Home-baked Theories Put Summer Heat To Good Use
Sydney Morning Herald
Tuesday January 3, 2006
I'M PROUD to say I've got the hottest wheels on the street this summer - my car's air-conditioning is broken. I've dubbed it the car sauna - maybe I can get my innovative machine on ABC TV's The New Inventors. I can imagine being asked how I came to invent such a product and then my reply would reveal my status as a new Einstein: "I drove it till it came off warranty, then it broke."
The blistering heat annoyed me at first but now I just throw on some oven mitts and a towel, drive away and lose kilos while I do kilometres. I used to be so obese my picture would fall off the wall. Thanks to my motorised weight-loss regime I can now fall down a crack in the footpath.Unfortunately, my apartment doesn't have air-conditioning either. But it does have a fan. If my car is a sauna, my apartment is the fan-forced oven that ensures I cook evenly. Dinners are a cinch. I just put a tray of vegies and a roast on the couch next to me for a couple of hours and voila - baked dinner is served.To be honest, the summer's heat is starting to get to me. Trips to the local pool have become a tricky affair due to the influx of crowds who just spend hours in there staying cool. Still their arrival leaves me with some big unanswered questions. For instance, how come nobody ever gets out, like me, to go to the toilet? Summer also seems to be the official season of dull sports. Surely cricket is dull, which explains why the bowler and fielders get so rabidly excited when somebody gets out, because something actually happens to replace the monotony of standing around in ridiculously hot clothes all day. HOWZAAAAT?To this end, I'd have to ask Cricket Australia if they've ever heard of putting the team in something outrageous for a game played in an Aussie summer - like shorts, creamy white stubbies. Perhaps to commemorate (cash in on) this historic moment, they could do a limited collector's edition run of 100,000 or so framed cricket shorts signed by the whole team for a mere $1995 plus postage and handling. And I know this is sacrilege but how about giving our Test players' holy grail, the crusty old daggy green, the heave-ho? Why not get a new line of sun visors instead, preferably with a flap at the back? For that matter, does it have to stay such a goofy green? How about the baggy beige to complement the stubbies? I know it's a break with tradition, it's the gentleman's game and all, but it needs to be pointed out that dressing in period costume (the only things missing are cravats and waxed moustaches) doth not a gentleman make.Then there's the biggest fashion victim on the field - the umpire. There they stand in black pants, sandshoes, a white shirt, tie and, to top off this mixture of authoritarianism and sport, a Panama hat. Does mummy dress these guys? Maybe they have a silly dress code so as not to embarrass the players.But that's enough hot air from me. I'm going to stick my head in the freezer and chill out.Readers are invited to apply wit to anything that makes their blood boil. Send 600 words, with day and evening phone numbers, to heckler@smh.com.au. Submissions may be edited and published on the internet.
© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald