My little eight-year-old girl Poppy made a startling admission the other day.

I was having a quiet beer while on holidays by the pool, just contemplating my navel, thinking about life and minding the children while they splashed around.

It is surprising how the truth will out in an unguarded moment, particularly where kids are concerned.

Poppy’s dog Milo, a miniature yapping ball of fluff, confidently walked to the side of the pool, leaned forward and began drinking.

Poppy sprang into action. “Don’t drink the pool water, Milo,” she scolded.

“People wee in that.”

I had one more mouthful of VB Gold and thought to myself … now how does she know that?

Those dam signs

You’ve got to give it to the farmers of the Mary Valley, they certainly know how to protest against the proposed Traveston Crossing dam.

I saw a sequence of signs just fresh up this week on the Mary Valley Tourist Drive. This particular farmer has what I would call a unique sense of humour.

As you drive along, the signs are spaced some 100 metres apart and the first one reads, “Tell her she’s dreaming”, followed 100 metres later by, “Money can’t buy what I have”.

At the 200-metre mark you get, “I don’t want your compensation” and to top it off comes the frustrated farmer’s powerful words directly from his soil-stained heart: “Tell them to get stuffed”.

The awful dentist

The awful dentist – that’s what Jackson used to call the orthodontist and I think he may have been pretty close to the truth.

In my day, if you had a crooked tooth it stayed crooked until you found a partner with the same affliction, but these days they stretch, they pull, they attach elastic bands to stainless-steel wires and drag them back into place.

I can’t believe that they actually give you a payment booklet to help you through the multi-thousand-dollar repayments.

I don’t want to make myself seem too old but the last time I had a payment booklet like that I had bought a Torana from John Sivyer Holden on the magic mile at Moorooka.

With five fang-challenged children and the impending orthodontic costs of same, I am tempted to let their teeth grow wild and simply encourage them to play country and western music.

Old meets new

Sixteen-year-old Stella stayed overnight at the grandparents’ place and got a lesson in thrift.

Kym had asked her dad to give Stella $40 to have breakfast with a friend, go to the movies at the plaza and then have lunch, but when the time came for Stella to head off to the shops, Grandad Max gave her an apple and a popper drink, some cut sandwiches for lunch and $11 for the movies, saying something like: “$40 is too much for a 16-year-old to have.”

It didn’t stop there though, Stella’s nanna gave her some parting safety instructions and that was “If anyone speaks to you, scream and run into the nearest shop”.

You can only imagine what their childhood would have been like at the institution.

Toads are us

After all this rain, the cane toads have certainly come out to play.

They place themselves strategically on our street, staring at my headlights, daring me to send them to Bridgestone heaven.

As always, doing my bit for the environment, I picked up the “hooer” of a toad that was sitting on my front lawn looking through the window eyeing off the new puppy and licking his lips.

I captured him and put him in a plastic bag, and as the RSPCA suggests, I put the bag into the freezer.

The theory is that they just go to sleep – but not this one.

In a last-minute bid for freedom, gigantor must have leapt around inside his plastic prison because when I opened the freezer door the next morning the bag had shifted from one side of the freezer to the other and had landed on the Neapolitan ice-cream bucket.

Naturally I didn’t tell anyone that I’d even put a toad in the freezer but at night as Kym scoops one extra spoon of strawberry, I can’t help but smile to myself.