Pinky's Book Link

Monday, June 26, 2017

The Sound of Dust Mites



I have twelve ladies coming for lunch tomorrow and have been cleaning my dusty house so that they don't think I'm a filthy pig. 

I picked up some Gumption at the IGA and it inspired me to write a song (as various things occasionally do). 

You have to sing along in your head to the Youtube song at the bottom of the post... k?

Warning: It's very deep. Very.



The Sound of Dust Mites



Hello Gumption my old friend

I’ve come to scrub with you again

In my vision softly cleaning...

Til my fingers are all bleeding

And the vision that is planted in my brain

Has no stains

Around the kit...chen island.



The counter gleamed, I scrubbed alone

My spouse was on the telephone

And my hand joints ached with raw cramp

I squeezed my sponge into the cold and damp

Then my eyes were stung with the splash of some Ajax White

It blurred my sight

So then I swore... with violence

But in the naked light I saw

Ten thousand dust balls, maybe more

Dust balls gathered on the bench top

Dust balls hiding from the duster mop

Dust balls telling tales... that vacuums never share

They’d never dared

Disturb that mound... of dust mites




Fool was I, you surely know

Dust mites like a cancer grows

"Hear my words that I might teach you

You filthy dust I’m going to reach you"

And my sponge... my silent loofah,  fell

And mopped up… all that mound of dust mites.




And then Pinky bowed and prayed

To the Gumption, God had made

But the label flashed its warning

In the words I saw were forming

And the words said, the stains from the dust are coated on the kitchen walls

And in the halls


They whispered… those mounds of dust mites.


Friday, June 23, 2017

Why School Holidays Rock like Ozzy Osborne

Scozzy Osborne


It was Crazy Hair Day, plus State of Origin Day at school the other day.

The perfect storm for primary students to express their personal identity.

The perfect storm for extravagant silly behaviour, excessive absurdity and disgraceful ambiguousness, and that is just the teachers.

Naturally, I went for it hell for leather.

I wore my maroon Qld supporter’s shirt AND a three foot long, black wig.

The black wig drew a mixed reaction from my class.

One kid regarded me thoughtfully and said, “You should make that your normal, Mrs. Poinker. It looks good on you.”
One kid looked petrified and started firing at me with an imaginary machine gun as if he had come face to face with the queen of the zombie hive of the apocalypse.

To be honest, I only kept the wig on for fifteen minutes and that was only to impress upon the parents who attended morning assembly that I was a bit of a good sport… and also to keep my ears warm in the bitter cold.

When I arrived home from work, Scotto asked me how the wearing of the wig went. After half-heartedly listening to my reply, he then disappeared for a few minutes into the depths of our bedroom.

I gasped in horror when he reappeared around the corner of our bedroom sporting the three foot long black wig looking like Mortcia in drag.

“I’d better not catch you dressed up in that wig and togged up in my undies!” I shrieked in alarm.

He shrugged and grinned.

I worry about Scotto sometimes.

I like the end of term because we do fun things like athletics carnivals.

When I say fun things, I mean fun things for the kids. 


Athletics day feels like the Education Minister has just slammed teachers in the kidneys with a cricket bat. Standing up from 9:00 am until 3:oopm in the hot sun and playing an unending game of Whack a Mole and Herding Cats in an attempt to control multitudes of blue and yellow, zinc sunscreened feral kids… well… that’s a recipe for a grand mal seizure if there ever was one.

But today is the end of term and all is good.

I have three things to look forward to.

Pretty much my entire school teaching mob are coming to my house for lunch on Tuesday for a champagne lunch (note to self: under no circumstance get pissed and reveal true nature and also don't forget to clean dog slobbered back window), I am going to Sydney on a whirlwind trip with my eldest son AND I am returning to my home town to visit my adorable but demanding children for the first time in eighteen months.



I bloody love school holidays!

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Bantam of the Opera

Bantam of the Opera


For the last few weeks my cherished rooster, Hodor, has been a bit off.

His appetite is as robust as ever but he keeps stumbling around in an unco-ordinated fashion, like a fluffy, rotund, drunken sailor. He’s still as belligerent as ever, picking fights with the hens and taking feathery chunks out of the magpies’ arses when they try to swoop him, though.

“Do you think he’s been overdoing the ‘making love’ thing with the eight hens?” I asked Scotto (although I didn’t use the actual words ‘making love’ I used a much crasser expression like ‘rooting’). "Eight women would be a lot to maintain."

“What? You think he can’t walk because he has blue balls?” Scotto sniffed in a way that suggested he was slightly envious of the eight women thing.

I shrugged. I don’t even know if roosters have balls.

Luckily for you, I just Googled it and they do have balls which are surprisingly large, look like sausages and taste like Tofu with overtones of chicken liver. If you want to see a picture of rooster balls click here…  Chickens do have balls!


But I can’t locate any balls on Hodor under all the feathery fat.


I suspected he might be too fat so I put him on a diet. He seemed to be tumbling forward as if he was top heavy or something and he definitely looked as if he’d been grazing in the good paddock of late.

A friend of ours who owns chickens recently commented he’d never seen such a fat and oddly shaped rooster.

After a couple of weeks on the diet, there was no improvement so I diagnosed his illness must be a return of the scaly leg mite infection he suffered six months ago when he was paralysed from the waist down and we thought he was about to sadly go the big, meal worm factory in the sky.

Scotto was enlisted as my male nurse and he gently held Hodor as I sprayed his legs with canola oil. 

The rooster’s legs not Scotto’s. 

Then we put him on the grass and doused him with Pesticene. 

Again, the rooster not Scotto.

You should have seen the bloody histrionics. Not only did Hodor play dead but once roused, he bunged on the biggest act I’ve ever seen.

Here’s the video…





You’ll be happy to know he was back strutting around and viciously taking fluffy hunks out of the hen’s necks again this morning.


But I’m going to enrol him in an Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Saturday, June 10, 2017

A Short History of Mostly Nothing

Homosapien Frustratusis


Every time I open a new Word document I automatically click on Page Layout, then Margins, then select Narrow Margins, to save paper. Imagine how much time I’d have saved over the last fifteen years if I’d had this set to default. Imagine how much time I will save over the next (hopefully) thirty years, if I set it to default now. An entire year probably.

Speaking of saving time, I’ve discovered how, by this time next year, without using up any drinking time, I can become a veritable genius.

I’ve finally embraced audio books and for the last week I’ve been listening to Bill Bryson’s, "A Short History of Nearly Everything" on my drive to work and back.

I now possess a short bit of knowledge of nearly everything.

I’m trying to find a book called ‘A Not Inconsiderable and Substantial History of Mother Fudging Everything’, which should set me up for life and perhaps proffer me a chance of getting on The Chase and allow me to win a not inconsiderable and substantial amount of money.

My not inconsiderable and substantially lengthy commute to work was starting to give me the not inconsiderable and substantial shits, what with having to listen to jaded radio personalities talking themselves up and Ed Sheeran being played on an endlessly monotonous, whiny loop. 


I was completely over the One Direction/Elton John mix CD Scotto had downloaded for me and it was getting more and more difficult to get out of bed in the freezing cold with nothing to look forward to.

Coldus Thermometus


This is what the temperature was when I ARRIVED at school last week. It was actually 3 degrees a few minutes earlier but by the time my frozen hands managed to get my phone out, the thermometer had gone up a degree.

Don’t feel too sorry for me though because the views I witness at every twist and turn on my journey to work are breathtaking. However, spectacularly striking, verdant, bucolic views can get a bit dreary after a while and I needed some intellectual stimulation.

Enter… audio books.

Ask me about mitochondria… go on…

Or ask me about the discovery of cyanobacteria fossils in the Cambrian period. I can wax lyrical about Cambrian fossils now.


(To be truthful, I tend to tune out on the extremely technical stuff the narrator garbles on with but I had a nightmare last week that I coughed up my lung. This was because I'd heard the narrator talking about a guy who coughed up the mucous lining of his larynx when he was climbing Mt Everest and it was one thing that clearly didn't go in one ear and out the other.)

I can listen to all sorts of stuff and fill my mind with all kinds of clever things over the next six months; the world’s my oyster (or member of genera Saccostrea and Crassostrea, to be precise).

“Would you like to know about how plants and trees evolved out of the primordial swamp?” I asked Scotto as we strolled around the botanical gardens this afternoon.

“No,” he grunted, pressing his thumbs into his temples and grimacing.

You don’t want to know either, do you?

Oh well, here are some nice photographs I took which you can look at instead.

P.S. Sorry I called Ed Sheeran whiny, but I personally feel he is.

P.P.S. This entire post was just a ruse to show off photos of our beautiful mountain so if you want to start saving time in your own life, don’t read my posts, just look at the pictures.


P.P.P.S I don't mean that.

Attractivus Treesus


Peacefulus Pondite

Wankerius Photograperite attempting Creativus Shotite
Anotherus Treeus
Eucalyptus Barkius
Treeus what has lost its Leavius known as Deciduitis
Orangeus Treeus
Kooaburrus Singolarusising in Non-Gum Treeus
Photographaris Tripping Overi and Snappingus Accidental Photogravis


Saturday, June 3, 2017

Who the Hell was it?

I’m breathless with excitement.

Literally twenty minutes ago, I was here...



at Mel Gibson’s pub up on the mountain, having lunch with Scotto… and now I’m back home and feeling very distracted. 

I saw an actual celebrity at lunch!

When I say ‘Mel Gibson’s Pub’, I don’t mean it’s actually Mel Gibson’s pub. 

My mother told me that Mel Gibson used to live there with his large family and sold it and whoever bought it turned it into a pub. We’ve since asked the staff there and they say my mother was talking rubbish. 

Apparently Mel Gibson came and looked at the property about twenty years ago but never bought it. I don’t even know if that’s bullshit or not to tell the truth. Anyway, we still call it Mel Gibson’s pub which is a much better name than the Eagle Heights Hotel (which is what it’s called).

So we were just sitting waiting for our bruschetta at Mel Gibson’s pub, when a helicopter started circling the sky above us and began its descent to the helipad at the back of the beer garden.

“It might be a celebrity,” I commented as I sipped my piccolo of champagne. “Maybe it’s Mel Gibson. Wouldn't that be ironic?”

“Maybe it’s Schapelle Corby!” quipped Scotto dryly.

I shrugged. Who cares about that flibbertigibbet?

Our meals arrived and we tucked in.

As I was chewing through my bread, a particularly tall and handsome, bronzed man strutted past us, accompanied by a short man in a uniform, a woman and two children. 

They’d clearly just alighted from the helicopter.

“God, he’s a bit handsome,” I said as I ruminated on a piece of lettuce.. “I think he’s so damn handsome he must be famous.”

“I think he’s the helicopter pilot,” munched Scotto.

“Hell of a handsome helicopter pilot then,” I masticated loudly. 

“I wouldn't mind flying his helicopter,” I added surreptitiously into my glass.

The Nordic God-like creature walked into the bar area and out of sight.

“If you go and ask that handsome man who he is I’ll give you five dollars,” I challenged Scotto whilst chomping on my tomato and fetta. “He was so handsome he has to be a celebrity from America or something.”


“I think you can stop saying handsome so much,” Scotto gnawed on a chip.


“Who can it be?” I shrilled. “He had two kids... and a rather plain wife, don't you think? I wonder who it could be?”
The handsome man suddenly emerged from the bar with the man in uniform, who was the actual (rather unattractive) helicopter pilot.

“It’s bloody Jon Snow!” I blurted out in a not so quiet voice.

I saw the handsome man falter in his step and glance over at our table.

It definitely wasn’t Jon Snow because this guy was tall and light-haired and bloody handsome as.

I just couldn’t think of any other actors at the time. I hope he didn’t hear me because I might have hurt his feelings saying he was Jon Snow.

He sort of looked like a tall, long-haired Christopher Pine/Chris Hemsworth and he looked like he had a bit of money what with the helicopter and all.

God, we arrived in Scotto’s Veloster and I thought THAT was flash.

Who arrives to lunch in a helicopter except really, really famous people?

Does anyone on the Gold Coast have any idea who it could have been? I'm quite desperate to know. 

It's not fair seeing a celebrity when you don't know who it is.