Something not for Mother’s Day

From The Melbourne ‘Age’

Too many cooks spoil Mother’s Day breakfast in bed

• Andra Jackson
• May 11, 2009

A LOWER Templestowe woman had a Mother’s Day to remember yesterday.

As she lay in bed waiting for breakfast made by her three children, their culinary skills failed to match their good intentions.

While they were cooking a special treat, the stove caught fire and spread quickly to the ceiling and roof.

Metropolitan Fire Brigade fire services officer Trevor Woodward said: “The mother was sitting in bed waiting for her kids to bring in breakfast when she heard them shouting and yelling — she thought they were having a fight,” he said.

“They were trying to do the right thing and make her breakfast. I am not sure what they were making, but whatever it was, it turned out to be a barbecue.”

When the parents realised their kitchen was on fire, they called the fire brigade while the woman’s husband, aged in his 50s, tried to douse the flames with a blanket he grabbed from the bedroom.

He had to be taken to hospital with burns to his hands, while the eldest of the three aspiring chefs — aged 18, 16 and 10 — was taken to the Austin Hospital with smoke inhalation.

The man was last night reported to be in a stable condition.

Templestowe MFB station officer Rod Lawler said the fire spread quickly from the stove top and rangehood into cupboards and the roof.

It took three fire trucks to put out what he described as “a fairly serious fire”.

“We had to pull off part of the roof,” he said. The family had only moved into the house a couple of months ago, he said.

Although the house had three smoke detector alarms, the batteries had been disconnected so that there was no contact.

Mr Lawler said the injury to the woman’s husband could have been avoided had there been a fire blanket in the house.

Yesterday afternoon, the woman told The Age she was too distressed to talk about the morning’s events.’

Now what could have been going on there, campers?

Official who OK’d Air Force One jet flyover resigns

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Obama has accepted the resignation of Louis Caldera, the director of the White House Military Office responsible for the controversial low-altitude flyover of New York by a 747 plane used as Air Force One, the White House said Friday.

 

The 747 used as Air Force One flies over the Statue of Liberty in this photo released by the White House.

 

The photo shoot, which President Obama said he was “furious” with, happened on April 27. The image of a low-flying plane accompanied by an F-16 fighter jet sent some New Yorkers into the streets and into a panic — reminding them of the tragic 9/11 attacks on the city.

Building evacuations also took place across the Hudson River in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Caldera later apologized for the flyover.

Something for Mother’s Day

‘DRIVING through a public car park one afternoon nearly 10 years ago, I saw a car pull out suddenly in front of me and I slammed on my brakes. There was a brief silence, during which I bit down on the expletive that had made it almost to my lips, then from behind me a small, clear voice said, “Cheeses Christ!”

There followed another moment of silence as I tried to collect my thoughts, and then my three-year-old son explained brightly: “Excuse me Mummy, but I did not say ‘Cheeses pucking Christ’ because you did not hit that car.”

As Philip Larkin almost wrote: “They puck you up, your mum and dad./They may not mean to, but they do.” And, as I was undeniably the family garbage mouth, it was, in this instance, I who had done the pucking up. Such is the power, and the burden, of motherhood.’

(more)