One of the things I’ve noticed about opening a business in the country is how often the word “support” crops up. “I hope people support you!” locals say effusively. And recently, when I dropped in on an acquaintance who’d opened a beauty salon/boutique she said, “I just hope people support me. I’ve supported enough of them over the years.” And it occurred to me that the idea of support is very valid. I don’t think we should live in a dog-eat-dog world. I don’t think we should always be chasing cheapness. Frugality may seem like a virtue, but in the end it leads to dead streets, dead towns, and a loss of power and choice for us all  So with this in mind, I’ve decided to stop shopping at Coles and Safeway/Woolworths, and to switch to Jonesy’s milk. I don’t want to be party to the creation of a world in which everything is controlled by some faraway corporate superpower; and quite frankly I’m tired of pouring so much brain power into comparing the prices of packets of biscuits.     

Something seems to have happened to my short-term memory. Whenever I plan to cook  beans, for instance, I can never – ever – for the life of me, remember to soak them in the morning so that I can cook them that night. So I’ve taken to placing packets of dried beans across the slots of the toaster so I’ll be reminded. And I can never – ever – for the life of me, remember to take the things I’ll need for the day with me when I leave the house. So I’ve started putting these things - a library book, say, or a particular tool – on the passenger seat of my car as soon as I think of it. And I write absolutely everything I need to know in my diary, only to forget to look in my diary on a daily basis. So my house is full of booby traps, my car is full of crap, and my diary is full of information that gets written but not read. But it isn’t just me. An acquaintance recently promised to visit my shop in Macedon, but she didn’t show. The next time I saw her she told me she’d made it as far as Woodend, where she went to the bank and then turned around and went home, completely forgetting that the reason she was in Woodend in the first place was that she was en route to see me.      

Another favourite column has recently bitten the dust. No surprises there. The unfortunate reality is that many pages of the newspaper are no longer for me. I understand that. Newspapers have to reinvent themselves; to continuously replace old readers with new readers. I became an avid newspaper reader in my twenties, and newspapers have to continue to appeal to a twentysomething audience in order to survive. I understand that. I don't like it, but I understand it. And I continue to read the newspaper because it is an old friend. A somewhat cold and disinterested old friend these days, but there it is. Thank God, then, for the sports pages (in Melbourne, anyway), one of the last remaining places where a long-standing columnist doesn't have to watch his back.        

When I was setting up my shop, I was a mess. My boyfriend had quit his job, I'd signed a commercial lease and outlaid thousands of dollars on stock and equipment, and I worried I was sending the whole family to the poorhouse for nothing more than a selfish dream. My boyfriend's response was, "We won't be going to the poorhouse this month, or next month, or the month after that; so just enjoy the process." Well, he has since decided not to seek out a new job immediately but to spend a month at home first, working on his own projects and looking after the children. Sometimes, at the end of the day, he frets that he hasn't been productive enough; so now it's my turn to say, "You've decided to take a month off work to do your own thing, we won't be going to the poorhouse any time soon, just enjoy the process."  

I know that the chances are that I will never win the lottery. But I have a special set of numbers, and sometimes, when I'm feeling desperate, I'm tempted to buy a ticket. Recently, however, I discovered a way to avoid this temptation. Whenever I walk into a Tattslotto outlet with the intention of buying a ticket, I pick up a results slip from the previous week's draw instead. As I walk away from the outlet I look at the results slip, and sure enough, my "special" numbers are never on it.  

In The Dark Knight, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character says of the Moscow Ballet, “Harvey’s taking me next week.” In Joanna Trollope’s latest novel Daughters-in-law there is the line, “Luke took Charlotte to Venice for their honeymoon.” Honestly, do men really have to be taking women places in this day and age? Don’t couples just do stuff together?

The Chinese may not be the best recyclers, but like poor people everywhere, they are natural re-users. If this scene were taken from an Australian kindergarten, you can bet the stepping-stones would be brightly-coloured, purpose-built, Australian Standard-ticked, Occupational Health and Safety-approved pieces of moulded plastic. And made in China, of course. For the world. A world which, incidentally, is not averse to tut-tutting China for its environmental track record whilst placing orders for as much plastic fantastic as will fit into a shipping container. 

Photo by Sanghee Lui, via The Age