Tag Archives: observations

the joke’s on me…

24 Mar

Most of you know of my horror in relation to bad public spelling…you know …when sign-writing goes wrong (not that it’s ok to do it in private , but somehow   it is 1000 times worse when it is painted on a sign that shouts  “I’m stupid”)…So, you can imagine my delight when I came across a painted sign advertising ‘amstaffs’  for sale.P1130213

The handmade advert sign caught my eye and immediately pricked my curiosity, in fact enough that I drove around the block to take another look and snap a photo to share with you all.

After all… how could anyone spell “Mastiff” wrong ? …not once but twice.

However, before putting my fingers to work and taking the high moral ground on this I ‘googled’  the offending word and bugga me, it is a legitimate breed of pup…. an Amstaff is an American Staffy.

Who would have thought it ? but why am I surprised in these times of labradoodles, cadoodles , boxerdoodles, cockerpoos, bossi-poos and ‘bich-poos’  Yes all real, just to name a few  !! check them out

So my apologies to the people on March Street who are doing their best to find homes for their amstaff puppies .. my bad.

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from Russia with love ….

2 Mar

furSo… today’s observation involves many ‘slightly-older-than 50 Something’ women hanging out in politically incorrect ‘head- to- toe’ fur.

We took the subway out of Manhattan to check out the infamous Coney Island. Despite the fact that it is heading toward spring… it  felt more like middle of  winter with temps around minus 8 deg… BUT, rugged up in our winter woollies, we headed for the (rather desolate) boardwalk to take in the beach and all it had to offer.

As we pondered the depressed greyness of what is meant to be a ‘fun park’ the thing that struck me was the number of more mature women wrapped in a variety of animal pelts… The striking similarity between them all got us to wondering…. and then all was revealed.

Coney Island and it’s surrounds, is apparently a Russian enclave … full of Slavic ex-pats bringing with them a range of fabulous food …and ‘fur fashions’. I saw more fur hats, wraps and full length coats in a square kilometre than I have seen in a lifetime… What they were in a past life is anyone’s guess, but one thing is for sure, these well dressed Russian women were certainly warmer than those of us wrapped in our synthetic coats and acrylic scarves.

The fur trade? …. politically incorrect perhaps;  but like it or loathe it…maybe it’s a case of recycling at its finest (just saying).

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say what ???

1 Mar

subwayWhen I was young(er) I was always under the impression that people who walked the streets talking to themselves where candidates for the psych  unit…you know ‘mad’ !!! In fact I recall someone from my school days who regularly spoke to telegraph  poles, and was subsequently being “managed” for odd behaviour…. Yet these days it’s a whole different ballgame.

Walking the streets of NYC I have been witness to SO many one sided conversations…. loud animated and without any obvious respondent. …BUT connected to someone somewhere…..not that you would know it at first glance, because ear plugs have become a fashion accessory, often tucked inside woolly ear muffs….and the handpieces themselves are stowed away on coat pockets, so really there is little to alert the onlooker that there is even a phone involved.

Today I got the inside story on domestic disharmony in one household… the poorly organised financial arrangements of a woman’s (adult) offspring in another…  and the highs and lows of a teenage love affair.

All on a 5 minute subway trip….who needs TV for entertainment when you can live it ?

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swimming upstream

28 Feb

pedestrianSome of you will recall me writing about the rules of being a pedestrian back in January. We were on holidays on the sunny north coast…and I was busy challenging the conventions of the morning walk.

Well forget all that… and imagine the peak hour foot patrol on 5th Av, NYC…  in the snow.

At 6pm  frozen faces with set expressions are hurrying to get home …or at least to dive into the nearest  store for a quick thaw. A constant stream of bodies covered from head to toe ON THE WRONG SIDE of the footpath. (One of the fun things about travel is remembering which side of the road cars are driving on and which side of the path you are expected to walk on… well get it wrong in this scene and you are in for a challenge).    

While normally such rules don’t concern me …(in fact I like nothing better than a bit of civil disobedience), the thought of slowing my progress by swimming upstream was more than this little cold duck could bear.

Sometimes it’s just so much easier to ‘go with the flow’. P1120773

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one man’s junk…

25 Feb

…is another man’s junk (sometimes).junk

I love that we have all become so much more environmentally aware…and that recycling has become the norm; but I sometimes wonder about the roadside ‘junk’.

Today while I was out driving I passed not one but THREE TV’s sitting on the footpath… each with a sign indicating ‘free to a good home. But the truth of the matter is that they are now nothing more than junk (especially after sitting out in the weather).  Every few weeks, piles of pre-loved and rejected goodies are left out on the footpath for Council pick-up  providing a bonanza for bargain hunters … I guess it’s one way of relocating the junk and keeping the cycle alive.

On the other hand…back on the first week of the school year I was driving to work and I couldn’t help but smile. …. A house nearby my office had a bunch of local school uniforms hanging on their picket fence, all pressed and ready for the taking. While it looked a bit like a Chinese laundry… I thought it was a fantastic way of sharing the love in what is a struggling blue collar (perhaps even ‘no collar’) neighbourhood.

You’ve gotta love recycling…. junk and all.

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drowning in ‘stuff’…

11 Feb

It’s strange how we get to a point in our lives (around the ’50 somethings’) and, for most of us the household shrinks as the kids leave the nest… BUT somehow we don’t manage to reclaim the ‘space’.

Not only do they leave behind all the things they WANT (but don’t want to take with them)… but we also find ourselves playing home to the belongings of our aging parents, who are downsizing into more manageable homes, aged care facilities …. OR making the more permanent move to greener pastures.  clutter

Suddenly home becomes a storage facility ( well the sheds at least …). No-one can bring themselves to ‘getting rid of granny’s goodies’ especially if she hasn’t quite ‘moved on’….  and you never know when you might need a spare lounge (or three)…or a 3 tiered planter stand and pots full of artificial plants…, or a 1970’s microwave. Just as you never know when your kids might be looking for that trumpet they played in year 7… or the year 10 formal dress that’s been hanging in the spare room for 11 years.

Funny though …as I write this I can actually hear my father asking me whether I plan to take the rest of my stuff when they finally sold the family home in 1999…(and I was a ’40 something’) ….so I guess nothing really changes.

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it’s all in the numbers

18 Jan

numbersThere is no doubt it’s hot… in fact one could say REALLY bloody hot. But what is it with the need to know the actual ‘number’ that tells us how hot it is?

I admit that I am not a ‘numbers girl’ … I hate sudoko but love crosswords, hated maths but loved english. There is no way I could tell you the price per kilo of any meat or vegetable… (if I need it, then it’s the right price). Nor could I tell you exactly how much I weigh; if (like now) the muffin top begins to appear, then it’s time to stop eating. I prefer to not think about the number of years I have been around, and I struggle with having way too many numbers to choose from in order to find the right TV station.

On the other hand, Mr ‘50 Something’ is like The Rainman…give him a measurement or phone number and he can retain and recall it forever..In some ways I’m envious, but the thought of cluttering my brain with all those meaningless digits (then maybe needing to find them again) just freaks me.

With this numbers skill comes a fascination with all kinds of measurement…the speed of sound, the speed of light….the speed of speed !!! But then there is the temperature, ‘how hot is it going to be?’… ‘how hot is it now?’… ‘how cold was it?’.  For him it’s all about the numbers, whereas for me it’s simple…. ‘do I feel hot?’, will I get cold?’, ‘do I think I’ll need to take a jacket, and if so, what colour?P1120574’.

It wouldn’t do for us all to be the same … (as he says, between us we can count AND write) but watching the outside temperature gauge in the car flick up or down by a degree is not really enough to capture my imagination (on the other hand, if there was a scrabble board built into the dashboard …. I’d be there in a heartbeat).

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