1) Notifying my sisters and me of a slime mould oscillating its way across the wood chips at Harlot Heights. (This was a very pleasing e-pistle indeedeeoh, and I have boasted to everyone I've met over the last week that my parents are growing a slime mould. Such disclosures seem to clear space on public transport.)
2) Notifying me (only) that she had repainted the garden gnome I gave her for Christmas in 1990.
This garden gnome was orginally advertised in the Target catalogue for $9.95, an exorbitant proportion of my personal GDP for the 1990/91 financial year. I was so enraptured, though, with the thought of giving a garden gnome to my mother (who had never before shown the slightest interest in ceramic men in dungarees), that I overrode the advice from Treasury and made a special expedition with my sister to Chatswood Target. Here - in horror - I watched the checkout kiddy swipe his bar code and request $12.95. And here my valiant sister stood up to her full height and demanded a price-check on my behalf. (This, as far as I was concerned, deserved some sort of national award for bravery, which I think I never got round to conferring.) Even at $9.95, our garden gnome broke the bank, and I was reduced to giving the Pa a set of ten hand-knitted toe warmers, in a fetching aqua acrylic yarn I happened to have at home. Meanwhile, the 'rents embrace my mother's new garden gnome like a prodigal son, and here he is today, replete with rouge and a brand new pair of scarlet Birkenstocks. The paint for which (though the Ma didn't tell me and I haven't asked) would have left $9.95 for dead.
4 comments:
Gnice Gnome.
I got Mum a gnome once, principally because she'd told me repeatedly that she didn't like garden gnomes. Admittedly, said gnome was too small to stand in a garden and did, in fact, have a pencil sharpener in his posterior. Mum subsequently adopted said gnome with gusto and placed him in prominent position on the mantlepiece. As Lewis Carrol said, 'Such is human perversity'.
Still, it's the thort that counts, you gnow?
Said gnome reminds me of the constipated accountant, who worked it out with a pencil.
(I assume no responsibility for the previous comment.)
National bravery award goes to anyone who actually walks into Target Chatswood, gnome or gno gnome.
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