New Sleepwear

I didn't go in there looking for a replacement for my old Purple Ronnie T-shirt.

There’s no section marked "Novelty Sleepwear" and even if there were I wouldn’t be drawn to it because I consider my Purple Ronnie T-shirt absolutely irreplaceable.

J doesn’t agree, and it’s a funny thing because my reasons for the T-shirt being a unique, irreplaceable thing of wonder happen to correspond exactly with her reasons for it becoming part of next week’s offering to the Rubbish Gods:

1. It’s well over 10 years old
2. It used to be a bit too warm to sleep in but the large holes and tears that have developed over the most recent half-decade, plus its overall threadbare nature seem to have sorted out the optimum temperature thing
3. It is no longer black, but rather a subdued shade of feldgrau-charcoal
4. It features a poem about farting

Those of you familiar with the Purple Ronnie range of greeting cards or books may understand. For the unenlightened among you it is probably enough to say that Purple Ronnie is a world populated by simple stick figure people, in the early days obsessed with bodily functions, emissions, fluids and orifices, but lately encompassing other less purple themes as well. It is the world as seen, felt, smelled and understood by a somewhat cheeky – yet loveable - child.

You can explore Purple Ronnie at your leisure HERE. For now, here is the poem as it appears on my beloved old T-shirt:
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A Poem about BOTTOM BURPS

If your bottom burps in public
Try to say in time
“Goodness gracious what a whiff
It doesn’t smell like mine”






Poo-eee

Poo-eee

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Perhaps now you understand the raw appeal . . . ?

As I said, I wasn't looking for a replacement - how could you possibly replace THAT - but they were having a storewide sale so my eyes flicked up and down the racks as I walked along, half-looking for shirts and T-shirts (of which I'm generally in need).

And there it was: a simple T-shirt. Prussian blue. It looked a good size, felt well made. I pulled it out from behind the other T-shirts . . .

Damn! It had some printing on the front. That’s an automatic disqualification in my book.

Too bad. . .

Just as I was replacing it on the rack, rejecting it out of hand, something in my brain screamed: “It says WHAT?”

Schlong’s

**KOSHER**

HOT DOGS

[. . image of hot dog in bun . .]

If it isn’t 12 inches it isn’t a SCHLONG

Of course, I simply HAD to have it!

My Encounter with the PM

It happened last week as I was walking back from a medical appointment along Grattan Street, opposite Melbourne University. I saw a car travelling slowly towards me with its headlights on. At first I thought perhaps a funeral procession (there were another two white sedans in tow, also with lights on). Then I saw the flag on the bonnet.

Is it Bracksy, the Premier?

No cigar.

Then I made out the plates: C-1

Ka-ching! The Prime Miniature himself.

He'’s a front seat passenger. I’'ll give him that much.

As the car approached I took off my sunglasses. Partly so I could see better; mainly because I wanted him to see my eyes. In the space of the next few seconds a stream of images poured through my mind, most of them related to social injustice and disadvantage.

I furrowed my brow and glared.

Well, he refused to meet my gaze, but he did appear to be intensely physically uncomfortable, as if caught in the process of trying to shift his body weight –-- while seat-belted –-- from one haemorrhoid to another. This will ever be a source of comfort to me.

Of course, he may always suffer like this in the vicinity of ACTU headquarters and Trades Hall (just up the road) but I’ had not seen the “"haemorrhoid"” look in the flesh (so to speak) before. I have to say though, the expression is remarkably similar to the one that comes over him these days whenever Peter Costello’'s within knifing distance ....