Autumn leaves

Also, if you go behind the West Block in the Parliamentary Triangle* you will find a most satisfactory build up of autumn leaves at the bottom of a small hillock.

Dust-free and private. Actually, probably only private on weekends, but if you don't mind showing off your autumn leaf crunching action to a bunch of desk-bound public servants you could go tomorrow.

Are there public servants in the West Block? Maybe it's the ghosts of public servants from 1927. They would be more used to looking at sheep and British royalty, I guess.


*Don't believe Wikipedia, though. If we called it the ParTri we would be well and truly Looked At. Someone is being a bit TriHard to my thinking.

Say yes to climate action

Have been an active citizen by attending the climate change rally here in Canberra. It feels a little odd rallying in front of Parliament House, when the politicians are presumably home for the weekend, but there it is. Symbolism and all that.

As to the number of people, there were Lots. Organisers estimated 10,000. John Hewson spoke sensible words, wondering why the topic was politicised when it was clear that something had to be done and nearly everyone wants something done.

I heard a rumour that two people turned up to protest against a carbon tax, with a sign saying that the next tax would be a tax on breathing.

There weren't many funny signs at all, but plenty of dogs. It was very cold and I wished I had brought a nice thermos of tea.

Everyone was encouraged to write to their local member, to the Prime Minister and to the Leader of the Opposition. Rude comments about the Leader of the Opposition were very infrequent, presumably on the basis that he gets quite enough attention anyway thank you very much and that his opinion on climate change is only worth ignoring.

Chatter chatter chatter

Does anyone else's child or more junior acquaintances go through days (and days and days) where they just dont' stop talking and everything they say is either about Dr Who or about something completely random and there are no segues?

A brief sample:
Are there more naughts in naughts and crosses?
Hiya
Fozzy Bear tells really bad jokes, remember the one where the telephone spurts smoke out at him and Animal pours water on the phone?
I am not being slow, I'm getting ready, really.
And then, when they landed on that planet, the daleks were already there....
MUM INTERJECTS - Are we talking about Dr Who now, which one?
The one from Series 3, you know.
MUM REPLIES - No, I don't remember Series 3 because it was made before I was born.
Oh, well, the daleks were already there and the Dr had to destroy them all, but Daleks can always come back, like in the one where Donna Noble got the Dr's brain but then she couldn't handle it and *looks in another direction*
I still have three timtams left, you don't have any timtams left.
And then Jackson shouted at me about my technology project and all he was doing was painting stuff and WE HADN'T EVEN FINISHED BUILDING THE WALLS YET.
(Odd snorty noise somewhere between a laugh and a death rattle).
Blah blah blah blah.

MUM TURNS TO DRINK.

Dr Who

So, the kid is too scared to actually watch the present series of Dr Who but is besotted with Dr Who. Thanks to the glories of the internet, he can now read the plot summaries of every episode, watch trailers, read the Wikepedia entries on all the Dr Whos ever made and so on ad infinitum. He is a very well informed Dr Who scholar, but really has not seen very many episodes of Dr Who. Even the non-scary ones set off the dalek nightmares, alas.

Also, Dr Who inspires some pretty amazing home made merchandise.

In other news, the husband is building us built-in bookshelves so we can isolate the paperbacks.

Off to Mexico and changing my name to Trotsky

Hoping next week I am a better public servant, student, parent and all round human being.

I would just like to mention to the world-at-large that human rights are for humans. All of them.

I would just like to mention to myself that humans who don't respect other people's human rights, still have human rights. Sigh.

New job

For the first time ever, I think, I have been told off for not expressing my opinion strongly enough.

Week of deadline horror.

What am I talking about again?

What?

What?

What?

Sorry.

Rage and silence

Part of the reason I am not blogging so much at the moment is because I am filled with rage at all kinds of things and I could easily become a little indiscriminate about it all.

Suffice to say my poor colleagues are not receiving quite as much consideration and are starting to look a little glassy eyed.

I will say that I don't think children should be in detention, it's not the decision of the mother to let her two-year-old visit her Dad that caused the kid to be dead, if we had better accommodation for homeless families they might not be living in tents and I think it's wrong to show the dead bodies of people killed in wars and not just for political reasons but because no one should be treated like that whoever they are, and whatever they've said or done.

Also, there is no statutory requirement that little girls wear only pink bathers, good people of Canberra. You can choose another colour.

*Incoherent screaming*