Life is pretty good right now except I loathe my newsagent

Work is crazy busy, but I am healthy, The Man is good, my family is well and, letss face it, compared to those in Burma or Sudan I don't have a thing to complain about. However that is not to say that aren't things that trouble my mind from time to time. I don't get to blog and read others as often as I want to, my computer keeps crashing, I haven't read a book in weeks, I've lost my driver's licence renewal form, I have baskets of washed clothes sitting around my spare room which I really must try to put away and my larder is mostly empty. What is really perturbing me at the moment though is that I may have to give up my long held addiction to newsprint.

It may not be obvious but ask yourself this, which of these three things does not belong with the others:

*I read newspapers in the old fashioned paper-turning way.
*I have a small, mostly dehydrated, front garden which is only barely alive during our water restrictions.
*I also have a great man with whom I spend part of my weekends ahem...kissing and sleeping in with.

Apparently it is impossible to have all three in my life at the same time.

I have stuck with print newspapers for many a year now, long after others moved entirely into the digital realm. I suffered through the Age's excessive newsprint stage which led to small smudgy black fingerprints all around my home. I survived the gradual diminution of the lifestyle, entertainment and food sections. All this time I have loyally subscribed to the Age, and I have the Australian and the Fin delivered on weekends. I love nothing more than to sit back on the couch on a Saturday with pages and pages of newspaper reading ahead of me.

In days gone past I had a lovely newsagent who would carefully place the papers just inside my front gate. After a while he was replaced by an aggressive young lad who each morning at 6:00 would launch the papers from his bike to my front door causing a loud bang. As annoying as this might sound it usually served as my alarm clock and ensured I could read the papers before heading off to work.

Now I have a newsagent who drives past in his Volvo (!) every morning at about 8, well after I have left for work. He seems to take particular perverse delight in throwing the weekday papers from his car window and he aims not at my front door or pathway, but at the any bit of greenery left in my small plot. So far he has decapitated geraniums, crushed my lavender bush, sliced a succulent or ten and "pruned" my roses for me. Is it too much to ask that I can read the Age and keep my garden intact? Apparently it is. I have visiting him and asked him nicely to help me out and try to avoid this. He looked down at me over his bulbous nose, with a smug look on his swarthy red face and smirked "sure." Since then the garden destruction has really taken off and it now looks like a small cyclone has visited upon my long suffering plants.

On weekends the problem is different. As I am often staying with The Man I arrive home later in the day to find all the papers nicely lined up on my pathway in clear sight advertising to all and sundry that (a)I have spent the night elsewhere and am not home or (b) I am a can't get out of bed. Don't get me wrong – I don't much care if my neighbours think I am a slovenly slut but I don't really want to let all the local burglars know I'm out.

Apparently I can't change to another newsagent as Mr Volvo is the only person who covers my area. I fear my days of newsprint are behind me. I apologise to those newspaper journalists who fear that the move to online newspapers will cost them jobs. You can't say I didn't try.

Judging a book by its index

Recently whilst browsing in a bookstore, I had reason to think about the index reference checks I have adopted over the years.

These are those items that I will search in the index of a book that purports to be encyclopedic in its area to see whether the book is worth buying. If the index doesn't contain the particular reference I am looking for then I conclude the book is a slap-dash effort. If my reference is there I will investigate further the text further.

As far as I can recall, here all the index checkers I use:

• Any book listing significant Hollywood actors or actresses needs to have Rosalind Russell. After all she was nominated for four Academy Awards. I recently came across a book of "greatest stars of all time" that omitted her but had Kurt Russell! Likewise it should ideally also include Natalie Wood, Eve Arden, Irene Dunn, George Raft and James Cagney.
• Eleanor Roosevelt needs to be included in any list of great historical figures or great women.
• Any book on great musicians or jazz needs to include Django Reinhardt.
• A book listing great songs or standards should list The Lady is a Tramp.
• Any cocktail book needs to include recipes for a Negroni and for an original Daiquiri (ie with lime).
• A general cookbook must contain a recipe for french onion soup.
• Any list of significant historical events should include Hearst's alleged role in blowing up The Maine in Havana Harbour in 1898 and starting the Spanish-American war. As a fairly significant event in terms of press manipulation this one needs some commentary.
• A book on great cities and travel experiences should list Melbourne.
• A book of great quotes needs to include both Dolly Parton and Nelson Mandela.
• A book of great speeches needs to includes Ted Kennedy's speech at the 1980 Democratic National Convention when he withdrew from the nomination for President. Even better if it contains Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman" speech from 1851.
• Depending on the context I will check books on films for one or more of the following: The Women, Spellbound (the 1947 version), His Girl Friday, Barefoot in the Park, The Thin Man, Little Caesar, The Maltese Falcon, The Magnificent Ambersons and The Awful Truth.
• A text on Australian history and events needs to record our (shameful) role in the 1975 invasion of East Timor.
• A book on great political leaders or Presidents better devote some time to Harry Truman.
• Gardening books need to explain how to care for gardenias when their leaves turn yellow (as mine do constantly).

I fear that this could be a Ms Batville only habit as it does smack a tad of Asperger's Syndrome. I think I need a catchier name than "index reference checks" for this but am running low on inspiration.

Stupid tips Part 1

I have a very small garden which over the last few years I have to come to love. I potter about and lose all track of time. I also have a pair of green and pink check gumboots which I adore so will welcome any excuse to wear them. At the end of a hard afternoon in the garden I can sit in my gumboots, downing a restorative cocktail and I don't have a care in the world.

The most frustrating thing about gardening is that it usually looks ragged and half-eaten due to a never-ending plague of snails. I've tried leaving out beer which is supposed to encourage them to some sort of drunken suicide but have never found this to work. I also realised once that this technique has too many parallels with young men and their first cars so it makes me uneasy (I know - possibly an odd reaction). So instead I bait them and ever so often I go on a rampage, hunt them out and crush them to death. I can pretend they are some of the arrogant idiots I occasionally have to work with. Even more satisfying is to apply salt to them and watch them foam up and die but this takes planning (after all who walks around with salt on them). I was reading a gardening book recently that suggested this was a cruel practice and a more humane way to dispose of snails was to put them in a plastic bag and then into the freezer so they could "fall asleep gently". WHAT? They are snails not endangered cute baby seals. As my dear old Grandad would say "What a load of rot!"

I am obviously not a very humane gardener. I will however continue on my search for appropriate and effective snail eradication techniques.