Road Runner (Adelaide style)

This little fella lives in a street in Clearview, near a friend's house *waves at Ms C!*.  He saunters along the pavement, pecking for food, or waddles along the side of the road, blithely ignoring cars, who have to go around him. My thought the first time we saw him was that he was lost and needed rescuing.  But let me tell you, they are remarkably hard to catch, so I couldn't take him home!  Having seen him 3 or 4 times now in the same street, it seems that he lives there as a free ranger.

He (or more likely She) is a guineafowl, a species of ground-dwelling  bird native to Africa.  According to Wikipedia guineafowl have a long history of domestication, mainly involving the Helmeted Guineafowl. The young (called "keets") are very small at birth. The keets are kept in a brooder box inside the house until about six weeks of age, before being moved into a proper coop or enclosure. They eat lice, worms, ants, spiders, weedseeds, and ticks while on range, or they can also eat chicken layer crumbles (one kind of commercial bird feed) while housed in a coop. The cooked flesh of guineafowl resembles chicken in texture, with a flavour somewhere between chicken and turkey.

There is also a band in Sydney called Guineafowl, and you can like them on Facebook here.

Goodness Gracious, great balls of fun!

Screams of joy or laughter? Can't hear 'em, don't care ;-)

Adelaide Ballzup is a lot of fun!  These giant globes of goodness are on the Torrens Lake in the school holidays, and the kids have done it twice now.  It's good value, and very, very entertaining to watch.  For $10 bucks the kids are zipped into the chambers, and they get five minutes of pretending to be hamsters while you get five minutes of peace and quiet (the balls are relatively sound proof, even better!).  When they get out they are yelling for more!

Library porn for bibliophiles

Look at this!

This is the Mortlock Wing at the State Library of South Australia, and honestly one of the most lovely libraries I've ever been in (yes I know there are many other lovelies in the book world, but this one on my doorstep is a favourite).  This wing houses the State Library's South Australiana collection, which began early in the colony's lifetime as one trunk of books brought out from England in 1860, and now takes up 50 kilometres of shelf space in storage.

Yes, I had to read it twice when I saw it, FIFTY LINEAR KILOMETRES OF BOOKS = bookgasm!  You could basically shut me in there with a large box of muesli bars and not see me for 30 years or so.  Heaven.

The wing is named after one of the library's greatest benefactors, John Tennant, who left over $70K to the libraries of South Australia when he died in 1950, a phenomenal sum for the time.  And I'm jolly glad he did, as South Australia's libraries are superb.  Thanks John!

25 random things about me

Inspired by this post at The Virginia House, I remembered I did this on Facebook a couple of years ago.

Funnily enough, most of them are still accurate today - except for the Krispy Kreme donuts, because they're not yet available in Adelaide (although coming soon, apparently).  I think I must have got given a box when DH went to Melbourne for work!

1. I like wine far too much for my own good
2.I just ate 2 Krispy Kreme donuts and want another
3. I wish I'd never shaved my legs as a teenager
4. When I was 18 I had a strapless dress that was purple
5. and my first pair of high heels was white (and I'm from Essex.  It was the 80s, so sue me!)
6. I worry about my elderly parents
7. I worry about my children
8. I worry too much!
9. I'd love a boob job
10. I have many tattoos (21?)
11. I wish I hadn't turned down a really good job when I was 20 to go back to uni (and then drop out)
12. Glad I turned it down as I met my husband afterwards at uni
13. I can drink my DH under the table on vodka (just like Karen Allen in Indiana Jones!)
14. I kissed a girl and I liked it
15. I have a partially un-fused sacrum = 6 lumbar vertebrae
16. I would like to lose 15kg but can't be arsed
17. I like chickens, live ones of course!
18. I served Tom Baker (1970s Dr Who) when I was working in a UK bookshop.  He's really tall
19. My favourite author is Jonathan Carroll, and you've probably never heard of him
20. Favourite perfume is Issy Miyake
21. Favourite smell is my children's hair after a bath
22. Cats are essential to modern life
23. I fell asleep at a party after drinking absinthe
24. I went to a Batman premiere in London in 2005
25. If I had a million dollars I would give most of it away

Prettiest cat in Adelaide (tm) - Haiku

Oh Princess Ada,
My fluffy little pusskin:
Grey, white, bony, soft.

Wow, I've never written a haiku to a cat before, that was fun!  Ada is of course totally unimpressed... 

Ada (AKA Pretty Princess Cat, or The Pocket-sized Princess of Perfection, or Trotty Trot Cat) is a grand old lady cat of 11 years, we got her as a tiny tiny stray kitten, and she was my baby until our kids came along.  She's still tiny, just 2.8kg.  My ickle wickle princess licks my feet while I'm sitting on the loo in the morning (TMI maybe?), and sleeps on my feet in bed.  She is named after the first programming language that DH learned at uni (ADA, which is in turn named after Lady Ada Lovelace, the 'first lady' of computers).  Total nerd attack!

Mummy FAIL (then win)

Seriously, you couldn't make this up - here's what happened to me today....

The lovely Adelaide City Council guys and little ol' me, dredging Torrens Lake.  As you do...

As per usual, Wednesday is walking group day.  But as it's school holidays here in Australia, I had DS (age 7) with me as well as DD (4).  We're 3/4 of the way around our 4.5kms circuit of Torrens Lake in the centre of Adelaide, I'm carrying a friend's dog (don't ask), DD is running ahead and DS is helpfully pushing the empty stroller (buggy, pushchair, pram, whatever you call it) for me.  All is fine and dandy in the summer sun, it's a beautiful day, 30C, lovely jubbly.

Next thing I know there's a splash and I see my (empty) stroller sinking like a stone into the lake...  with my bag hooked onto it.  My lovely Belgian tapestry chicken bag that's got my car keys, phone, wallet/purse, drivers license, DD's beloved Blankie, etc in it!  Note to self - don't let 7 yr old push stroller vigorously right next to the lake where there's no fence - this is a mummy Fail.

Cue hysteria from the kids, with DD carrying on in an Oscar-worthy way, hands raised to heaven, tears and snot streaming from her, yelling 'Blankie, Blankie, this is a disaster!', and DS crying because his new Swiss Army Knife was also sitting on the stroller seat.  Shouldn't have let it fall in the lake then, mate :-(

What to do in this pickle?  I wasn't going to jump in the lake, it's filthy (and quite deep there), not to mention I had  the kids going bananas with me.  Thankfully, my gorgeous friend B kept a cool head, phoned my hubby, and phoned the City Council, who dispatched a (not very) Rapid Response Team to help.

Hubby took the crying kids away for lunch and B stayed while the guys got a long pole (a remarkably difficult process, they had to go away and come back again twice) and started dredging for the stroller.

But wait, there's more!

Half and hour later, no sign of pram, City guys go away, B drives me to my car and I use hubby's keys to get us all home.  Commiserations, etc with the kids.  Me and B joke about getting dive tanks, as my hubs is a PADI scuba diver.  A couple of hours later, we discuss with B's hubby, who promptly goes down to the lake with a big hook on a rope and within 10 minutes RESCUES MY SHIT!

This is a great chicken bag! 

The only unrecovered item was the Swiss army knife, easily replaced.  Blankie has now been washed and returned to very happy little girl, my car keys are drying out, and we'll see if my phone recovers - at least I've now got the SIM. Thankyou thankyou to M, B, and all concerned!

See, I told you you couldn't make this stuff up - it's never a dull moment here!

S & P Chicken are here

Oh hello little chickies, how nice to welcome you to my home!  Do come into the kitchen, I'll find you a special place to sit in no time at all. 

Gorgeous, huh?  I walked into 'Littlest Vintage' in Prospect last night (the whole street was going bonkers for the 'Tourrific Prospect' Tour Downunder Street Party, which was AWESOME) and there were these darling chooks, just waiting for me to take them home.  I really like how the pepper is a Wyandotte type (one of my favourite breeds) and the salt looks just like my Hetty - awwwwwww.

Check out Littlest Vintage here for cool vintage and retro if you are in Adelaide.  They've got clothes, homewares, furniture and an old-fashioned RIDE ON ELEPHANT in the kids' section - how many stores can you say that about?

(Also admire my cunning use of a Tupperware lunchbox and my toaster as an impromptu photo backdrop - not bad, huh?!  Yes, in addition to my other skills, I'm also a Tupper-tragic)