Sunday 14 November 2010

The Vanishing Twist-Tie and Rhyming Cheese

MONDAY: While the rain, wind, and cold rage outside, I'm sitting in a very quiet and empty staff room eating a sandwich with avocado, Pyrenees cheese, and sun-dried tomatoes on a past-its-best rustic cheese roll. It's a chewy but pleasant combination.

THURSDAY: The rain continues, the students are rioting over tuition fee increases, and the First buses to Walkley are getting more random every day. Is it Mars doing a tango with Venus while Jupiter trines nearby, seething with jealousy? Or is it all to do with the economy, rain included? It seems like a waste of water to me, all those rivers running down the pavement. We should be collecting this water so we can save it for, um, a rainy day? Hmmm...

This morning the rare twistie -- aka twist-tie -- I use to seal my muesli bag finally broke, leaving me wit the realisation that I now have no more of these amazingly useful little bits of wire. I don't really know what happened to twisties, as I had a whole drawerful in my kitchen when I lived in Seattle, back when common grocery items like bread wrappers were secured with them. Nowadays one has to grapple with that sticky plastic strip that loses its stick almost immediately after the bread wrapper has been opened for the first time, and with those ridiculous plastic tabs with the cut-out in the centre that always break in half. I've become used to using rubber bands to close things now. But certain bags and wrappers still beg to be properly closed with a twistie. Manufacturers still seem to think twist ties are good for keeping electrical cables tidy. Does this mean I have to start buying unneeded electrical appliances regularly just to have my twisties?

FRIDAY: I'm in the Winter Garden before work, watching a scantily clad family group pose under the fan palms while the very serious photographer bunches them together and orders them to smile. Two of them, a woman and a man, are holding hands. Is it a wedding in process? After they leave another dressed-up group arrives. This time it's two parents photographing their son in his graduation cap and gown. What's coming next -- a supermodel shoot? Or perhaps a new boy band video in the making?

Lunch is more of the Pyrenees cheese with just a small bit of sun-dried tomato, red pepper, and spring onion, and a sprinkling of thyme. It's very pleasant on this cold and windy day. I like this cheese. In fact, I could say that this Pyrenees cheese is the bee's knees. But I won't. Oops, too late...

I apologise ahead of time, but I now have the urge to see how far I can go with the rhyme. Let's see...as my Pyrenees cheese continues to please, as I sit under the trees away from the freeze and shoot the breeze about the increase in fees, the man next to me emits a sneeze, then a wheeze, and his knees seize and I suspect he's filled with quease and ill at ease. And the woman over there agrees as she jingles her keys, and she's teasing the bees hovering over the sleazy peas...oh jeeze, all right, I'll cease!

(I obviously have nothing else to say right now...)

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