My Friend Peter

I spoke to my friend Peter last night and he was a little bit sad.

I want to write about him and I'm thinking about telling him about my blog.

In fact I'm thinking of coming out and telling all my friends about it.

But tonight I'm knackered so I'll do it tomorrow.

Change

Today I didn't turn cheese.

I thought for a while that all my hopes of a better life away from the tedium of cheese turning we're in vain as hoop washing was not initially quite as scintillating as it sounds.

But persistence paid off and after the initial shock of the new came the warming glow of satisfaction from doing something different for the first time in two weeks.

It was, as I had been warned, much more strenuous than turning but it proved to be less of a strain on my back which is good, very good in fact.

I was working with Daniel and we alternated between either putting the hoops into one end of the machine or taking them out of the other. I know it doesn't sound like much when you write down like that but believe me it was a welcome respite from turning, turning, turning.

Overheard II

At a little after six in the morning as the first cheeses are being dehooped by hand.

Barney - "Muzza?"

Muzza - "What?"

Barney - "If you were a 17th century Irish robber who would you be?"

Made me laugh.

Baby George

I was bent double over one of my 954 racks of cheese this morning, trying to think of something positive to write about in order to take my mind of the pain in my back.

Luckily it took no more than a few seconds as last night I watched a video sent to me by my sister of her new baby. I've seen photos attached to emails but they all look pretty similar to all the other baby photos that proud parents send out to their entire address list in the first flush of parenthood.

To see him on video was not in itself illuminating as he is only six weeks old and does little other than recline in a regal manner befitting his grand name but to see him with his family, being bathed, being cuddled, being cooed at gave him so much more context and brought him alive to me as a real person with whom I'll have a relationship before too long.

That's all.

Made me happier than I expected.

Otherwise everything's shit.

It's the Weekend!

All day.

How can I be expected to fit two days of weekend like activities involvling relaxation and inspiration into one day.

Especially when I need to go to bed early in order to be up before 5.00 to hitch my way to work.

And I'm strating to piss people off by being so negative.

And I've got to work for another 3 weeks before I've paid off the loan I had in order to get a visa which would allow me to work.

And I was laying in bed this morning thinking about cheese turning.

And I need to get a grip of myself.

Pizza

What a dreadful taste that whole experience left in my mouth.

Where else would a taste be left I wonder?

Papa what-his-name can forget any repeat business and as for the hat!

I read recently that men fart twice as often as women which in itself isn't a remarkable fact. I think it was something like 14 times a day for women and 28 for men although I couldn't be sure and in the interest of science have taken to counting my farts in an effort to establish whether I fart more than is normal and acceptable and whether this is caused by my diet or just good genes.

Yesterday I got up to 20 before I lost count and today I forgot after my first one of the day.

Not exactly Stephen Hawking I know.

Got paid today and (not) coincidentally had my best day. Even found the cheese turning bearable today which is fortunate as I was doing it all day. My co-workers have been revealing the tried and trusted cheese turning secrets which have proved to be pretty succesful in helping me to speed up and keep my spirits elevated.

It's not much I know but I'm grateful for the respite from self pity as that wasn't getting me anywhere.

Tonight I dine on steak to celebrate (and to hopefully redress some of the cheese - beef imbalance).

The First Time

This is the first time I've thought about writing a blog and then sat here looking into space, exhaling loudly and rubbing my chin in a ponderous manner.

Does this suggest that I'm done with this thing?

Has my brain turned to cheese after too many hours turning, turning and turning cheese?

Am I feeling sorry for myself and proving to the world what a pathetic character I am?

I've been meaning for a while to introduce you to my partner. Here name is Peta and she's gone to Melbourne to get her hair-cut.

That's it for now, further information will be released on a strict need to know basis.

I thought I had dinner sorted by cleverly saving the leftovers of last nights noodle triumph.

Then I remembered we don't have a microwave.

The shops all shut at 6.00 so I'm half an hour late.

Hey wait a minute!

Didn't someone with foresight and great self knowledge but a frozen pizza at the weekend?

Papa Guiseppi, you are the man, not only have you allowed me to eat a filling and nutritious meal but you have also provided me with a cut-out-and-keep chefs hat. "To make my hat simply cut around the dotted line and run strings through the holes at the bottom. Tie the string behind your head and hey presto...YOU'RE THE PAPA!"

If his pizza's are anything like his hats I'm in for quite a night. You'll have to excuse me while I return said masterpiece to the freezer as the Papa say's it's best cooked from frozen and I've yet to have my bath.

Oooh look Papa, there's a beer in the fridge. That's just asking for trouble.

well I do feel better already.

Pizza and beer, the salve for everyday maladies.

I may be thousands of miles from home, my relationship may be in tatters, I may be working at a cheese factory and it may be raining and cold but with Guiseppi by my side, a watery beer in my hand and the prospect of a languish in the bath while reading a lame excuse for a newspaper I can conquer the world. I will save our relationship, I will turn cheese, the sun will come out, I'll get used to this beer if I have another one - soon - in the bath maybe.

The Sunday Night Feeling

First time for a while I've had that fear and dread at the end of the weekend.

Problem is it's only Saturday.

I've got to start work at 6.00 on a Sunday morning.

Bob Geldof

Overheard in the canteen -

Muzza - That Bob Geldofs daughter's fit.

Daniel - Who's Bob Geldof?

Muzza - He was in that band, U2 wasn't it?

Me - No, it was the Boomtown Rats.

Daniel - Never heard of them.

Muzza - You know that bird Paula Yates?

Daniel - Nah.

Muzza - She was married to Michael Hutchence.

Daniel - I've heard of him, who is he?

2.

Cameron - Are you going to see Starsky and Hutch on Saturday?

Spike - Is it on?

Cameron - Yeah, at the town hall.

Spike - Is it a cartoon or something?

Cameron - It's an old skool cop show.

Ira - They used to drive a red car or something.


Are they just doing this to me to make me feel older and more depressed?

Is it not enough that I'm the new boy among a largely young male workforce?

They have their lives ahead of them, mine is largely spent and still they taunt me.

Loading

Here's what I did this afternoon.

Load hoop.

Load hoop.

Load hoop.

Load hoop.

Load hoop.

Load hoop.

Load hoop.

Load hoop.

Load hoop.

Load hoop.

Push base to new position.

Spray base.

Load hoop.

Load hoop.

Load hoop.

Load hoop.

Load hoop.

Return to base and load onto runners.

Press button.

Collect new hoops.

(Repeat roughly 40 times until tearful)

Hoop Washing

In my last post I made a dreadful faux pas for which I must apologise.

It has been brought to my attention that in the 5th paragraph I referred to a cheese "mould" in respect of a plastic mould in which the curd is moulded overnight into the finely moulded and easily recognisable circular shape found in cheese shops and all good retailers.

However, it appears that in the cheese making world the term 'mould' has a rather different and fundamentally important meaning so to avoid confusion the mould is actually referred to as a hoop.

I would like to take this opportunity to apologise for any embarrassment I may have caused the cheese making fraternity and can only claim in mitigation that I am new to this brotherhood and will strive to bring no further shame on my employers.

The error was highlighted when next weeks rota was issued and I noticed that this week I have been cutting and loading whereas next week I will be turning and hoop washing. Hitherto I had thought of a hoop as a euphemism for the anus and I will do my very best to rid my mind of such contaminants.

For those of you who are ill informed concerning the subject of cheese I will endeavour to bring you closer to this wonderful world over the coming weeks.

Perhaps this could culminate in a small quiz after which a certificate could be issued to those attaining respectable scores.

Who Cut The Cheese?

I did!

Roughly 700 of them to be imprecise.

Didn't much care for it as a job and am thinking of starting a campaign against selling / buying half moon cheeses. If you like it why not buy a whole one and share it with a friend.

I'm not talking about the big 2 kilo monsters, just 600 measly grammes.

My shift starts at 6.00 am which is when the cheeses put in the mould on the previous day have set and are ready to be placed on racks for some process shoruded in mystery but which I believe involves salt.

I spent the post-lunch shift loading the moulds to a conveyor belt, roughly 10,000 cheese are made on my shift, I don't play ahuge part in this but I do play an integral part which is what job satisfaction is all about.

The main problem I have is not being able to fart in the factory. Apparently it's as good as airbourne excrement so one has to hold it in until the next 2 hourly fart break comes around. I'm not very good at this and tend to suffer from stomach pains as a consequence.

Perhaps I fart more than the average person as I don't notice anyone else making smells or looking uncomfortably inflated. Men fart almost twice as often as women and the factory is largely populated by men but perhaps they have trained their bowels to expel air only at break time.

But it doesn't smell in the canteen either?

Perhaps I'm onto something regarding smelly cheese. It seems like too much of a coincidence otherwise.

I'm working Sunday too.

At 6.00am.

Blessed Are The Cheesemakers

First day at the cheese factory today and I hardly know where to start. There was so much fun to be had and too many tales to tell so I'll avoid them all and focus on the DRAMA of the weekend which involved me looking after our neighbours dog for a week while they holidayed in Melbourne.

They left on Saturday and Molly was run over on Sunday. I don't wish to shirk the responsibility inherent in dog-minding but I was not driving the car and was not officially in control of the dog at the time of the said knocking-over.

I had ventured to the shops in order to purchase materials with which to make breakfast: bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes (we already had a full complement of eggs at our disposal and had no need for any additional supplies).

I was approaching town on foot when Molly arrived without a lead or a care in the world. I removed my belt and tied her up outside the post office to prevent her from intuding on the supermarket and causing a bit of a to do.

However, upon leaving the shop I set her free, assuming that as I did not bring her town I was not responsible for her actions and as she had proved herself capable of reaching town without mishap then presemueably she was capable of returning in a similar fashion.

I was wrong.

She heard a dog bark.

Didn't see the car.

I saw it.

I shouted.

She heeded me not.

She was knocked down.

She's not dead.

It had to be a major news event to knock cheese off the agenda and indeed it was.

More cheese new tomorrow...beeep...beep...beep...

That It Should Come To This

This was the title of the post I tried to write after my induction at the cheese factory yesterday. I was feeling very sorry for myself after a morning of mind numbing health and safety videos followed by infantile quizzes.

I didn't really feel optimistic about my ability to work there while managing to simultaneously preserve my mental health.

I didn't write anything as I wasn't inspired to submit a self pitying rant when things could obviously be a great deal worse.

Thiis morning I'm off to work at the water factory which is a far more attractive proposition (although not exactly stimulating or challenging) so I thought I'd write an optimistic suymmary of yesterday's activities.

Needless to say as soon as I logged on I learned what had happened overnight in North Ossetia and feet even more self obsessed.

Last night we went around to our neighbours to watch the first preliminary AFL final featuring St Kilda and the Brisbane Lions. There was a news break at half time and I was dissapointed to see the stand off in Russia had fallen from the news agenda and had been replaced by what seemed to me to be mindless, parochial, local news stories.

I mentioned this and everyone agreed that the stuation in Russia was more important than anything on the news but it made me think about why it's important. Why should people in a remote Australian community care about what happens to a couple of hundred Russian schoolchildren?

No matter how many deaths occur the only impact it will have is via newspaper reports and pictures of the bloodied bodies of children carried in arm by rescue workers splashed momentarily on the TV news.

Would the people of North Ossetia care about a similar event on this island? Would the people of this island expect the world to take notice of hundreds of their children being held captive and murdered? Is the news coverage merely sensationalist story telling or does it serve a greater purpose?

Coincidentally one of the stories on last nights news-lite concerened a video of Martin Bryant shooting dead tens of Tasmanians during the Port Arthur Massacre. I'm know that event was given a great deal of coverage in the UK and probably around the world but I'm not sure whether the people of Tasmania would have wanted that any more than they would want to hear about the tragic deaths of Russian schoolchildren.

Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

In darker moments such as these I turn to the words of Brillat-Savarin for comfort. He was born in France on April 1st 1755 (which is exactly 249 years before I arrived on this island) and has been referred to as the "greatest gastronome the world has ever known."

I prefer to think of him as one of the worlds foremost motivational speakers for the brotherhood of cheese workers, a group whose number it appears I am about to join.

Tomorrow I have been invited to make my way to the cheese factory where I will don the ancient costume of the cheese worker before watching a health and safety video.

This is but the start of my induction, revealing more would be most improper and could lead to fatal repercussions. Who can forget the case of Dave Ostrander who allegedly fell on a cheese and pineapple hedgehog at the launch party of his notorious book, 'Cheese Secrets'?

I will not be making the same mistake but I hope that relative anonymity and a certain delicacy may allow me to hint at the splendours that await me at 8.00am tomorrow.

Let me end with the inspirational words of Brillat-Savarin, "A dinner which ends without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye."

Carnage

DDA (Daily Dead Animals) = ?

Due to circumstances beyond my control I am unable to give an accurate assessment of the number of dead animals I've seen in the last 24 hours.

If a rough figure will suffice then I'm probably in a position to provide it although I feel that recently received correspondence would suggest that 'rough' is less than is expected from such an otherwise exact and scientific study of life.

I spotted one dead wallaby by the side of the road yesterday afternoon, I also spotted a black fish washed up on the shore (I'm going to allow this one as although it only had a diameter of about 6cms it was in excess of a meter in length and therefore qualifies as noteworthy over and above insects and other very small, expendable creatures like plankton and budgerigars.

Part of me would like to include the squashed worm handed to me by my niece(ish) this morning as she clearly found it to be far from expendable but rules are rules so that sad death will be yet another futile annelidian gesture.

As you can tell my DDA count is a serious business so why, I hear you ask, is there such confusion over today's total?

Regrettably I'm unable to provide a pictorial explanation for my shortcomings as I don't own a digital camera and mere words will fail to do justice to the sight which greeted me outside the Co-Op as I popped in to buy an ice lolly for my niece(ish).

There was a blue open back van (I believe they are called Utes in Australia which is short for utility, utilitarianism or utopian) which was loaded with the split and bloody carcasses of several kangaroos.

I would have liked to have the time at my disposal to rebuild them in order to perform a reliable count for today but I had a dog in one hand and a niece(ish) in the other and couldn't quite work out the logistics.

In the name of science I'll call it three dissected roos making a grand total for the day of 5.

Freak!

Stick out do they?

I'll give her stick out next time I see her (which judging by these articles is when I attend the first of my three free physio sessions kindly donated by the benelovant cheese factory).

Why would sticky-outie shoulder blades make me feel depressed?

Maybe it's the weather?

It's raining again.

And the washing's out.


Or maybe it's the football results?

One win, one loss and two draws.

But I resolved not to let that affect my mental well being so that can't be it.

Full moon anyone?

Winged Scapula

Despite my improved mood of late I couldn’t help a momentary slump yesterday afternoon following my cheese medical.

I’m quite impressed that they go to all the trouble of checking out their prospective employees in order to assess their suitability for the work (or more pertinently to minimise the risk of litigation) but I couldn’t help feeling like the proverbial piece of meat, the proverbial small cog in the big wheel of industry and the proverbial fish out of water.

It’s all very well being resolute in the pursuit of fiscal reward but I don’t really want to work in a factory, I’m pretty sure I’ll hate it and it will make me depressed. I’ve grown to like doing chores around the house, sitting at my laptop, walking the dogs, intermittent child minding and food shopping, I’m pretty sure I won’t like cheese turning.

Cheese turning is apparently what tall people end up doing. I can’t explain it to you just yet but I’m sure that a full and detailed description of why cheese turners being tall is as logical as chimney sweeps being small and Father Christmas’ being fat will be posted here once I’m in the know.

It was only a temporary depression. I had the walk back to think my way out of it and last night I spoke to some friends back home and reminded myself that my wages will not only be set against my ever increasing debt but will also be used to visit said friends at the end of the year. Nearly September now…home at the end of December…15 weeks…not that likely to top myself am I?

Anyway, the physiotherapist who prodded me and ummed and arghed said that I had Winged Scapula. Something to do with my shoulder-blades which I’ll look up later in case it’s anything terminal (which might get me out of having to turn cheese).