The grocery shopping isn’t meant to get exciting. Normally its a very routine event. Today it was looking perfectly ordinary until we got home, I tried to get the eggs out of the egg carton, and discovered that they were cemented in with dried yolk from one that had leaked. Attempting to prise them out of the carton, one exploded, showering me with rotting egg, and filling the kitchen with a truly evil stench.
It was in poor humour that I took the carton of eggs, firmly sealed in two plastic bags, back to the supermarket and politely requested a replacement. I nearly had the last laugh when the Coles rep. started to open the bag at the service counter, in front of all the other staff and customers, but self-preservation got the better of me and I advised them not to open the bag inside, but to escort it gently to the hazardous waste area.
This afternoon we went to the footy! Joey had acquired some free tickets courtesy of work, so Rosie, Jo and I went off to the footy. St. Kilda vs Geelong at Docklands Stadium, err, Colonial Stadium, err, Telstra Dome. It’s all getting very American and corporate, football held inside under floodlights so that the TV cameras get even coverage, advertising everywhere. I had to laugh at the quarter and three-quarter breaks when they unroll banners advertising the team sponsors, leave them out for all of five minutes, then roll them back up again. My life is now complete with the true Melbourne experience of having a pie at the footy and hearing the large Cats fan next to me scream out “Yer white maggot!” at the umpire. As we pointed out, it isn’t real footy since we’re not out in the cold and the rain with a beanie and a scarf, shivering at a suburban oval in the drizzle. As Rosie pointed out though, there are now only four AFL ovals in Melbourne, all the original club ovals have been closed, or no longer hold “premier” league events.
Oh, the actual football? After trailing dismally for the first three quarters, St. Kilda woke up in the last quarter and finished only one point down, 101 to 102.
A post-match beer at the Celtic club, disappointed that on a Sunday they’ve closed off half the rooms, the only one open is the one chock full of traditional Irish poker machines and a large-screen TV showing American sitcoms. (Yes, there is a little sarcasm there.)
On the way home we were in a hurry to get out of the wind, and jumped on the first tram without checking carefully what it was. Two out of three that we could have picked would have us heading up Bridge Road, we got the wrong one, down and along Swan Street. It made up for it by being chock full of skimpily dressed, shivering Kylie fans, all out for a big night at the Kylie concert, and by threatening to fall apart at any moment. A very worried looking tram-electrician was poking around behind a panel at one end of the tram, and every time we stopped there were all sorts of weird clunking sounds before we managed to start up again. When Jo and I finally got off we saw that we were being followed up the tracks by a very large truck equipped with a tram-pushing bull-bar.
