stingarees of all degrees, as well as whales and sharks

Today I had meetings at 9am, 10am and 11am, and another that ran from 2-4pm and was characterised by an abundance of meaningless verbiage. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a meeting given to phrases such as "way forward", "stakeholders" and "on the table" never did, never can, never will, actually achieve anything¹. I must make a bingo card, I think. It can only liven things up when someone finally says "grassroots" and I leap to my feet with a cheerful yodel, thereafter, with any luck, being summarily ejected.

khoi_boi tells me that Cape Town's spore count is currently skyrocketing, as all the happy fungi are reacting with enthused growth and propagatory zeal to the recent weather patterns of extreme damp followed by a couple of days of sunlight - rinse, repeat. This is possibly what gave me yesterday's epic beast of a headache, one of those ones which spurned all painkillers with callous disregard, and is still lurking today, cracking its knuckles and occasionally punching my cerebellum. Thank heavens for the lone, abandoned Advil I found in my handbag. Also, headrubs really help. Thanks, khoi_boi.

I seem to have randomly and arbitrarily designated September the Month of Retro Kiddielit Classics, and am inclined, for no adequately defined reason, to run with the theme, so be prepared to deal with the happy dregs of my childhood memories. While we're in Australia: Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding: Being The Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and his friends Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff . This is an unalloyed delight, illustrated throughout with Lindsay's exquisite and irreverent line-drawings, and full of marvellously eccentric and wayward Australian characters. The Magic Pudding is called Albert, and is this sour-faced, mean-spirited creature who wears his bowl on his head like a hat and has incredibly long, skinny legs and a tendency to (a) run away a lot, (b) consort with puddin'-thieves, and (c) verbally or physically abuse people. The puddin'-owning characters are Bill Barnacle, the sailor, Sam Sawnoff, a penguin, and the koala Bunyip Bluegum. The characters burst into song at frequent intervals so half of the book is verse, a lot of it slightly scurrilous. Also features a singed possum.

¹ Now it's bugging me that I can't remember who I'm quoting. Wait! it's Dickens. "A nation without fancy, without some romance, never did, never can, never will, hold a great place under the sun." (Frauds on the Fairies. Odd, I had a sort of a vague sense it might have been Churchill.)