Various thoughts

I'm still pretty occupied with this and that, but a few more random observations:

*  Judith Sloan looked like she ate a lemon before she came on last night's Q&A.  But I fell asleep during it and missed nearly all of her bon mots.   Did she mention that cyclone warnings are a crock, for example?

*  smoked mussels on a cracker with a slice of ripe avocado is a very nice combination.  (Buy them from Aldi and they are from Europe, not some Chinese polluted pond.)

*   I think I am pretty much over Wes Anderson before I even got into him.  I saw The Grand Budapest Hotel on Saturday night, and still think the best thing of his I have seen is Fantastic Mr Fox.  I mean, the characters  in that actually felt more real than most of the human characters in his other movies.   I have not seen his earlier works, which are well regarded, but I do not understand the critical enthusiasm for the latest movie.  The audience did not seem to find it all that funny either.  (The guy next to me actually seemed to be sighing in disappointment from about the middle onwards.)   Sure, it looks charming, but I need a bit more than that.

* Nicholas Gruen's post about his father's role in aboriginal pay reform in the 1960's is unusually interesting (see the comments following as well.)

*  Has anyone got any suggestion as to how to deal with men or women who work in physical  jobs whose bodies may not last until retirement at 70?   My father was a perfect example - a bricklayer for nearly all his life, who paid off the house but had no retirement savings whatsoever.   It would have been cruel watching him try to continue working at that job til the age of 70.