouldn’t be there forever and now there was just a void in its place. And I never fully appreciated the comfort it provided until it was no longer a presence in my life. 

That’s always the way it goes though, isn’t it?

You never realise how often you use a microwave until you don’t have one anymore. 

And, look, I know that I was able to get by without one for a really, really long time. Even when microwaves became quite cheap, it took the Maguire household a bit of time to get on board. My father was quite suspicious of those radiation boxes. And that’s fair. I mean it would be very, very annoying if we all found out we were poisoning ourselves just for the convenience heating up a Tupperware container of soup. And that, I think, might be another element to it – it was almost too convenient. If you wanted to reheat something before microwaves, you’d have to either put it in the oven or warm it on the stovetop, which, as well as probably using more energy, meant more washing up. But with a microwave, the effort and washing up was eliminated, so I suppose it made us lazier. And that lack of resistance meant it was easer to keep on reheating and eating. So I suppose that box also represented two of the major seven sins – gluttony and sloth. Although, I would point out that there’s no absolutely pride in microwave-abetted gluttony and sloth, so there’s one consolation there. 

So, that was a long way of saying that it wasn’t until well into my teen years that a microwave was brought into our home. Before that, I was fine living without one. But when you’re young, you don’t really need to worry about it too much because someone else is generally doing the cooking. 

And, look, as a strong independent woman in my late 20s, it’s not that I need a microwave. 

I have a perfectly functioning stove top (it’s one of those old coil stove tops which isn’t very fancy, but it does mean you can hear when you’ve left the stove on) and the oven also works well enough. I am fully capable of reheating my food by alternative methods.

But there are times when a gal really misses a microwave. Like, if you want microwavable popcorn. Or when you’re too glum to cook for yourself. Or when you have a muscle ache that a hot wheat pack would soothe. 

No matter how many cute little cups I put in that space where the previous microwave once sat, I couldn’t fill the void. And no matter how many times I proclaimed I could reheat food with other methods, I couldn’t deny that my longing for a microwave. 

I didn’t need one, but my life was undeniably better with one in it. 

And don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t not looking. I went into a physical shop, but was disappointed by the range. I looked on the apps, swiping keenly through to second-hand options but they all seemed to be too high of a price to pay, had far too many buttons and whiz-bang features or they gave off a very sad, unappealing vibe that made me think I’d be better off going without.

I had planned to get one the weekend just gone, but I was so disappointed and discouraged that I abandoned the quest altogether and decided to just go out any enjoy the beautiful winter sunshine. I went for my first big run in a long time and, once I caught my breath, treated myself to a City Cat ride in the direction of home, stopping to wander through a park in golden hour. I felt strangely content and I’d not felt that way for a really, really long time. 

On the walk home, I decided to go a slightly different route I’d not taken before. And as I walked between the riverfront and a-street-back-from-riverfront homes, I noticed something sitting on a low wall. 

It was a working microwave, with a “free to a good home” sign stuck to it.  

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, July 7, 2021

Do you believe in signs?

I obviously don’t mean that in a literal sense. I generally tend to accept that most signs are telling me the truth when they’re warning me about electric fencing or overhead powerlines. Like, they’re just trying to help. What have they got to gain from lying to me, you know?

When I’m talking signs, I’m talking about the signals from the universe that you’re on the right track or you’re making a big mistake or that you should put it all on red.

I once had a dream where I kept repeating a bunch of numbers over and over to the point that, when I woke up, I could still recall those numbers. I figured it could possibly be my psychic subconscious doing me a solid and giving me a heads up about the winning lotto numbers. I mean, the fact that those numbers came to me so clearly surely had to mean something. When something comes to you in a dream, there has to be some reason for it, right? So I went out and bought a lotto ticket.

I didn’t win a dime.  

If nothing else, this sign from the universe that came to me in a dream was perhaps a sign from the universe that I shouldn’t be reading too much into signs from the universe.

I think choosing to read something into those “came to me in a dream” moments is what makes them so powerful. Like, if you’re looking for a sign to tell you that you need to change jobs/dump your partner/get a blunt fringe, then I think what you can learn from that is that, deep down, you probably really want to change jobs/dump your partner/get a blunt fringe and you’re desperate for some external, all-knowing force to justify your decision. 

But there’s something so intoxicating about the idea that some cosmic force is taking an interest in my life and is trying to communicate something to me. Part of this is because I can’t emotionally cope with the fact that everything that happens to us is all a cruel accident and part of it is because I’m a closet romantic but the biggest part is because I’m incredibly self-obsessed.

Usually, these signs come by way of streetlights. 

Sometimes when I pass a streetlight while out walking alone, one will turn off. Sometimes one will turn on. 

And, look, logic would tell me this was a sensor or self-timer situation. But that terrified, romantic and self-obsessed person in me likes to think it’s a signal from the universe. There’s usually no one else around when this happens. The streets are generally empty. Surely that light turning on or off is only doing so for me, right?

Maybe the light turned on because my last thought was actually a really, really good idea. Maybe the light turned off because cosmic forces are telling me to let go of the idea/person/hair style I was just thinking about. And sometimes, I take it as a vague sign that there’s something… more to ponder.

In Year Nine I played one of two slags in roller-skates in a scaled-back, reimagined production of Waiting for Godot. In this high school iteration of the classic play, the dead tree was replaced by a streetlight that turned on and then back off again without our characters noticing.

So I suppose I was primed to take notice of the streetlights and attempt to listen to what they’re trying to say. And, let’s be honest, the symbolism of a streetlight is too delicious to ignore. 

But then something happened for the first time the other day. 

I was walking along the footpath that runs past the creek/stormwater drain that keeps my neighbourhood from flooding. Usually it’s full of stinky wastewater with a system of gates and pipes regulating the flow. 

Just as I walked past the other day, the valve opened. All this stinky wastewater came gushing out at the exact second I passed it. And if you apply the same logic to this as you do my streetlight thing, you have to attach some kind of meaning to this too.

Unfortunately, the only message that comes to mind is that, perhaps, I just might be full of poo… in the proverbial sense. 

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, June 30, 2021

I think we need another word for the consumption of soup. 

A week or so ago I was writing about a soupy experience when I had a thought. I was about to type that I had been “eating soup” and I realised that was kind of a lie. I wasn’t doing any chewing when I was ingesting the soup, so I felt like “eating” was the wrong verb. 

But then to say that I was “drinking soup” sounded weird.

That conjures up an image of me chugging a glass of soup like it was a cold glass of milk after a long run on a hot summer’s day (it’s like a workout recovery shake… but plain. Would recommend).

I almost unpacked this thought using 28 words in a set of brackets within that column but I decided that, rather than making a concise point, I could ramble on about it for more than 600 words.

The next day at work, I noticed someone with a container of soup at their desk and hit them with the big questions. Here’s a rough outline of what I accosted my colleague with:

“Do you say that you’re eating soup? Because technically you’re not really chewing the soup, you’re drinking it.”

She raised the counter point that you can chew the soup chunks, so you’re doing some actual eating there.

“Hmm yeah, I guess, but would you say you drink the soup and eat the chunks? Like, are the soup chunks the actual soup itself or are they just chunks? Like, is the soup just the liquid around the chunks? What is a soup, really?”

Pretty deep, huh?

The point my learned colleague about the chunks was an interesting one. Does that mean you can truthfully say you’re eating soup so long as it has chunks? What does that mean for chunk-less soups like, say, a creamy pumpkin? Do we need to have different words for soups based on their chunkiness? 

Personally, I don’t think we say “eating soup” because of the way the soup goes down our gullets. I think it’s more abstract. In fact, I think it’s something to do with our unconscious food biases. 

I’m wondering if the reason we say we’re eating soup is because it’s savoury and mostly vegetable-based. That’s not to say that we only associate the word “eat” with savoury and “drink” with sweet. But you have to admit, we have many more sweet drinks – Milo, juice, Enos… – than we do savoury drinks. Like, I wouldn’t say a dry white wine or a beer is sweet, but I wouldn’t call them savoury. I’d put the more in a neutral category. 

When you think about it, a smoothie is much like a soup. It’s liquefied plant matter. It is a blend of multiple ingredients. It’s thicker than water and, often can be thicker and therefore heartier than of some of the more broth-y soups on dining tables around the country. A smoothie is like a desert soup.

And yet we don’t say that we’re eating a smoothie, but we do say that we’re eating soup. 

It’s not because soups are hot and smoothies are cold. Because as we all know from that BOYBB episode of The Simpsons where Lisa tries to get people not to eat meat by offering up gazpacho, soup can be served ice cold.

So perhaps it’s something to do with the mode of ingestion. A smoothie typically makes its way into your body via a straw, while the soup gets there by individual spoonfuls.  

Instead of saying “eating soup” or “drinking soup” you could say “spooning soup into your mouth” but it sounds like you’re binging on soup with concerning gusto. And you could also say “slurping soup” but that sounds more like you’re being a slob rather than daintily consuming a liquefied savoury concoction in an extremely polite manner. 

So what’s the answer? Do we just skirt around the issue forever? Do we abolish soup from our diets so we never have to address the issue again? Or do we just carry on with our lives because it doesn’t really matter that much, in the grand scheme of things?

Tough to say. 

Originally published by The Clifton Courier, June26, 2021

It’s funny what you don’t notice until you do.

Like how it took me years to notice the spelling of The Beatles was different to your garden variety beetles. This is particularly puzzling as back in my I’m-not-like-other-girls teenage phase I would listen to them quite a lot and even owned a Beatles t-shirt. I had also seen that episode of The Simpsons where they parody The Beatles many, many times. There’s a scene in the episode where Homer, Apu, Barney and Principal Skinner try to come up with a name for their band. “We need a name that’s witty at first, but that seems less funny each time you hear it,” Principal Skinner says. Then they call themselves the B Sharps. And despite all this, it was probably only a few years ago that I realised The Beatles was a punny name that would have seemed witty at first but got less funny each time people heard it.

It was right in front of my face and it never even clicked. 

Another thing that was right in front of my face was the microwave and how they all open on the same side. I say “right in front of my face” because often, when you’re using a microwave, you’re watching them so intensely it’s like you’re having a staring competition with them. 

If you’re facing a microwave, the door hinges will always be on your left. And the control panel will always be on your right. Have you ever noticed that? Or is that something that everyone just knows and accepts as the way things were meant to be?

Because it seems messed up to me. 

I mean, who decided that all microwaves were this way? Was it one appliance dictator who made this decree or is this a conspiracy all the appliance makers are in on? How come no microwave makers have the guts to go against their conformist competitors and open the other way? Who are these cowards?!

I had these thoughts while looking for a microwave to fill the microwave-shaped hole in my kitchen. 

And the microwave-shaped hole in my kitchen is hard to fill. Not because of the sixe of the void, but because of where the void is located. Unfortunately, the people who designed my kitchen those many moons ago put the microwave hole underneath an overhead cabinet so it hangs over the bench corner. You can’t stand directly in front of it, so you have to lean over the bench to get to it. And if you’re standing on the kitchen side of the bench, opening a microwave door that’s hinged on the left hand side means nearly slapping yourself in the face with said microwave door. 

So my plan was to get a microwave that opened the other way.

I don’t know if this is me showing my age, but I feel like there used to be a time when you should get microwaves with door hinges on the right hand side without much trouble. I like to think it was around the same time my place was built, otherwise those were either some very short-sighted or just downright spiteful cabinet makers. 

But it seems those golden days have passed. Because every microwave I’ve seen – and I’ve seen a lot in recent weeks – has the control panel on the right and the door hinges on the left. 

A little online research tells me what I already knew – those microwave norms were set because they suited the right-handed folk better. Opening the door with a left hand side hinge was more natural for right-handed people. And you’re much more successful at pressing the right buttons if you’re doing it with you dominant hand, so it makes sense that right-handed people felt more comfortable with the buttons being on the right-hand side.

And, look, I understand there are many more right-handed folk in the world and market forces meant the left-handed microwaves weren’t commercially viable, thus being the cause of the ceasing of their production and eventfully erasing their presence from society. Capitalism is anti-left. I get it. 

But I just really hate it when the world doesn’t cater specifically to my own individual needs and petty desires, you know?