Nelson

Jane's daughter, Jenni, and her husband Cedric have a cat named Nelson.   I can't find my notes - and I did make some - but I believe he is an Australian Mist;  They are bred from Burmese, Abyssinian and Australian Domestic Short-haired cats and are particularly suited to indoor life.  Being a house-only cat and thus virtually, if kindly, imprisoned, he is named after Nelson Mandela.



Jane came back early from Avoca do take up cat-sitting while Jenni and Cedric were away.    Also, to get some quiet time for herself after the stretch of busy-ness and stress of those weeks.

When Bill and I returned to Sydney a few days later, Nelson was still pining for mommy and daddy, though he did pose for photos and allow petting at times.





This will be the last post about Australia for a while. I think it's time to go home, don't you? But before we do, let me tell you about some new words I learned.

You didn't really want to do any ironing, did you?

Stickybeak: An inquisitive person; a Nosey Parker; The act or an instance of looking at or watching something, especially something which does not directly concern the one looking; to pry or to snoop. As in "Let's take a stickybeak at that house that's for sale."

Can't you see I'm busy topping up my stripes?

 Bagsy: declaring a first claim to something to which no individual has any clearly recognized right. As in, "I call bagsies." In American, one might say "I've got dibs." In fact there is a whole Wikipedia entry about the origin of the term 'dibs'. 

When is my Mommy coming to get me?

Bogan: Usually pejorative or self-deprecating, for an individual who is recognised to be from a lower-middle class background or someone whose limited education, speech, clothing, attitude and behaviour exemplifies such a background. I picked this up from Corinne Grant's book and she seemed to mainly refer to people's nerdy clothing style, basically meaning anyone British or Dutch. (She's a comedian). The Geordie word would be 'charver'. I've lost my American term.

Someone get this idiot dog off my back!

  Daggy / daggies: Uncool, unfashionable, but comfortably so. This is the term used to refer to shabby underwear in an advert for a feminine hygiene product. I remember the term from The Thornbirds, it being the result of diarrhea in sheep. Apparently short for daglock (I'm never going to look at dreadlocks the same again) and not to be confused with bogan.



Daddy plays rough, but I love it.

Budgie-smugglers: Bill dropped this one on me one day at the beach when he was making observations about age and choice of swimwear. He concluded that the youngsters preferred board shorts and the oldies liked budgie-smugglers. He tends to wear the loosed, lined swimming shorts.

 

You're not really taking a photo of my rabbit feet are you?

Isn't English an amazing language?