The Best Biscuits

 I saw something on social media today - this bloke, who's platform is him ranting,"I BELIEVE THIS AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME CHANGE MY MIND". He's pretty funny. He often does suburb reviews. 

Today, he was pontificating about biscuits. And the worst biscuits.

Ah, found it on Youtube. 

And see, I don't agree with him on some of his list. 

Sure, Marie biscuits are only there for making pie crusts, and even then, I prefer to use Nice biscuits. 

It's a fair call in regard to the ginger nuts. They are only good after they've been dunked in tea or coffee for a few minutes, save you crack a tooth. 

The only good ANZAC biscuits are home made. I had a colleague in Darwin who made the absolute best ANZACs - and I refuse to have them when they have been bought from a store. 

Kingstons are making a resurgence, particularly after the viral Kingston Peach crumble recipe has been doing the rounds. 

And I agree with what he says about the Orange Cremes. They really are the Turkish Delight of the Assorted Creams pack.  (Says she who loves Turkish Delight - often have one in the fridge.)

But he can leave the Chocolate Digestives alone. For me, they're a throwback to England - and they provide heaps of roughage, so you don't need to take Metamucil. 

And he does have a point with the Hundreds and Thousands biscuits - they're just badly produced fairy bread. But they still have Tic Tocs! I used to love licking off the icing as a kid. 

We also deviate on the Lemon Crisp. They're my absolute favourite. They don't taste like multi-purpose cleaner. I don't buy them, because I inhale them. I love the touch of salt on the surface - it's like eating a Margarita. And they aren't too sweet. 

Of the Arnott's stable of biscuits, I also adore Venetians. The currants and the white icing. They're thin and crispy. Love them. I've introduced many friends to these. 

I'm also amazed that he didn't bring up Iced VoVos - as they are nowhere near as good as they were when we were kids. Now, they have next to no toppings. The marshmallow used to be soft and fluffy. Not any more. 

On my worst list you find the following: 

• Marie (cardboard substitutes)
• Milk Arrowroot (they dry your mouth out - may as well be eating a Sao)
• Chocolate Scotch Fingers (why ruin a good thing with chocolate?)
• Milk Chocolate Royals (Too sweet, too fussy)
• Orange Slice (as above, nobody likes them, they just fill in the assorted packet)
• Oh, and any fancy flavour of Tim Tam that deviates from the plain. We don't need Iced VoVo Tim Tams - just fix the original Iced VoVos for pity's sake. 

Oh, and one last favourite, the Arnott's YoYo. It's something that you tend only to find in Adelaide, city of all good parochial food stuffs. Best served with lashings of butter while singing the YoYo song. 

You don't believe me? Just as the Nutbush can get any Australians in a room up on the dancefloor, the YoYos song will get anybody from Adelaide over the age of 45 singing a stupid advertisement from the 70s. 

I fear I may have some unpopular opinions here - but please, give the name of the person who loves Orange Cremes. They don't exist. 

Today's song:

Sharing and Chores

Two questions. 

Why does the cat demand I make the bed for him in the morning so that he can sleep on it? If it's not made by the time I start work, he's at me until I make it. Of course,. I make the bet most mornings as, like I was told at a child, what will the burglars think if I don't make it. (I can't be the only one told lies by my parents - like what will the doctors think if I get hit by a bus wearing dirty knickers, or how you'll get stuck with a nasty expression on your face if the wind changes... the list is endless.)

Regardless, this six-kilogram, lazy, fur-clad terrorist insists that HIS bed is made before he lies on it in the morning. 

Secondly, why does he demand that I share my sushi with him. It's only sushi that he will sit next to me and pull my hand, with a handroll, towards him with a paw. He likes the rice it seems. He really likes sushi. Go figure. 

His other big antisocial habit is wiping his bum on the mat outside the kitchen door. 

It gets washed regularly. Don't worry. 

Little cretin. It's good that he's cute.

Today's song: 

What to write?

Things you need to know:

1. I've been feeling off colour for a few days. I'm seeing the doctor tomorrow. It's low grade but annoying. This is not helping me write. 
2. I asked my writing First Monday's Writing Group what to write - and they said name the best young adult novels I've read and why. So here goes. 

• The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak - why - because who knew Death could be such a compelling narrator. (and yes, this is a Young Adult novel).
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, about a girl from the wrong part of town in a private school and how race affects everything. It's amazing. 
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. The first book in the series is a masterpiece.
• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green - two kids with cancer meet and fall in love. I bawled buckets over this one. 
• The His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman - amazing for its world building and an alternative Oxford. 
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky - a definitive 90s coming of age story. 
• And it pains me to put these on this list, but Craig Silvey's Jasper Jones and Honeybee are incredible, however, the actions of the author have had him cancelled. His works are wonderful. The authors actions are not. 

3.  I need to write to the real estate agent about the cockroaches. I don't like cockroaches - however, there appears to be an infestation in the ground floor flat in the block over from us (possible hoarder making life difficult.) I'm two floors up, I'm clean and I don't leave rubbish lying around. Everybody on the block is complaining about this. The girls who live about him can't use their kitchen. Not happy. 

However, cockroaches are better than huntsman spiders and the cat enjoys killing them. 

4.  I've been enjoying the second series of The Gentlemen - but it's got very dark. Eddie has got very dark. 

5.  Coles Wensleydale with Cranberries is the bomb. 

6.  I need a bowl of ice cream now. And some panadol. 

7.  Writer's Group might just get me off my arse to tackle the next bit of this novel. 1997 - here we come. 

Today's song: 

Movie Review: Spa Weekend

 Movie Number 34 of 2026

The Movie: Spa Weekend

The Cinema: Hoyts Victoria Gardens

Runtime: One hour 37 minutes

Stars: 2.5

This is a bad movie. It's okay that it's a bad movie. It's not criminally bad. It's a film you can watch and know that it's bad and come away from it thinking, yeah, there were some mildly entertaining bits to it, but that's it. It's not Eyes Wide Shut bad (pretentious overhyped Kubrick). It's not The Room bad (So bad it has a cult following....  YOU ARE TEARING ME APART, LISA!). It's not Terrence Mallick's Tree of Life bad (Subjectively, I found it complete wank). It's not Cats bad (where to enjoy it, you're probably better off stoned.)

Spa Weekend has done a disservice cinema by having a pretty good cast and giving them a particularly awful script. 

On their own, Anna Faris (who appears to have gone a bit overboard with the botox) Leslie Mann, Michelle Buteau and Isla Fisher are all pretty decent comic actors. They have tried to make the best of the script, but with little success. 

Jane (Mann), an overworked, late forty-something lawyer and single mum has absolutely no time for herself, caring for teenage kids and an aging father. Coco (Buteau) had always been the loud, angry friend, but has become even more so since her divorce. Sophie (Faris) is an overworked personal assistant come nanny to a super-rich guy). The three of them, needing a break, take themselves off for a spa weekend, making the conscious decision to not invite the fourth in their group, Mel (Fisher). Mel is a trainwreck of a chaos agent. Read she has fewer boundaries than a country football field and absolutely no filter. 

Of course, Sophie backhandedly invites Mel along and their plans for a quiet weekend go out the window. Jane discovers a cute yoga instructor. Coco has a sort of reconciliation with her ex. Sophie grows a spine, and Mel... yeah, well Mel. 

There is a lot of rather dodgy over-acting on top of the horrendous script.

On the plus side, the spa was filmed at the Sheraton on the Gold Coast, and the film used a lot of Australian actors as their filler cast. 

However, I'm not going to forgive the script. Written and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, who have written such films as Bad Moms and The Hangover, this is just more of the same with peri-menopausal women. It has the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and the plot goes from situation to situation like a drunk toddler. 

I wonder what could have been done if women had written the script. 

This is slated as Bridesmaids with middle-aged women. It's not. Unsurprisingly, Bridesmaids, still one of the funniest women's comedies about, was written by women.

It's not that hard. 

Don't bother with this - there's not much point other than it is pretty to look at. This does not redeem it in the slightest. 

Today's song: 

Sunday Stealing is Artificial

It's Saturday afternoon. My evening plans have fallen through and I'm having a lazy day. 

It's wonderful. 

So here are this week's questions. It appears there's a public holiday over in America. I can't work out how America has so many public holidays. I'm told it's Labour Day. This is the day after which you're not supposed to where white. 

Talking of silly public holidays, we get a Friday off in a few weeks for a football game the following day. 

Questions, as always, come from Sunday Stealing.

1) What’s something you want to do before summer slips away?

Umm, it's Winter over here, and we're going into Spring. Winter is my second favourite season after Autumn (Fall). I'm just going to enjoy wearing boots for the next little while. After October, it's back to runners, pumps and court shoes for work. 

2) What book are you currently reading?

After slogging through Meg Mason's Sophie, Standing There, which did get better in the second half, but still, it was hard work, I'm now reading Madeline Cash's Lost Lambs, which is laugh out loud funny in places. 

3) What have you been listening to?

I'm an audiobook reader. Currently, I'm listening to Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, which is not the strongest of Austen's novels. I finished Elif Shafak's There are Rivers in the Sky earlier in the week - which is an extraordinary novel. 

4) What shows or movies have you been watching?

On the big screen, I've seen Tony and & Sons. One was about Anthony Bourdain's early life, the other and English film and family drama. Both were good. 

On television, I've been loving the weekly drops of the new season of Ted Lasso. I'm currently watching the second season of The Gentleman - I have a little thing for Theo James. 

Today's song:

Theatre Review: The Jungle and The Sea

The Production: The Jungle and the Sea by S. Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack

The Company: Melbourne Theatre Company

Runtime: Two hours 50 minutes (with two intervals)

Until: 15 September

Stars: 4.5

I needed to take a night before writing this review. 

A play that's three hours long about a family caught in the Sri Lankan civil war over a generation. A striped backstage containing a large turntable and a wall pock-marked with bullets and two traditional musicians on the stage and a cast moistly unknown to Australian audiences take us through the harrowing journey of a family as they negotiate the horrors of a pointless and long running civil war. 

I'm the first to admit that I know very little of the recent history of Sri Lanka, other than friends have emigrated to safety over the last century and that the situation was horrid. Violent, bloody and long lasting impacting a huge part of the population all for the want of power. 

This play was first performed at the Belvoir Street Theatre in Sydney

The Jungle and the Sea shows a family coming to terms with all of this. Amma (Anandavalli) is the matriarch over four children. A Hindu married to Sivapalan (Prakash Belawadi) and elder of his church, the pair try to keep the family, and the community safe. Of their children, Lakshmi (Emma Harvie) is a budding lawyer accepted to university in Sydney. Madhu (Nadie Kammallaweera) is a budding vet, Abi (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) is in love with her childhood sweetheart Himal (Rajan Velu) and son Ahilan (Shiv Palekar) appears to be the happy-go-lucky younger brother. When the war comes close to the village, the town mayor, gives assurances that the churches and temples will not be targeted in the bombing raids. People shelter in these places. People die. Amma blindfolds herself to the world until her family are reunited after Appa and Lashkmi flee to Australia and Ahilan is conscripted into the Tamil Tigers. From here, the family are set on a journey to keep together as well as keep their dignity and humanity. 

This is not an easy play to watch. However, it is powerful in its simplicity and drive. It's an incredibly human story - cutting, moving and deeply human. The themes of war, family, dignity and survival are all there, overlayed with grief and guilt. 

I will say not more. 

This is an incredibly work that begs to be seen. The MTC have added a couple of extra nights, due to the play's popularity.

This is a throught-provoking and incredibly moving play about a piece of history that few are aware of. 

(As a side note, if you're looking to read more, in fiction, about this, the works of Shankari Chandran, particularly her novel, Safe Haven and Song of the Sun God look at this. Her novel, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens won the Miles Franklin Prize and is also extraordinary. It also looks at the Sri Lankan diaspora in Australia. 

See this if you can. 

Today's song: 

Mrs Norris

I found out something today. Mrs Norris, Mr Filch's cat in the Harry Potter series is named after a character in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. 

Currently, I'm listening to the audiobook of Mansfield Park, delighting at Austen's witty banter and funny characters, so I was rather delighted to meet the original Mrs Norris - a complete pain in the butt and a bit of a thorn in the protagonist, Fanny Price's side. It makes sense. Mrs Norris in Harry Potter is just the same. 

Of course, Mansfield Park is one of the secondary Austens. Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Emma always ring out as the favourites. Mansfield Park sits with Northanger Abbey and Persuasion and the more underated novels (though I have a soft spot for Persuasion, and rather like the Netflix take on things - I know, an unpopular opinion.)

And if I was to name a cat after an Austen character, I'd probably go with something like Willoughby (horny scoundrel), Mary Bennet (misunderstood), Mr Collins (big, supercilious creep) or Brandon (Saviour)

Mind you, if I was to get another black cat, I'd call him Belly - short of Beelzebub. Beelzebub and Lucifer - what a pair. (Lucifer would eat a kitten - not going to do it.)

Anyway, that's what I discovered today.

I also wanted to get this out before my psychologist appointment, so I don't have to sit in front of the computer afterwards. 

My job is done. 

Today's song: