bagels, heirlooms, wankers/mutants, cigarettes... and queen elizabeth the first

Places in Richmond that do not sell bagels:

Brumby's
Baker's Delight
Both private bakeries on Swan Street

Only place in Richmond (apparently) that sells bagels:

Jaybeez Deli in Victoria Gardens.
They also sell lovely cheeses and pâtés and fresh cold cut meats. Yay for Jaybeez Deli.

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Grandma Miller has moved into a retirement home. She is very happy there and it's all Hurrah. My aunt has been going through the things left behind in her unit, pending its sale at the end of this month. Yesterday, patermunkey and I went to help go through some of her things.

My aunt (thus far in charge of the packing operation) did not see anything wrong with pitching a small engraved brass cup - worthless, but the only posession of my late great-grandfather that still exists - into a box for the Salvos. And she found it rather bemusing that patermunkey and I thought it just might be worth keeping in the family.

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A distant by-marriage-only relation of mine is a member of the Australian Navy. I met him on the weekend for the first time. He is a handsome, quite charming young man, who took the time to spend quite a while chatting with the old grannies present (big brownie-points score) and generally seemed like an all round Good Bloke™.

Later in the afternoon, I found myself surrounded by the men of the family, when talk turned to boats *yawn*. Boys like boats. I don't know why. They will spend literally hours talking about motors and winches and water-pumps and horse-power and other things that generally make my eyes glaze over. I think I'm the only one who noticed, but at this point, Mister Navy quite obviously inserted his hand deep into his shorts pocket and began visibly playing with himself as he spoke about how fast the Navy patrol boats can go. He continued his enthusiastic pocket-billiards as he referred to his duties as "chasing illegal fishermen and illegal immigrants - mutants." The word 'mutants' was spat with such vitriol, and the accompanying hand-in-groin action was so enthusiastic, that I was a little startled. I had to leave the room. I didn't talk to him again, and I later hesitated to return his jocular handshake as he said goodbye.

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As I drove home from patermunkey's, I passed an elderly woman walking along a quiet outer-suburban main road, with the aid of one of those wheelie-walker things, on her own, in the dark. It was near the freeway on-ramp. There are no shops or houses nearby. The direction she was coming from is a wetlands reserve. I half-considered pulling over to ask if she needed help, when she raised a cigarette to her lips and sucked hard on it. I continued on my way, wondering. Where had she been? What was she doing? Why was she alone? And importantly: what does it say about my brain, or our culture, that I had considered she may need help until after I saw that she was smoking a fag? "Oh she's huffing a ciggie. She must be fine!"

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Spending two hours watching Helen Mirren in Elizabethan garb (and I swear she was wearing a different costume in every scene!) before you go to bed, makes for very strange dreams.