I live in a block of flats, which is pretty normal around here. It's actually a converted hotel. When I first lived in St Kilda it was a run down old boarding house, then it became a squat full of drug dealers and takers. Then it was added to and converted to flats. So I've contributed to the gentrification of St Kilda just by living here I guess.

But next door is a hostel run by a community housing society. and in the hostel there was a lady whom I never saw, but I heard her frequently. She had the habit of, occasionally, conducting long, bitter and very loud arguments with someone who was not there. This didn't happen every day, or even every week. Maybe once a month, sometimes less often. It was annoying, but that's all. she had been there longer than I've lived in the flats, so at least five years.

Then I heard that other residents in my flats had taken up a petition to have
Robin removed from the hostel. I rang the housing society and was told yes, that had happened. Furthermore, they had enlisted the aid of councillors and members of parliament who had added their voices to the demands that Robin must go. I said that that was not my opinion at all, but it was obvious that I was outnumbered. I heard last week that Robin has gone. Where? I don't know. I asked the petition signers. They don't know either, and they don't care, just so long as their delicate ears are no longer assailed by her despair and distress at the way life has dealt with her. They were amazed at my suggestion that Robin too was entitled to her home. But, they said, she was crazy.

I never know when to keep my mouth shut, so I suggested to these ladies that anybody who chooses to live in St Kilda should be aware that there are drug addicts, street kids, prostitutes and a variety of other troubled and damaged people on the streets. So why do they come? Do they not know this? One explained. "But," she said, "this is the most expensive part of St Kilda." No, actually, it's not. But the connection eludes me anyway.

Wherever you are Robin, I hope your neighbours are kinder than the ones you had here.

What a woman!

This morning I was walking along Fitzroy Street when I saw Alannah Hill and her small son. Alannah was wearing a pink chiffon frock, a navy linen coat (you understand these are the descriptions of a person not very interested in clothes) black lace footless tights, red stilettos and flowers in her hair. She was fully made up, and carrying a large pink and black bag. Suddenly, her son decided to turn around and walk backwards, and Alannah joined him. Together, they walked solemnly along Fitzroy St, ignoring the debris of last night's clubbers (smashed eggs, vomit, old pizza boxes, broken glass), backwards. She is an inspiration to us all. The smashed eggs are there because it is a sport for carloads of young men from other places to come to St Kilda on Friday and Saturday nights, sometimes in stretch limos, and to drive slowly along shouting abuse at the locals and throwing raw eggs. They particularly target women whom they assume to be prostitutes. Charming.

Every time I open a magazine or newspaper lately I read about the obesity epidemic which has hit the western world, including its children The story seems to go like this:

We no longer exercise

We eat too much junk food - regularly mentioned are McDonalds, chocolates and chips

Added elements are that poor people are worse than rich people (poverty apparently equals stupidity and the poor are therefore too stupid to feed themselves or their children properly) and that this added fat is an incredible health risk, causing diabetes, heart disease and all sorts of other horrors.

I have issues with quite a lot of this. First, as a school teacher, I saw no evidence whatsoever that my students were fatter in 2006 than in 1976. There have always been a few fat kids, just as there have always been a few very skinny kids. I know, there are statistics, and statistics must be right. I just didn't see it, and I knew thousands of kids.

Second, I worked in both poor and rich schools, and saw no difference - in both, there were a few skinny kids, a few fat kids, most about average. There was one difference. To thank teachers, parents in working class areas, who are often migrants, would sent gifts - a bag of homegrown tomatoes or capsicums, a jar of home bottled tomato sauce - while in the richer schools, it was chocolates and bottles of wine that appeared in the last week.

Third, I reckon girls, at least, exercise more than they used to. They all seem to go to the gym, which my generation certainly didn't. To us, the gym was a place you went once a week to do a class in, essentially, flexibility.

A surprising number of teenagers are vegetarians. Many still have the basic diet of their parents home countries, whether it be Lebanon, Greece, Italy, India or another country. Many observe various food taboos - no pork, or beef, or alcohol. They do go to "Maccas", but not daily. I have on occasion found myself defending McDonalds against some the wilder beliefs students have about them - I won't tell you what they believe to be the ingredients of the burgers, or the milk shake type drinks (I forget what they are called.)

Teachers get to do supervise the canteen once a week or so. This is all part of what you studied 6 years to be qualified to do. You see what kids order for lunch. Now, our canteen didn't sell fried food, so popular items were a chicken schnitzel in a roll, sausages in rolls, pies, pasties, sandwiches, containers of soup, pasta or fried rice. A particular fad for a while was a bread roll filled with grated cheese and tomato sauce. Not fabulous food, but OK, I would have thought. Judging by the apple cores and banana peel strewn around the playground in the afternoons, there was a fair bit of fruit being consumed too.

I am pretty fat. I do not go to McDonalds (or get someone to pick it up for me). I have never eaten a single mouthful from KFC, Pizza Hut, Hungry Jacks or any similar establishment. I eat very little meat, and lots of fruit and vegetables. I don't eat chips, hot or in a packet (crisps). I don't drink lemonade or coke or beer. I have Vegemite on my toast, never jam. My eggs are poached, not fried. I do sometimes eat pasta and rice, but not once a week. Nevertheless I am fat. I don't know my BMI index, but I'm sure it's disastrous.

I don't have a car, so I walk a lot. As well as the necessary walking, I try to walk or swim for an hour a day.

Every weekday for about a thousand years I sat in the staffroom at recess and lunchtime and watched people consume Kit Kats, Coke, chocolate milk, pies with sauce, and other fat laden goodies. They were almost all thin. Some very thin. Some exercised, some didn't.

One teacher did weights at the gym, swam daily and rode a bike to and from school. She was fat.

I have a diet on which I can lose about four kilos a month. This is it:

Breakfast: 2 slices toast with ricotta cheese and sliced tomatoes

Lunch: small container of salad (tomato, lettuce, cucumber) with ONE of a boiled egg, a small tin of tuna, a slice of cheese, half a grilled chicken breast.

Dinner: steamed vegetables (not potatoes), half a chicken breast.

Drinks: tea, coffee, water

Extras: fruit

Good eh? Makes it hard to eat out of course, and it means preparing two meals, one for me one for the family, every night. And the longest I've managed to sustain it was for about a year, in which I lost 35 kilos.

Perhaps, being fat, I have grown too stupid to see an obvious pattern here. Perhaps my sample size was too small to draw conclusions from. And perhaps the pattern is more complex than we think, and it's just too easy to just blame the fat, especially if they are from a social group that won't hit back.

I'm going to have my lunch now. A cheese sandwich, if you want to know. And a cup of coffee.

Allotment News

Yesterday afternoon my dog Billy I went to my allotment. I harvested leeks, broccoli, peas, a huge cauliflower and lots of silverbeet. Then Graham, who has the allotment next to mine, told me that he was going to South America for four weeks, and I can have all his broadbeans when they are ready to pick. He also gave me a huge bunch of rhubard and a bunch of white daisies before he roared off on his Harley.

Billy checked out all the other allotments, chased all the birds away and found something disgusting to roll in.

We had poached rhubard with yoghurt for dinner, and I made soup from the leeks, some chicken stock I found in the refrigerator, and some of those little pasta that are shaped like rice. That's today's lunch.

Then I planted tomatoes, capsicums and lettuce, and we dragged our bag of produce home.

A Joyous Week

What a wonderful week it has been for we soured old feminists. First there was the sight of Steve Irwin's memorial service, complete with crocodiles and John Williamson. And was that a professional choir lined up in khaki shirts? They sounded suspiciously like it to me. The highlight of course was the horrid continuing exploitation of his daughter.
Then there was Peter Brock's state funeral, with men in mullets and holden t- shirts, some with attractively random teeth, expressing their love for Brocky, and his wife and mistress on the steps of St Pauls, separated by an apprehensive looking clergywoman. Running through the week there was the spectacle of the Armed Robbery Squad going about their business, with, yes! a token female among them. Every day the papers showed us a parade of the members looking like a poster for Pulp Fiction. I thought the casting a little stereotyped, actually.

And finally, the silver sparkles on the chocolate cupcake, Shelley Kovco displaying her large new tattoo of her beloved, smiling on her upper arm above his regimental badge. This was for some reason in much darker ink than his portrait, which seemed as though it should mean something.