Many thanks to all who attended the recent pancake fest: Greybeard and his lovely wife, Mayhem, Monster Yuppy, Janet and Quokka. Judging by the speed and comprehensive way in which everyone’s breakfast was consumed we all enjoyed our pancakes. The coffee, however, was so monumentally, outstandingly, excruciatingly atrocious that it deserves special mention:
IF YOU GO TO THE PANCAKE MANOR, WHATEVER YOU DO DON’T ORDER THE COFFEE!
Unless, of course, you’re running low on chemical weapons and you need to stock up. In which case, go for your life – get a whole pot.
Fun in a box 
I think there’s a well out the back that taps into the Brisbane River. And its from this that they brew their evil concoction. Same colour, same smell, and in all likelihood, traces of the DDT that my grandfather used on his rosegarden in 1952.
But yes, most enjoyable, we must do this breakfast thing more often.
And as such, perhaps we should discuss the vices and virtues of various venues before making the important decision of Venue with Palatable Coffee.
Oh and ahoy Mayhem, if you are talking to Janet can you ask her if she remembers the name of that tour boat that could tell you the depths etc of the Brisbane River?
Bloke and I are looking for things to amuse nephew and niece when they come to visit for that week in October.
Am contemplating torturing them with Lone Pine. Nephew wants to work with animals and I feel its important for him to discover that Skippy Bites.
Lone Pine would be fabulous, Quokka. You haven’t lived until you’ve been sprinkled with koala wee, fresh from the source.
The Sciencentre at the Museum is worth a look, too, if they’ve got any scientific leanings. And I think Reverse Garbage at West End run crafty workshops with recyclables, too.
The coffee could have been worse. It could have been Riva instant. *shudder*
Thank God for yesterday! Today has been a total shitstorm. My boss has gone from amazing and supportive to strongly suggesting that I take six months unpaid leave. Not happy!
And he thinks you’d return after six months, after this suggestion?
I’m sorry Mayhem. I hope he was just having a cranky day and is back to being supportive tomorrow.
If it helps to distract you, Greybeard has photos of our pancake pigout up at his blog.
Ha, and today my gmail is working again, just like that.
So, Ms Mayhem, it is a day for miracles.
If your boss is freaking out, might be a good idea to pull him aside and ask him to outline his concerns and brainstorm some other solutions.
It may be that he doesn’t understand your treatment program. From the sounds of things its a short course as a ‘just in case’ measure and he may not understand that you should bounce back once its past.
Also, if the fatigue is becoming an issue for you, there are praccies like Janet Schloss who can whip up some tonics/nutrient combos that will help with that.
Still can’t believe Gmail is working after 3 weeks of goblin infestation. The Tech nerds must have responded to my request to fix the problem at their end. Miracles.
Mayhem, you could break both of his kneecaps, then “strongly suggest” he walk on his hands…. No? Fair enough. But seriously… Hopefully, he was just having a bad day and will snap out of it tomorrow. We all have bad days now and again.
Some tonics don’t react well with chemo. The right ones can help, but it’s hard to find a naturopath who knows what they’re doing. And the ones who DO know, charge a bomb. My favourite tonic is a liquid multivitamin called Hepasol. (available at most chemists). It really gives me a boost – unlike supermarket multivitamin capsules. They just give me wind.
Although that CAN be useful if I’m annoyed at the Boss. A couple of Cenovis once-daily’s, and he ends up sleeping with a peg on his nose. He he he he he!
Janet Schloss and David McLeod are Brisbane’s naturopathy/cancer specialists, Catty. Their practices revolve around cancer, they know their stuff and I wouldn’t see anyone else.
There are a lot of drugs used in chemo and as you said, you do see a lot of reactions, whether its deficiencies caused by the drugs or a clash due to drugs/herbs/nutrients being processed by the same pathways in the liver. I could go on but my brain might explode.
It is expensive but as you’re paying for their expertise and experience, if it was me I’d rather see someone that is the specialist in their field rather than go to someone who mostly treats period pain and hot flushes. Which is about 70% of what you treat in natural therapies.
Disclaimer: David is a friend and gave me a lot of useful advice when I had my tumour.
Second disclaimer:
If I had breast cancer, I’d see Janet. Its her thing.
Hmm, sounds perilously close to unfair dismissal to me, Mayhem. How the hell are you supposed to get by without six months pay? I’d threaten the mongrel with a thorough suing.
Sounds like good advice from Quokka on the tonic front, though.
Don’t let the bastard grind you down!
Good-oh, Quokka. My sister does the homeopathic treatments that replace chemo entirely. She refers people already doing chemo to an expert Brisbane naturopath – I wouldn’t be surprised if her naturopath experts are your friends, Quokka, as my sister is very fussy and notoriously hard to impress.
Meanwhile, Mayhem should try some of my ex-boyfriend revenge techniques on her boss. Unless you’re the one who empties the office mailbox, Mayhem.
Mailbox… hehehe.
Ah, a witch in the family, catty.
But can she turn you into a newt?
Mayhem, its hard to advise on limited information, but it may be worth giving him the benefit of the doubt.
I remember that when I was sporting 54 stitches in a highly visible part of my body and someone said ‘what’s that?’ and I said ‘Tumour’, lots assumed when I said the C word that I’d be dead within a year.
Trying to explain that they’d got it early and I had a good prognosis was like speaking to a block of wood. And then there were those who just didn’t get it when I outlined the risks of recurrence (pregnancy being a high risk factor for recurrence which is why they just said ‘Don’t get pregnant). When I tried to explain this to a cousin (pause to bear in mind that even the most functional of my family are somewhat empathy impaired ‘Oh, but that’s OK, if you die, we’ll look after it.’ Yeesh.
I find that the general public don’t know enough about cancer to know that there’s different stages and different prognoses.
Even if you think you’ve spelled it out, lots of them still don’t get it. All they’ve heard is ‘SCARY SCARY CANCER’ and the rest is white noise.
Sometimes you really have to spell it out for people and then get out the large stone mallet and a spike and beat the knowledge into their brains.
I found that a good way to figure out if they were confused was to say ‘OK, I’m not sure you understand what I’ve said to you so perhaps it would help if you tell me in your own words what you think is happening and what your expectations are for x and y.’
If you sit back, listen to them – and be prepared to keep a straight face when they come out with something so far out of left field that it must have landed from outer space and shat on a passing wombat – it can help to clarify what’s going through their heads.
It just seems odd that the boss has been supportive up until this point and then does a rapid u-turn. It could even be something else entirely unrelated, like he has some other issue and it’s not about you, Mayhem. Maybe he’s scared that your wig will blow off and get stuck in the air con vent and you’ll frighten the customers if you forget to colour in an eyebrow one day. People can get some strange ideas.
Anyway, hope your day worked out OK. Keep us posted.
Gosh the cross posting here can get confusing.
Now I’m wondering what it is you Evil People do with mail and trash. Or have I shared my Little Old Lady with Dog Terd story with you at some point and forgotten that already?
Re: nephew and niece, I think we might fork out for the Lone Pine Boat trip. On the way up the river I can point to the West End pontoon and offer up one of the many valuable cautionary tales provided in our fine city by our population of Irish Backpackers.
Children will be sleeping (or not) in that room which has closest proximity to The Green Menace.
I’m hoping the kids will keep them awake all night playing Left 4 Dead on the xbox. I’ll be at the other end of the house oblivious, so it won’t be for me to interfere with that little bit of retributive karma.
The boat trip does sound nice. Not something we could afford when other nephews and nieces were younger. I think I packed jam sandwiches to save money and caught the youngest niece eating the food we’d purchased to tempt skippy.
Skippy was far more interested in their raisins and jam sangas.
Niece is crafty and would like Reverse Garbage but one of my dearest friends has assured me that all those craft courses – and in particular the scrapbooking shops – are all fronts for amphetamine dealers. She says that this is obvious as there’s no way you could find enough women mad enough to fritter away their lives and their fortunes
on scrapbooking.
I’m sure she’s onto something, there.
I MADE A FKN MISTAKE!!!!!
When I came back to work after surgery, there was an email from our biggest client, asking us to forward a document to a fund manager. For who knows what reason I didn’t get it away for a few days. Wouldn’t have been an issue if the fund manager in question hadn’t promptly lost it.
On Sunday night, the boss received an email from the client noting that the fund manager has not acted on his instructions, and could we check it out please? The boss checked it out, and was told that a) they couldn’t find my email (we have records of the email and their acknowledgement), b) even if they could find the email the process take 5 weeks to complete, and it wouldn’t have been there in time to take effect this month anyway, and c) even though we faxed it again yesterday, we were still outside the time limit for the instruction to take effect NEXT month (by 1 day).
In his wisdom, the boss has decided that the Cancer has made me unreliable, and I am jeopardising his business so he would prefer I wasn’t there at all. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that a) if I’d known of the time constraints it’s likely I would have prioritised the communication, b) I walked back into a shitstorm of stuff that should have been done by my replacement while I was away, hadn’t, and needed to be RIGHT NOW! or c) I’m human, human’s make mistakes whether they have cancer or not!
He wants me to approach my parents about helping me out financially, like they could even afford to replace anywhere near the two thirds of my income I stand to lose by going on sickness benefits. When he asks me (and he will) if I have done that, I will let him know that if I have that particular conversation with my parents, my Mum will be on the phone to ACA before I’m halfway through.
The worst of it is, he knows I can’t afford to take unpaid leave, and he also knows that I know that the woman who will replace me is lazy and incompetent, and I will have to spend the NEXT 6 months cleaning up her mess. I’m not allowed to complain about the things she has stuffed up or simply hasn’t done when I’m out for Chemo, because she is the woman I took over from, has been with the business for over 20 years, since it started, and is therefore the only person besides myself who knows the job, even if she’s TOTALLY half-arsed about doing it.
And by the way, the process was complete within 24 hours of the Boss getting on the phone to the fund manage….
Mayhem, if you make a small error of judgement in prioritising, and it’s cancer that’s to blame, then it’s fair to assume:
*The half arsed replacement who stuffs everything up must have leprosy,
*The fund manager who ‘lost’ the email must have bubonic plague, &
*The boss who is too stupid to realise this must have erectile dysfunction.
Now that I have implanted that mental image, I dare you to look your boss in the eye without smirking.
Sounds like he’s just grumpy if he’s blaming you for
1. His failure to supervise the supply staff
2. Her willingness to put tasks off and leave you to pick up the slack
3. Failure of technology, when you’d done the task as asked, albeit a little late.
I think you just need to front him and say that you are willing to accept your share of responsibility for this fiasco but you can’t take responsibility for items 1 – 3.
It sounds to me like he’s just shitty after a rough week while the supply staff has been in there screwing up and he’s putting the blame on you. People displace their anger all the time.
If the supply staff is that much of an idiot, he must know this on some level. I’m guessing he just needs to work his way out of his bad mood. If he was serious about wanting you out of the office he’d be willing to dismiss you.
The Bloke went through a similar thing earlier in the year when the company he was with said that they could no longer afford to keep him on but if he was willing to accept half pay he could stay. he told them if they were having financial problems then it was up to them to dismiss him and pay him out in redundancy.
You need to tell your boss that if he truly believes that you’re incompetent then he needs to dismiss you so that you can claim social security.
I wouldn’t mention ACA, its only going to accelerate the conflict and add to his already bad mood.
I think if you stay calm, stick to your guns and say that you are only willing to accept your fair share of responsibility for the screw up, then sooner or later he’ll either shit or get off the pot.
If he keeps up the carping just tell him that if he wants to do the right thing by you he’ll dismiss you so that you can claim health benefits.
I doubt very much that he’s willing to do this so it might call his bluff and end the stand off.
Ah, bugger it. Find his home address, go there, and pee in his letterbox.
Then write rude words on the back window of his car with vaseline. He won’t see them straight away, but one good dust storm and EVERYONE will know he’s a bastard.
Oh, and make a point of slagging in his coffee cup every day. If you’re not snotty enough, just pee in it.
I don’t think I can add anything to the work of those two excellent strategists, Quokka and Catty.
Only to say, stay strong and I’m beaming love and support your way.
🙂
Yes, Mayhem. What Madam said. And remember – There is no problem so big that it can’t be fixed by peeing on it.
I’ve rethought this.
I think its worth asking the counselor at the hospital if there’s some way you can take four weeks off and get social security benefits.
A month with the supply staff running the place should be what’s needed to show your boss what’s what. And then its his fault because it was his idea.
BTW, I wouldn’t ever agree to take time off without pay unless there’s some sort of written contract that he will take you back at the end of it.
Otherwise if he does replace you, and it looks like you left voluntarily, it may be really difficult to get benefits out of centrelink.
A nice little four week holiday – fabulous idea. He should miss you thoroughly by the end of that… in fact, he’ll probably be on the phone, pleading you to return, by the end of week 1!
It would be a good plan, if Centrelink paid anything worthwhile. What with medical expenses plus the usual living costs, I don’t know how anyone can survive on sickness benefits.
I’d recommend going down to Centrelink and peeing on them.
I feel warm in the knowledge that centre links all over Australia get peed on all the time. They don’t provide public toilets and they keep you waiting beyond Natural Bladder Capacity.
They say the metal grilles under Centrelink’s carpet are to catch the bladder runoff. But having worked there, I can assure you that’s not the case. The carpet soaks up all the bladder runoff. Then it’s extracted – this is where the term ‘taking the piss’ comes from. Then it is injected into the veins of the serving Prime Minister. You didn’t think they actually had blood in their veins, did you?
While my “sworn to secrecy for all eternity” contract prevents me from telling you what Centrelink’s metal grilles really cover, may I refer you back to that “eternity” word. Add the word “damned”. Or even “souls”. I can say no more. Especially not “pit”.
*Shudder*
So that’s what happens to you when you don’t return your forms… other than being cut off from your barely-life-sustaining pittance, that is?
Flung through the grilles into Centrelink’s Pit of Eternal Damnation.
*Sigh*
Shhhhhh! You didn’t hear it from me!
I think I need help.
I’ve been sorting out my home office/study notes/the accumulated crap of 20 years and I discovered an old Ikea Storage solutions box (drawers, really) that measures:
40W x 28H x 20D
Somehow I’ve managed to fill the compartments with cat toys.
Prior to this they were all rolling around the house and stuffed into drawers and cushions.
The cleaners found a shirtload of the damned things when they spring cleaned yesterday.
This must qualify as some sort of psychiatric problem.
Question is, where do I go to seek help?
Not Catty’s blog, that’s obvious.
I should add it’s very orderly.
I now have my cat toys sorted by:
* Soft Fluffy Things
* Seemingly soft fluffy things that double as a weapon
* Crinkly things
* Bouncy plastic things
* Balls and ping pong balls
* Plastic rings off vegemite and juice bottles.
In my defense two of my cats FETCH and before I discovered this, one of them was stealing the plugs out of the bathtub and pinging them around the house before performing his final trick of making the plugs disappear forever. I went through five bath plugs before I got smart and got one on a chain.
Well, as long as you’ve got them ordered and categorised like that I’m sure it’s not pathological, Quokka. Unless… have you got them sorted by colour, so they match the rainbow? That might be considered a little peculiar…
Yes, you have a problem. Someone with that many cat toys obviously loves cats. Anyone who loves cats is obviously a well-adjusted, intelligent person. Anyone who is well-adjusted and intelligent is a magnet for trolls. So your problem, therefore, is Lobes.
Have your cats kill him. Failing that, get them to pee on him.
Given their feelings towards all things with 6 legs and cold blood, I’m sure they’d give it a go, Catty.
MM RE: Colour coding the kitty toys.
That’ll be top of my list next time I have a really tedious exam to study for.
Just curious to know how far the Brisbane fog extended to this damp winter’s morn.
I went out to get milk (& dispatch the Bloke a few blocks closer to his place of employment) and I could barely see 30 metres through it.
Wet, wet, wet. I see the airport is closed till 10am, too.
It was lovely and foggy here this morning… very atmospheric, so to speak. However, it’s now burnt off to be a bright, warm, sunny day.
Fingers crossed for a storm this arvo.
11am here and I can still see fog off towards the city and the river. Clearing to the south though. Thickest longest fog I’ve seen in a while. In spite of this I did manage to find my way to the Golden Arches for a double bacon McMuffin. I was listening to Redcliffe Radio and they’re at the Pine Rivers show today.
Apparently they have Pig Racing every day.
I’m sorely tempted to drag the bloke out there to see the piggies run. Although it might put me off bacon, which would be a terrible loss for my taste buds.
Surely nothing could put you off bacon. Mmm… sizzling, crispy, delicious bacon.
Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, this talk of racing pigs has got me wondering about Moko’s mini goats. Mayhem, we await the mini goat update with interest.
Indeed we do.
Still waiting for an update to see if the boss has recovered his humour, too.
Well, I have spent the last two days unpacking the last of my storage boxes, leftover from last year’s exodus from Casa Quokka.
I’m feeling somewhat better about my kitty toy collection – and the scathing comments the Bloke offered when he saw The Accumulation – because today when I went through a box marked ‘Shitpile’ – I found his collection of prizes from Kellogs cereal boxes.
Just wait till he gets home and then we’ll see who’s got the most useless collection of hoarded shit , won’t we?
Ha. We have a winner.
I am sure of it.
PS. There is a prize for She Among You who can figure out why I left the ‘Shitpile’ box till last.
(Well, second last if you count the box that says ‘Tax Records Across the Ages’.)
Mind you, you will have to rest said prize from the cold dead fingers of my Bloke because that is the only way he will ever part with the Kellogs mini clock/torch/compass/mystery broken thing.
I have at least three tonnes of McDonalds toys stored in boxes all over the house. The kidlets will not let me part with a single one of them, no matter how mystery or broken they are.
I hate stupid happy meals. They don’t make me happy. Stupid toys. One day I will flush them all down the toilet. Not my toilet, though. The council’s toilet. Yep, you guessed it. Rates time.
Well Catty, with luck they’ll grow out of their McToy hoarding before they’re, oh, let’s see…47 and off to their 30th high school reunion?
I will be temporarily Blokeless next weekend while he goes off to Tasmania for this event.
I’m trying to think of something bad to do while he’s away.
Trouble is I do Bad while he’s around so its hard to think of a ‘Ha! Look, I repapered the guest bedroom with Hummels’ type thing to do while he’s out of the way and can’t stop me.
And it’s too early in the season to give his cat a mohawk.
Even if it is meant to be 27C here in Brisvegas tomorrow.
Wow, Quokka, I love cereal toys! Has the Bloke got those walking animals with the weights that dangle over the edge of the table? Those are totally awesome.
Catty, a friend of mine has a rule with the Unhappy Meal toys. After 2 weeks they’re binned – no exceptions. This rule makes her very happy!
No, but the Bloke wants to know what kind of cereal you get these in so he can start buying it.
Sup ladies?.
M&M mentioned you guys were after some mini goat pics.
The following page has a scrolling gallery of a few of ours,
http://pikaminigoatstud.com/mini-goats.php
and this page is from the reasonably recent Toowoomba Royal show.
The bottom photo is a comparison of a 1 year old mini against our cat Scaredy.
http://pikaminigoatstud.com/royal-toowoomba-results.php
This page is my photo blog. It has a couple of shots there too.
http://mokodelineates.blogspot.com/
Moko called in to drop off some link to mini goats. Awaiting moderation apparently Ms Moderator.
Quokka, sadly the walking cereal toys are a relic of my long-ago childhood. Tell the Bloke he could probably pick some up in an antique shop.
Thanks Moko! Everyone, check out the mini-goat links. Super cute!!
So, Mayhem, the goats were just as adorable in the flesh?
Cool Mini goats! I’ve always said I love goats, but I couldn’t eat a whole one. But I reckon I could go a whole mini one.
Hangi, anyone?
They’re so CUTE.
I’m inspired.
On three, all ye in favour – yodel.
Indeed they are VERY cute in the flesh.
Thanks for the video, Quokka… but now I’ve got a craving for fondue. Or some talking chicken.
Funny you should say that, Madam. I was in the library last week, when a chook walked in. “Book, book, book,” she said. The librarian gave her a book, and the chook took her book to the book nook. As I watched in amazement, she sat down next to a frog, and said, “book, book, book!” The frog glanced over at the chook’s book, and said, “read-it. Read-it.”
I gotta stop taking the blue pills.
Yeah. Knock off the blue pills, and maybe up the yellow. And the white. And have a handful of the green while you’re at it.
Hehehe. Sounds like you’ll need a rainbow connection.
Oh, crap.
I just got in from Woollies and I realized I forgot to stock up on the White Pills – of the paracetamol variety. Aunt Irma will be wanting those later on this week.
Bugger.
I did remember the important stuff though – Double Chocolate Homer Hudson Ice cream.
Mmm… Homer Hudson.
They used to make a flavour called Hoboken Crunch that was full of pieces of chocolate-covered toffee. Whatever happened to Hoboken Crunch?
They’ve got Hoboken Crunch at the Pizza place around the corner. Lucky me!
Oh, and Quokka, IGA must have been eavesdropping the other day. Last week they had Bertie Beetle sharepacks on sale for $3.00.
The Boss wants us to move out into the country. Not on your nellie! He doesn’t want to know me if I haven’t got Pizza, Homer Hudson and Bertie Beetles within a five minute walk.
*Sniffle*
No icecream at our pizza place, Catty. They’ve barely got anchovies, for goodness sake. Perhaps I can grind up some toffee bars and make my own. Or move to Melbourne.
Here’s what you do, Madam. Get a bag of chocolate coated peanut brittle fingers from Darrell Lea. Pound the bag a bit with a rolling pin. Mix the resultant chunks through a two litre tub of Cadbury Caramello ice cream.
It’s not quite the same, but it is bloody good.
Madame, they sell Hoboken Crunch down at Woollies at Buranda. The renal unit across the road would go out of business without it, so they’ll never stop stocking it.
That’s a regular in our household so I can stockpile it for you. Then all you need is a refrigerator truck to get it from Casa Quokka to the Fields of Green in which you dwell.
The flavor that I haven’t seen for years and which I yearn for is Butter Pecan.
Did I mention I found Bertie Beetles in the sweet shop near Central station?
So glad you managed to source the Beetles, Quokka. Now we just have to fix you up with some LGBB and you’ll be all set.
Perhaps I can get the manager of my Woolies to talk to the manager of Buranda and hook me up.
I’ve never tried Butter Pecan but it sounds good. Perhaps we could deal direct with Homer Hudson himself? I’m assuming he’s a real person. You don’t think he’s an illusory frontman for a faceless multinational, do you?
Catty, sounds fabulous. I’m off to Darrel Lea ASAP.
Good news! My boss is NOT an ogre or an arsehole… I am an idiot!
Miscommunication on both sides… Stress levels down several notches!
Well I’m glad that’s sorted Ms Mayhem, but One Screw Up after a bout of chemo does not automatically make you an idiot.
If anyone wants to see a true idiot, an entire family of them can be viewed from my front porch.
Last weekend The Lady of the House went into hysterics at the Gentleman of the House. This happens often so it took us a while to figure out what this one was about.
‘*****! That’s DISGUSTING! You can’t clean that with a TOILET BRUSH!’
The Bloke and I have yet to figure out what Mr. Idiot at number 24 Idiot Lane was in fact cleaning with a toilet brush.
So we have set up a suggestion box at Casa Quokka.
When it is full I will transform it into a multiple choice ‘What was ***** cleaning with the toilet brush on the morning of Saturday 31st July’ and I shall trot across the road and interview surrounding neighbours. There’s a prize for whoever gets it right. Somebody closer to the source of the shrieking must know.
Feel welcome to contribute to it.
Just so you know, The Bloke has dibs on
* Mr. Idiot was cleaning his teeth with it
And I think he was scouring the pots and pans with it.
However given the levels of idiocy that I’ve witnessed here in the last 8 years, its possible that we are both correct.
So, Mayhem, unless you were cleaning the boss’s computer screen with the toilet brush, I believe you do not qualify for the position of Village Idiot.
If your boss would like to find out what a true idiot does look like, I will be happy to send Mr. Idiot from Number 24 out to your place of employment to help out. Just show him where the toilet brush is.
I’m guessing Mr Idiot was using the toilet brush to scrub out the fermenter on his homebrew still.
Either that, or Mrs Idiot’s footspa. It takes a biiiig brush to remove bogan bunion scum out of your standard footspa.
Tragically they are not bogans.
They pass as Pillars of the Community in my little neck of the woods. What happens behind closed doors (not that Queenslanders contain much in the way of domestic noise) is another matter.
I’m voting for… the lint filter on the tumble dryer.
That’s right, those of you playing at home – you can’t clean the lint filter with a toilet brush. Well, you CAN but you SHOULDN’T.
Glad things worked out okay, Mayhem. Hope you’re making the most of the lowered stress levels.
Hmm. So many insightful suggestions, and all so difficult to choose from.
Given his tendency towards Passive Aggression and hers towards Bouts of Screaming, I’m leaning towards the idea that the object he was polishing with the toilet brush was either her wine glass or her ‘World’s Greatest Mum’ coffee cup.