Feed Me Melbourne

It's been a long dark winter but fortunately I have survived. I can attribute this to central heating, kindly donated downloads of the season 4 of Mad Men and the warmth and comforts of eateries Melbourne wide. I thought it was time to repay the favour, so thank you Ancient Romans for inventing hypocaust, thank you Matthew Weiner for giving us Sterling Cooper et al and thanks to the following fine establishments for keeping my belly full and my tootsies warm.

Felices, 141 Greeves Street (Smith Street end), Fitzroy

We went to Felices the morning after the general election, looking for something to take away the sour taste of the night before. Fortunately this decidedly european cafe (plain timber walls, fussball, large mirrors) with its beautifully uncomplicated menu was able to deliver more than Julia and Tony. We ordered croissants and toast with our coffees, and both came accompanied with generous serves of marscapone cheese, fresh marmalade and one of the nicest strawberry jams I've tasted. Recommended to people who don't want eggs with every breakfast as well as anyone who likes to eat under a giant aeroplane; there's one attached to the roof. If you'd like to see it check out these great pictures at Fitzroyalty, a blog dedicated to all things Fitzroy.

Tabet's Bakery, 607 Sydney Road, Brunswick
There's been a lot of coverage of the hidden delights of Sydney Road in the local press this year, probably as more and more journalists are forced away from the increasingly expensive inner city and head towards the 'burbs. It's true that there are a great many outlets on the main road north out of melbourne, covering a wide range of cuisines and an even broader range of quality. Always reliable however is Tabet's - a lebanese bakery with an exceptionally cheap yet delicious range of bready cheesey products. Both the haloumi pies (essentially a lebanese pastie) and spinach and cheese pies are amazing and for just $2.80 you can eat like royalty even on a budget. Heartily recommended smothered in Masterfoods Hot Chilli sauce.

Salford Lads Club, 1 Fennell Street, Port Melbourne As an indie tragic it's hard to go past a cafe that takes it's name from a place in Greater Manchester made famous by Morrissey and the Smiths. Before you Mozophiles get too excited this isn't a Smiths tribute cafe and there was nothing beyond the name and the This Charming Man ringtone of the owner's phone to link it to Steven, Johnny and the other two.


Having done the pilgrimage to actual SLC and been hassled by actual Salford lads I am pleased to report that this relatively new cafe in Port Melbourne was far more welcoming. The decor inside this industrial setting is an homage to cycling, and there were several old racing bikes and jerseys around the place - as well as a Huddersfield Town banner. Sadly I'm unable to provide much comment on the highly interesting and varied dinner menu as we only went for breakfast. I am happy to report though that the coffee, eggs and homemade baked beans were top drawer and the Northern Breakfast (replete with black pudding) looked good enough to turn Morrissey himself back to meat.

Zingara, 875 High Street, Thornbury

I have double praise for Zingara in Thornbury. Firstly for not making a fuss when our dog started going crazy and almost upended our table when he saw pigeons for the first time. Secondly (and most importantly) for turning out the finest caesar salad I've ever had. Not eating meat makes a good caesar hard to find. Some places do a salmon version but they're few and far between. Thankfully Zingara have thought outside the chicken box and offer a delicious charred king prawns alternative every bit as good if not better as anything I ate back in the meat days. A great choice for these warm spring afternoons, with or without crazy puppy as a dinner guest.

Mamasita, 11 Collins Street, Melbourne

I haven't seen this kind of buzz about a food outlet since Speedy Peppers finally brought take-away pizza to East Yorkshire in the late 80s. Every bloody newspaper and magazine has been crapping on about Mamasita for months now, as if they were serving up Michael Jackson steaks. Sadly the main thing people have to say is 'boo hoo me, I had to queue for hours to get in.' Well here's a couple of suggestions. Firstly don't go the same week as there is a newspaper or magazine feature about it; there's more people can read than just you. Secondly, try avoiding going along at 7pm on a Friday. Everything is busy at 7pm on a Friday cretins. I've been twice, had awesome times, lush modern twists on mexican food (the corn is particularly recommended, as are the soft fish tacos and chilli chocolate), been well looked after by the helpful staff who protected me from the most vicious chillis and hey, never had to queue once. Yay Mamsita.

Nothing to do with your Vorsprung Durch Technik

The past few months have been a quiet time for the Mint Custard Book Club (membership one and counting, slowly). After ripping through A Streetcar Named Desire I got bogged down in Cloudstreet. This is less a reflection on Tim Winton’s Miles Franklin Award winning masterpiece than on the fact that I scored myself a free iPhone. Instead of bettering myself by diligently sticking to my mission to read at least one piece of literature a month, I’ve been distracted by the gaudy thrills of mobile internet, Angry Birds and pseudo-Scrabble, Words with Friends.

Yes, a mere three years after the launch of the iPhone I’ve finally caught up with technology. I say only because despite assurances from gadget enthusiasts that just six months can be a lifetime when it comes to technology, up til now I have spent my life separated from modernity by a continual seven year buffer of which phones are just a minor detail.

Much of this spans back to childhood and a general lack of gadgetry in our house. We got our first video - a VHS Ferguson Videostar – in 1987. It was my grandparent’s old one, donated to us because even Grandad wouldn’t be seen dead with a top loader by then. We had a hi-fi, one of those housed in an MDF wood-effect cabinet and sealed behind a darkened glass door, but it was a strictly tapes and records affair. 1985 may have seen Dire Straits become first band to sell a million copies of an album on compact disc but it was 1992 before I got around to buying my first CD player. Add another ten years to those two dates for DVDs and you can see a bit of a trend.

Despite their circumstances mum and dad always did their best to get us all what we wanted. Unable to afford the Atari 2600 games console I wanted they got me Astro Wars, a single game table top space shoot-em-up they probably couldn’t afford either and which I clocked several hundred times. I still have it and, in keeping with my temporal techno buffer, I eventually got my 2600 and a sackful of games for my eighteenth birthday in 1993. Mum got it on the cheap from a local second-hand shop inundated with Ataris thanks to Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog. Again, still have it and still love it. I bought Raiders of the Lost Ark for it last week.

Games consoles have become a bit of a yardstick for my gadget delay. Despite spending the entire summer of 1996 playing Worms on my friends’ PlayStation, it was 2003 - three years after the launch of PS2 - before someone took pity on us and gave us their old one. Having never seen a PS2 in action our old machine was still a revelation, and even better, the games were ridiculously cheap. A similar thing happened in 2008 when a kindly soul gave us a Nintendo GameCube. Leaping several years into the future in a single bound we were amazed by the graphics and game play – happily ignorant that kids of all ages were in similar thrall to the Nintendo Wii. I look forward to getting one… in 2015.

After slagging off mobile phone users for several years I got my first mobile in 2003. It was (naturally) a hand-me down from Mrs Custard, and even that had been given to her by a friend. I left it at home a lot and got told off for not answering it when people rang, but I did like the primitive version of Snake which kept me busy on the bus. I kept it for three years, updating to yet another pre-loved phone in exchange for a six pack of beer. It had a dodgy joystick and perhaps the worst camera ever made, but it did have a great mini-golf game. I finally signed a proper contract in 2008 and was given a free phone for my troubles. It had a rather pointless Walkman feature which didn’t let you use your own headphones, but the mini-golf had better graphics and the at least the camera worked. I felt modern, even though most of my friends had long since moved on to iPhone.

Anyway so finally, after so long at apogee of technological innovation here I am, at its artificially beating heart. For once in my life I can look people in the eye without shame, without a shrug of ‘ahdunno’ when discussing matters telecommunicational. I may have forgotten how to read a book but I can feel the same sense of smugness and self-satisfaction that I am more cutting edge than the general populous. I speak the language of Gates and Jobs. I - with my iPhone 3G - am of the moment. I am now. I am 2010. I am… sorry... hang on... there’s a what? When? Oh balls…

Death by Puppy - Round 2

It's time for another round of Death by Puppy, a semi-regular feature dedicated to the memory of anthropomorphised peluches whose tour of duty as companion/punching bag to Woody, our small but tenacious puppy, has come to an end. This time we feature two much loved but short-lived folks from land and sea.

First up we have Kanga Poo. We would like to dedicate this to the memory of not one but two of the Poo family who perished at Woody's tiny jaws. The first friendly yellow marsupial met its maker literally overnight, its back ripped open along what we assumed was a dodgy workshop-sewn seam and Woody triumphant with a plastic squeaker in his mouth. We took the unprecendented move of returning Kanga Poo to the shop on the basis of poor seamstressness, noting that we only had a Jack Russell, not a rottweiler-velociraptor cross.

Sure enough within three days Woody (who it must be said greatly enjoyed playing with Kanga during their short time together) had once again ripped open Kanga Two's spine, removed the squeaker and decorated his bed in white fluff. Rest in Pieces, Kanga.

Second up we have Annabel Crab, a small squeaky crustacean with threaded wool instead of a shell and big googly eyes that lasted about 48 hours. We think Woody ate them. Despite this Annabel fared quite well for a while. That was until Woody realised that he could unpick her shell row by row by standing on her back and yanking with his teeth. By the time the fourth row was gone Woody had enough wool to form a lassoo and Annabel's stuffing was stuffed.

On behalf of ourselves and Woody we'd like to take a moment to thank these two loyal, short-lived servants to the cause. Nice one guys. You (temporarily) rocked.

Name: Kanga Poo

Age: 3 days

Nature of Injuries: Disembowelment through spinal column

Cause of Death: Excessive innard spillage leading to squeaker removal

Name: Annabel

Age: 3 weeks

Nature of Injuries: dual eye detachment, shell unplucking

Cause of Death: progressive woolly shell removal leading to potential

choking hazard and multiple exposure to crabby innards

Vale Annabel and Kanga Poo. Fare thee well in the next life

Rhys's Pieces

In this hung-parliament world of uncertainty and doubt, it’s nice to know that there are some things you can rely on to get you through another day. For me it’s knowing that Gruff Rhys – the world’s favourite softly spoken, curly-locked Welsh gentleman genius – has a new single out. It is, naturally, fricken awesome and even better it can be yours for free. Simply head off to gruffrhys.com (cannily renamed recently as The Gruffington Post), leave an email address and soon your ears will be swimming in Gruff’s delightful Shark Ridden Waters.

The track is taken from his upcoming (and as yet unnamed) third solo album. It comes at the end of yet another crazy-busy year for Mr Rhys, a man who is starting to make Billy Childish look a bit idle. Lesser folks might still be resting on the rather spectacular laurels of Super Furry Animals’ 2009 epic masterpiece Dark Days/Light Years. Other folks however are not Gruff Rhys who has been involved in a plethora of projects in a year he also marked his 40^th birthday.

After collaborating with Gorillaz on their Plastic Beach album (including the as-yet unreleased Leviathan, described by Gruff as a ‘three o'clock in the morning, speeding down the autobahn evading West German police-type track.’) he teamed up with Tony Da Gatorra, ‘a Brazilian TV and VCR repairman and musical freedom fighter.’ Together they produced The Terror of Cosmic Loneliness, an experimental, mostly live album built around the sound of the gatorra, a homemade drum machine/guitar invented by its namesake. It’s about as far from Gruff’s harmonic style as it’s possible to get so won’t make everyone happy, but it does sound like they’re having a lot of fun. The duo did a few small gigs in the UK this year to promote the album, clips of which you can see on Gruff’s website here...

Gruff met Da Gatorra whilst in South America as part of his other big project for the year, the documentary movie Separado! Described by the blurb as ‘Star Trek meets Buena Vista Social Club in a psychedelic western musical’ the film follows Gruff on ‘a pan continental road trip in search of his long lost Patagonian uncle’.

In an apparently true series of events that sound like the plot of Back to the Future III, a controversial horse race in 1880 led to an unresolved death and a split amongst Gruff’s ancestors, some of whom joined the wave of Welsh expatriates to Patagonia. Gruff undertakes a tour of ‘theatres, nightclubs and desert teahouses of Wales, Brazil and the Argentine Andes as he discovers what became of his family, the Welsh Diaspora and its musical legacy.’ There's unlikely to be an Australian release anytime soon which is a shame as having and watched the trailer with a robot helmeted Guff singing into a vocoder to a crowd of bemused families and scenes of the gatorra in action it looks like it'd be right up my alley.

Whilst we all wait for the DVD, watch the trailer for yourself and find out more about possible cinema screenings in your area at separado.co.uk. For everything else Gruff, including your free copy of his new single, get yourself over to www.gruffrhys.com. Believe me, Shark Ridden Waters is everything you’re hoping it will be. For other reliable (and up to date) Gruff and Super Furry news, remember to check out SFA Goodness (http://sfagoodness.blogspot.com/) or www.superfurry.org. That should be enough to keep you going until the next SFA album which knowing them will probably arrive as a triple album before Christmas. Maybe. Hwyl!

Return of the Robots

It's been a while since we had a report back on the ongoing war between war and machine, oft reported on these pages as Robots are Going to Kill Us All. I'm not sure if this is because they've upped their camouflage game or I've just not been paying attention. Thankfully our international reporter Mr Flange is still on the case. Over to him for this report from London Village...

After taking the tube for years I was horrified to discover I have been being watched this whole time by robot koalas. I hope you appreciate that I missed my stop and added 20 minutes on to my journey home in order to capture this picture for you. Apologies for low quality.

Mr Flange, it may be low quality resolution but that's high quality evil-robot-cute-furry animal spy hybrid spotting. Your diligence may have just saved mankind one more day in charge before the inevitable techno-apocalypse. Mint Custard salutes you.

Twee are the World

Please understand. We don't want no trouble.

We just want the right to be different. That's all.

Liner notes to Pulp’s Different Class, 1995

Melbourne played host to its inaugural Finders Keepers markets this weekend, with hundreds of people descending on a Docklands pier to check out stalls crammed with homemade clothes, jewellery, cards, home decorations and other kooky knick-knacks. In a celebration of the craft of craft, shoppers milled the converted warehouse to the sounds of angelic voiced singer-songwriters with acoustic guitars and xylophones.

Despite what I’m about to say, I think the Finders Keepers markets are a great thing. Set up to showcase the work of emerging designers and artists from around Australia and New Zealand, they bring together creative people who care about art and design, who seek more than financial reward from their craft, who value the handmade over the mass produced, and being an individual over blending into the crowd. My problem (and I will state categorically, it is my problem) is why did everything seem so, well, samey?

Crafty folks have been happily knitting one and pearling one in contented nerdy obscurity for decades. A ragtag mob of (mostly female) cross-stitch enthusiasts, sewing machine owners, Fimo manipulators and people who make those odd stuffed knitted dolls that always show up at school fetes and op shops. I come from a family of such people, their walls adorned with framed cross-stitch creations of their own hand depicting (for example) the alphabet alongside a cute woodland cottage. There is not a child born to this family that has not been clad in hand-knitted swaddling clothes. I myself have enjoyed many a pair of delightfully impractical woollen socks. It kept Grandma happy, it keeps my aunty happy and it keeps my cousins happy.

The craft scene as represented at Finders Keepers is a little different. It is post-modern and knowingly retro. It is two parts Anne Taintor, one part Fanny Craddock, a dash of Alice from the United States of Tara and (this is where I come in I guess) a spoonful of Morrissey. It takes the skills honed at nanna’s knee and seeks to cutesy them up. Gone are the useless woollen dolls, replaced by… useless woollen cupcakes. Goodbye cross-stitch pictures of doe-eyed Huckleberry Finn type children, hello woollen recreations of the cover of Belle and Sebastian’s Tigermilk.

This nu-craft was thrust into the limelight almost as soon as the global financial wobble became a full-blown crisis. The future was homemade. Recycle. Grow Your Own. Make Your Own. Craft (as I was reminded by a badge I saw yesterday) is the new black. Knitters (I was told by another) ain’t quitters… This is all well and good really. Rampant mass commercialism is evil. People should think for themselves. Using your brain and your hands is wonderful. Recycling is the future. Vegetables are rock and roll. What isn’t clear is why, when you have so many clever, interesting and artistic people all beavering away, do so many of them make the same thing? Here’s a quick run down of the totems of nu-craft on display several times over at Finders Keepers…

• Buttons as badges and brooches and earrings and basically anything. Especially buttons with material on
• Birds – predominantly of the owl variety (which is a shame because I do like an owl, despite the fact that they are not what they seem) though equally popular were birds in cages with variations on door open/door closed. Oh the symbolism.
• Fonts – WORDS. And LETTERS. In DIFFERENT FONTS. In FRAMES.
• Impractical Jewellery – especially earrings made out of found objects that look nice on a table on a velvet cushion but are not conducive to hanging comfortably from your lobes
• Things made out of old children's books – ‘Fanny and Dick were amazed to see how many things they could be exploited for.’
• Rabbits - cuwte lickle snuffle bunnies. On adults.
• Butterflies – oh yes. Butterflies. Fly my pretties. Next stop, unicorns.
• BIG patterns – their name is prints. And they is funky. And they is everywhere.
• Big Glasses – I expressed my angst about this alarming trend for enormous glasses last year. Did anyone listen? No. Many gigantic pairs spotted wandering around Docklands with little tiny people in cardigans underneath them.
• Antlers – mostly deer related (lots of fake hunting trophy heads) though a few creative souls had gotten all Island of Dr Moreau and started welding antlers to anything in sight
• Silhouettes – see most of the items in this list but without the filly-in middle bits
• Laser Cut everything – literally anything on earth that a laser can cut a shape into or cut something out of. See silhouettes. I did. Several times.
• Big things on chains - assorted random large items hung between two ends of a chain to be worn like an ineffectual breastplate
• Old Cameras - a shame this one, because I quite like the aesthetic and the symbolism of an old camera. Still that doesn’t mean I want to see t-shirts, jewellery, purses, cushions and wallpaper of old Pentaxes and Polaroids everywhere I go. Stop. You’re spoiling it now.

In case you think I’m being mean, I’ll reiterate that lots of the items on offer were splendid. Beautifully made, intricately detailed, lovingly imagined. I also get that all tribes have their trends. Punks, Goths, Mods, Emo Kids, Rude Boys (and Girls), football fans, bikers – there’s always something gangs build their identity around. The difference with this kind of art is that the unifying point is philosophical. It’s not based on a look or a person or a thing, but an idea - an appreciation of the personal.

Of course I can craft precisely nothing (though I am good at growing potatoes) so really have no right to criticise what people choose to make and sell. Perhaps I’d be less bothered if Finders Keepers had been billed as a celebration of (and place to buy) all things cute and mid-20^th century retro, but as a ‘showcase for emerging designers and artists’ I don’t think that was the point. In the end I came away from Finders Keepers with the distinct feeling that too much of a good thing is still too much. In the art world nothing kills an original and personal idea like a backdrop of sameness, which - unless it’s just about the money - surely defeats the purpose.

For more about the Finders Keepers markets click here or visit thefinderskeepers.com

Gone to the Birds

Once, very long ago, I did something bad. Something very bad, for which I am highly ashamed, and feel the need to confess to you here and now. It was early 1990, just a few weeks after I saw my first ever gig; the Beautiful South at Bridlington Spa. I was staying at my Grandma and Grandad’s house in Hull. With them both safely tucked up in bed, I decided to entertain myself by looking up members of the newly famous Beautiful South in the phone book.

With Paul Heaton already famous for a good few years he was always going to be ex-directory. However, clearly unprepared for the perils of fame was Mr Dave Rotheray, the South’s lead guitarist and co-song writer (and improbably one of three Daves in a band with just five full time members). Sure enough, there he was - in pre-internet black and white – Rotheray, D.

I’m not sure what possessed the teenage me to ring Dave’s house that night. I am still horrified at the thought. However, ring I did. A male voice answered with a friendly enough ‘hello.’ ‘Can I speak to Dave, please?’ I squeaked. As the voice at the other end of the line changed tone and politely told me that Dave was not in (despite clearly being he) I realised I probably wasn’t the first East Yorkshire-based miscreant to call chez Rotheray. To his credit Dave didn’t use any rude words but it was clear that he wasn’t up for a chat with an inarticulate pimply youth. I hung up quickly, grateful that caller return and 1471 was a few years away.

Dave, I’d like to apologise for this invasion of your privacy two decades ago. I’ve lived many embarrassed moments since thinking about it and am slightly flushed now as I type. I’m sorry Mr Rotheray. Perhaps I could make it up to you by encouraging people to buy your new album The Life of Birds. I mean people should, and no doubt will anyway, whether you forgive me or not, but I thought it might help a little and assuage some of my guilt.

After all, the Life of Birds is a wonderful album. Less a solo album than a collection of collaborations with some of Dave’s favourite folks artists, the result is beautiful, moving and highly diverse. Fans of the Beautiful South - especially songs that put their various leading ladies in the spotlight - will be sated by Eleanor McEvoy’s Almost Beautiful and Nat Johnson’s Flying Lessons but there is more on offer here than the South with new singers.

Draughty Old Fortress features the striking vocal talents of Alasdair Roberts and sounds like the soundtrack to The Wicker Man re-recorded by the Fence Collective. There are hints of the Divine Comedy in Jim Causley’s The Sparrow, The Rush and the Nightingale and Jack L’s The Best Excuse in the World, whilst the slide guitar on Jim Causley’s too-brief The Hummingbird and Camille O’Sullivan’s Sweet Forgetfulness reminded me of listening to Radio Humberside’s weekly Country by Request as a lad. Elsewhere there are few voices as lovely as Kathryn Williams and her Crows, Ravens and Rooks is an album highlight.

As you may have picked up from the title and song names, The Life of Birds is also something of a concept album about our fine feathered friends. The theme hangs in the air well with some clever imagery and metaphors, but that said all the songs sit comfortably on their own and the bird references are not overdone. I’d challenge anyone to listen to Draughty Old Fortress out of context and know what it’s about, but knowing just adds an extra dimension to an already powerful moment.

Reviews have been very positive for the Rotheray and the album, which is nice considering all the shit the media hung on the Beautiful South over the years. Coinciding with former partner Paul Heaton’s own creative renaissance, it proves that they really are national treasures that we took for granted, but also that they were right to go their separate ways in 2008. Oh and by the way Dave, if you’d like to call me, uninvited in the middle of the night then please, feel free. I think I probably owe you one.

Watch this YouTube interview with Dave to hear him talking about Life of Birds. You can also watch live performances of songs from the album by visiting propertv on YouTube including Crows, Ravens and Rooks with the gorgeous Kathryn Williams. You should you know.

Sing When You're Winning

There were rare scenes of joy in our house this past weekend with the unexpected breaking of a longstanding drought; a sporting team I support actually won something. Despite over 25 years regularly watching all manner of teams playing a fair few different sports, I've never ever seen any of them win anything of note.

The team in question was St George Illawarra - the Dragons. Some of you may have heard of them. Most of you will not. They won the NRL Telstra Premiership, Australia's top rugby league club championship. They are the toppermost of their particular poppermost. Look, here's a picture of them... winning things... yay!

My long wait for the Dragons' win (11 years in my case, 31 in theirs) was just one part of what could be called the Custard Curse. At its most basic this means whoever I want to win, will not. In all my years watching Sunderland, they have won only the Coca Cola Championship - twice. I won't pretend I wasn't pleased at the time, but since one needs to be relegated to win this second tier trophy it's one I'd rather never win again.

Similarly with my oldest team Hull Kingston Rovers, the rugby league team everyone in my family was born into the misery of supporting. Their last moment on top was 1984, tantalisingly out of my adult memory's reach. Thankfully I do remember sitting in the hotel bar at my aunty's wedding two years later watching Rovers lose by 1 point at Wembley in the Challenge Cup final; the moment my sporting path was set.

Of course I have experienced the distinct pleasure of watching Ricky Ponting's face contort with rage and frustration at the hands of the English Cricket Team - twice. I've also had many happy moments watching South African, Indian, Sri Lankan and Kiwi players slap the Aussies around the park a bit, especially in the past few years. That said a few weeks in summer following national sides are not enough to wipe out the pain of following the fortunes (or unfortunes) of your own useless team.

So thank you Dragons for bucking the trend. I'm more grateful than you know. However, whilst I'm at it I should apologise to the newly formed A-League team Melbourne Heart. You see, you play in red and white and well, I need a football team to support over here, and I refuse to go for Melbourne Victory and I never really cared much for Sydney FC. So, well, I figure since you need fans and I need a team well... you know... how about it? After all you're only as good as your last game right, and tonight, for one night I am a champion...

Tales from the Compost Bin

True tales from the Mint Custard compost bin...

Greg: So the waiter says "Hanz that does dishes is as soft as Gervais, about the mild green hairy lip squid." Ha ha ha!

Peg: He he he! Classic!

Spud: Eh...?

Greg: anyway, so the waiter turns to him and says "Hanz that does the dishes is as soft as Gervais for the mild green hairy lip squid!"

Avon: Ha ha ha! That's freakin' awesome!

Peg: Classic. Just classic

Spud: Erm...

Peg: ...so her mum says to her

"you can't marry him, he's a common-tator!"

Spud: Hihihhihihihihi! Hihihihihihi! Hihihhihihihihi!!!

Avon: Freakin' awesome...

Greg: Classic...

Pimp My Ride to Work Day

Next Wednesday 13th October is national Ride to Work Day in Australia. As good an idea as this seems, in reality it means that those people who do actually ride to work will just find themselves sharing their journey with unco people in bad clothes who haven't actually ridden a bike in years. Expect crashes and some foul mouthed exchanges about cycle lane etiquette between the lycra-clad peletonistas and Geoff from accounts.

For those of you taking part on Wednesday but looking for some extra thrills on your journey, why not try these variations on Ride to Work day....

• Guide to Work Day – for people who need help remembering where their place of employment
• Fried to Work Day – for people riding their bikes in hot climates with no shirts or sunblock
• Cried to Work Day – for those who don’t want to go to work
• Died to Work Day – I told you I didn't want to go to work
• Bride to Work Day- in which we see how difficult it is to ride a bike in a big white taffeta dress
• Tried to Work Day- ‘well at least I tried…’
• Tie-Dyed to Work Day – hippies on bikes
• Slide to Work day – “Wheeeeee! Wheeeeeeeeeee! Wheeeeeeeeeee!!! Oh. I’m at work…”
• Hide to Work Day – invisible people on invisible bikes
• Ride to Ride to Work Day - in which cyclists listen to Oxford-based early 90s shoegazer bands as they (ahem) ride
• Lied to Work Day – for those who “would have done ride to work day but my bike had a flat tyre, what a shame, would you believe it etc”
• Mide to Work Day – when South Africans are forced to do things
• Tide to Work Day - for people who'd rather surf to work
• Pide to Work Day – bring a loaf of Turkish bread to work

Apologies in advance to anyone who I take out on my bike on the day. That means you Geoff.