Generally, I think most daytime television programmes are rubbish. Silly soap operas and game shows aimed, in the main, at bored housewives, because the studios know (they’ve done the demographics!) that daytime shows are watched by housebound folk.
So, as you’d expect, the advertisements are similarly tailored. Headache remedies, junk food (but now it’s low GI, 97% fat-free junk food. It’s still junk food!) lavatory cleaners, detergents, baby products…
And cookery shows on commercial channels at lunchtime? Not for this chicken!
But sometimes, after a rushed morning with the mercury rising higher than I like and my brain about to go into overdrive, it’s good to sit down with a cold drink and some electronic switch-off.
I hit the button for the news (there’s a rumour of rain…), but was too late for the update, catching, instead, an ABC programme about holiday/retirement shacks on Tasmania.
What a stunningly beautiful island that is! And some of these shacks are crouching, for they seem so unstructured, on million-dollar sites.
True, some look as though they’ll disintegrate in the next big southerly, but they all have the look of “belonging.” As do the shacks’ people. And that’s something many modern architects have lost touch with.
One old fellow said, in a rich north coontry ack-cent, that he liked to make things. “An if summat’s broke, it’ll end oop bein’ summat else.I’d not throw it out.” He had an ornamental tyre swan ( very popular Down Under!) on his car’s roof rack one day and wondered why people were staring. Turns out, ” t’wind were blowing swan about and it looked like it were flappin’ its wings an’ pullin’ t’car along!”
He made me think of a poem I wrote for a school class:
EBERNEEZER PONDERZACK.
Down a twisty, dusty track,
In a crooked, creaky shack
With a wobbly chimney stack,
Lives Eberneezer Ponderzack.
Eberneezer is a fixer, so his shack is full of things:
From tiny puppet dolls on strings
To giant kites, like paper wings,
Screws and hinges, nails and springs.
Pots of paint and globs of glue,
Fishing floats and fish hooks, too,
Teapots (cracked) and teapots (new),
Red ones, green ones, yellow! blue!
He’d save a rusty pizza tray
“It might be handy one fine day.”
Where you or I would simply say:
“It’s useless! Just throw it away!”
But Eberneezer loves his junk
It’s even piled upon his bunk!
He can fix it if it’s going “clunk!”
Or “clang!” Or if it’s lost a chunk.
So it your train’s come off its track,
If a wheel your cart should lack,
If something needs an extra tack –
See Eberneezer Ponderzack.
D.J.Patmore. © 2004.
And for more info on swans and other Aussie oddities, strictly on the lighter side…Go ahead. Make your day!
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