Trees are really important. They’re pretty and leafy and they grow and make oxygen (used for breathing) and if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t have the awesome tree house out the back of the office that I go to sometimes when I’m sleepy or bored or angry because I’m hungry or that one time when somebody broke the arm off my yellow Power Ranger and tried to blame one of the truck drivers. And without our tree house where would we hold our staff meetings and come up with all our best ideas and decide what the super secret password will be for next week and who’s turn it is to be lookout and who’s turn it is to bring lunch tomorrow and who keeps forgetting that I don’t like vegemite sandwiches unless they’re cut into triangles with the crusts off? Yep, trees are important. We love trees so much that we’re in cahoots now with Greenfleet who help us love trees even more…

I’ll be honest, when I was first told that we were going to meet a new gang called Greenfleet who love trees as much as we do, I got a little bit territorial. Okay, okay, I stormed up to the tree house, put the super secret invisible force field up, raised the pirate flag and wouldn’t come down til Mum came and said I had to.  But after she gave me some sultanas and changed the dressings on my Power Ranger’s dislocated shoulder, I was willing enough to meet the new kids and see what they’re like. They. Are. Awesome. They don’t just love trees. They have forests where they plant more trees. Know what forests are good for? Playing Robin Hood.

Even though I’m pretty sure the trees in Sherwood Forest are a bit taller than the shrubs we’re prancing around in ours (a tree that you can step over doesn’t provide the best shelter from a throng of oncoming enemy arrows), we put on our Lincoln green every lunch time and set about catching all the baddies to bring down that old tyrant Prince John. I’ll admit there were some early disputes about who gets to be Robin Hood and who’d be wearing a ringleted wig and a petticoat as Maid Marian, but we resolved them like grown-ups once everyone realized that my dad can make the best cardboard swords and there was no way I was going to let everyone use them unless I get to be Robin Hood. Sometimes we get the neighborhood kids in on the action and the kids from Hepburn Wind are the best because we’ve known them for ages and they never complain about wearing tights in public and they’re allowed to stay out after dark on Fridays which means more chances to run sneak attacks on the baddies. And sure, some townsfolk seem a little weirded out with the sight of fully-grown adults running around in tunics and tights throwing sticks at each other. But we’ll see who’s weird once we’ve overthrown the monarchs and return justice to all and hold a parade to ourselves in the town square. Although it probably wouldn’t hurt our image if a certain sales rep didn’t insist on having his tunic quite so short…

Adam’s enviably feminine legs aside, Greenfleet and Hepburn Wind are awesome friends to have. Greenfleet are helping us to offset our carbon footprint by planting trees for every single ounce of energy we use which is super important because any good outlaw knows never to leave a footprint.  And Hepburn Wind is Australia’s very first community owned wind farm and we support them with funds to create renewable energy which we aim to be fully reliant on here at headquarters which pretty much makes us exactly like Robin Hood in a rob-from-the-rich-and-give-to-the-poor kind of way. Except for none of the money was stolen and I don’t even know who the rich are in this metaphor but it’s important to keep drawing comparisons because otherwise it might be weird that I’m sitting in a tree house wearing pantyhose and a green hat with a jaunty red feather.

If you want to know more about the coolest outlaws around you can visit their websites! Or you can come ask me in person. Tomorrow is stocktake so I’ll probably have a tummy ache and be in the tree house all day. The password is littlejohn, bring snacks.

Apparently, lots of different cities have food. Which is confusing and frankly inconsiderate. As a seasoned traveler who’s owned houses in more than two (less than four) different Monopolies, I don’t appreciate having to worry about what I’ll be eating on my worldly adventures that have seen me check into eleven different places on Facebook.  My concern is this: how do I know if I will like a city’s food until I get there? And how do I know where to find the food that I want at the temperature that I like? And what if it’s too late by then because Mum forgot to pack my emergency supply of freeze-dried Doritos and canned Tiny Teddies? Nightmare.

The good news is that there’s really no need to be too panicked about travelling to the exotic far-aways of Woolloomooloo or Paddington or Community Chest. Well, you can be a little bit scared but not too scared. Feel free to be Desperate-Housewives-is-in-its-final-season alert but not Terri-Hatcher-hasn’t-got-any-definitive-new-projects-lined-up alarmed. But how to avoid potential starvation and / or  culinary disaster? Um, it’s easy peasy cross my heart no duh infinity. To find out about a city’s food you can visit a “Taste Of City” show and taste all the different not to mention available food and drinks and people a city offers (yes of course people have different tastes depending on the city they are in – lick someone and then go to a different place and lick somebody there, you’ll see).

So we trooped off to Taste of Sydney to a] find out how many jars of preserved Fruit Loops and dehydrated Pop Tarts we’d need to pack on any future visits to the Bondi Vet set (a golden retriever who’s been attacked by a parrot shouldn’t be the only one allowed to lick Dr Chris) and b] to reassure the nervous crowds with the knowledge that you can depend on yummy, fizzy, fruity and minerally drinks being available in Sydney whenever you’re in town for a trip to the Sydney Harbor Bridge Club or whatever (talk about high stakes – the last game I went to my mouth went so dry I played my trump card way too early and it cost me the under 65s metropolitan final. That’s the last time I let Ira psych me out into thinking the bar’s gone dry. He walked away with the trophy and I was left licking ginger beer off a coaster, trying to convince Val and the girls to renew my contract for next season).

Ira’s impending epic and very public embarrassment at the hands of a whoopee cushion aside, knowing that you don’t have to BYO mineral water on any interstate travel saves a lot of luggage space not to mention the time and tears wasted at domestic check-in when security realizes that your hand luggage is full of glass bottles and you’re left with no choice but to chug down a long weekend’s supply of organic cola before spending a very uncomfortable 70 minutes at high altitude trying to suppress the amount of gas that can only be produced by boat-racing ten liters of carbonated soft drink. It’s really no way to make new friends (travel bingo is the way. You’ll have the whole cabin asking who the cool cat is with the plastic bingo set and the bag of Columbines. Trust me).

To borrow a term from my bridge buddies, our Taste of Sydney stand was pretty bingo-bango-bongo. Unlike the fridges at certain bridge clubs that will remain nameless, ours were well stocked and psychological warfare free.  Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t Calombaris or Zumbo pulling all the babes. I guess word got around pretty quickly that there was a mineral water enthusiast who’s recently won second prize in a beauty contest and collected $10 for their trouble working the water stand. And Ira said I’d never pull again in this town. Never underestimate the power of local mineral water and a fail-safe pick-up line. Now, before I go I just have to ask, is that a Columbine in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?

I don’t trust change. Never have, never will.  I mean, why make something different when it’s already pretty good? Name me one thing that’s been made any better by change and I’ll name you something incredulous that you wouldn’t believe because it’s impossible and totally unimaginable and could never happen no matter what and would sure teach you a lesson (note to self: think of a list of those things just in case, you don’t want to look stupid later). So, yeah, change is the worst.

Lucky for me and change-haters everywhere, all old things become new again one day. So if you can just resist change long enough, you’ll be cool eventually and you can claim you were doing it first. It’s what the hipsters do – stay ahead of the trends by looking backwards and never forwards. Good advice when you’re riding your penny-farthing down Gertrude Street, good advice when you’re deciding what length jeans to wear. And hells yeah, staying true to my lycra power suits throughout the more breathable fabric favoring naughties was hard and at times pretty awkward work. And sure, a year ago you might have laughed at my stockpile of tasseled push-down socks and water-proof stirrup pants. And yes, since getting around town on my sweet “new” one-wheeler there have been more recorded penny-farthing related accidents in Melbourne since 1880. But yesterday I saw a group of hipsters riding backwards on horseback in Brunswick so who’s laughing now?

Still, you can imagine that when I was taken aside one day last week and told that DHMSCO would be releasing not one but two new drinks, I maybe freaked out a little bit. Threats were made, my pre-colonial urban bonnet was thrown, and more than one limited edition signed Baywatch poster was destroyed. That’s when I should have known I’d gone too far – you just don’t mess with the Hoff in Speedos. I’m genuinely sorry about that. But when not even a cordless phone maimed David Hasselhoff was enough to convince a clearly delirious staff that change is how Saved by the Bell: The New Class got made, I did what any mature, cool-headed adult would do: I threatened to destroy the entire mineral water industry and then called my mum to come get me.

After Mum calmed me down with a sippy cup of apple juice and a hard boiled egg with buttered soldiers, I agreed to take a look at these two “new drinks:” Organic Lemon Lime Bitters and Organic Orange Soda. Organic Lemon Lime Bitters and Organic Soda! Even despite the hyperventilating and tyrannical swearing, it was becoming clear that actually, they really weren’t as offensive as I’d assumed they’d be.  The labels are contemporary retro (yeah it’s a thing), the bottles could easily have been recycled from my last abandoned milk bar party, and the taste is frankly Hoff-in-jocks dribble inducing. Conclusion: what could be more hipster or more amazingly forwards-backwards than sitting on an upside down rubbish bin outside a roasting-warehouse-meets-nana’s-sitting-room styled café, ordering an Organic Orange Soda float? Nothing, that’s what. Unless you do it while you’re wearing a poncho as a skirt. Which would prompt me to doff my propeller cap to you. Or it would if I hadn’t already done it weeks ago. Sheesh.

DHMSCO’s new organic Orange Soda and Lemon Lime Bitters have landed. Make sure you get in before the hipsters do. Because once I’ve tied some string to one of the empty bottles and used it as a satchel, you won’t be able to get your hands on one anywhere.

So this whole internet thing really took off, huh? I remember being told about it a few months ago and I was all “Inter-wha? It’ll never last. I didn’t buy shares in telegrams and pigeon mail because they’re not awesome.”  But then I saw The Social Network (not to become better informed, but because J.T has – allegedly – been the recipient of one too many pigeon-grams and consequently, seeing his movies in 3D is as close to Sir Timberlake as the recently invoked restraining order allows) and it started to dawn on me that if Justin’s taking the time to make a movie about the interwebbity, maybe there’s more to it than I originally thought.

So I had a bit of a poke around and after tearing myself away from justhot4justin.com and then justinspeedos.org and finally, justinstimber.net (turns out this one was actually a timber sales yard in Adelaide, although the owner Justin was happy to send me some personal polaroids, and from that angle the resemblance really is uncanny – I’m also looking at ordering a few hundred meters of Baltic pine) I’ve conceded that yeah, there are some bits and pieces going on in the WWW and yeah, some of them are kind of awesome. Obviously I’ve dabbled in the blog writing market, but when I click “post” I until recently assumed that meant post literally, like by mail, pigeon, whatever…

“Goodbye fair blog, and up another point go my beloved telegram stocks, as strong today as they were during WWI. God bless the stock exchange and all who sail in her.”

I haven’t Wikipedeed it yet but I’ve a sneaking suspicion that a dapperly dressed gent in a brass buttoned suit with a harmonica in his pocket and a nattily combed moustache isn’t arriving at Internet’s front door to announce my posts with quaint yet assertive aplomb. Apparently I haven’t been doing my shares any favours stop

Still, I’ve decided to embrace the online scene. I’ve been trying to contact Bill Gates to see if I can be a partner or president or whatever, but unless you count the twelve disheartened telegram boys who’ve arrived back on my doorstep and thirty-nine emphysemic pigeons, no response as yet. Is it crazy that I feel like there should be a way I can contact him directly? Like an intermail or a net-message? If you know of something like that, instant telegram me. In the meantime, I’m utilizing as much cyber space as I possibly can. I’ve made some totally amazing new friends, like Chris who’s got some seriously creative ideas about attracting celebrity attention…

And while I was at it I thought hey, since I’m pretty much spending my entire workday refreshing JT’s twitter feed and chatting online to babes, I might as well bring my work online with me. I mean if Chris can go on to create a mildly successful music career online, who am I to dismiss the strength of the web?

Which is why DHMSCO has gone full internet. Boom. Click on the picture of Simon the Online Shop Keeper (should he be getting the full salary plus benefits we’re paying him for guarding the web-shop? I’m still not sure…) on the right of your screen there and be transported to a magical place where mineral water comes by the case and a t-shirt can appear on your torso in the merest click of a button!

Impressive isn’t it? Equally as impressive is the delivery of a case of Blood Orange by a team of carrier pigeons. Or if pigeons with the beak strength of a hippogriff don’t excite you (pfft!), keep in mind that we’re coming into summer which means short shorts for the telegram boys if you catch my drift (that’s a winking face, apparently they’re all the rage online). Service with a smile and a well-oiled indecently exposed thigh? The internet really is a magical place…

Oh and if anyone’s got any spare food they’d be willing to donate to feed a sizeable flock of pigeons and some particularly fussy telegram boys who refuse to eat refined sugar while I’m waiting for some stocks to liquidate, please contact me asap!!

We’ve come a long way since our humble beginnings five years ago. There’s been a whopping 600% increase in our Beanie Baby portfolio from its modest inception as a two man show all those years ago (Misty the Unicorn Bear and Ryan the Lion Bear – love you guys!) And gone are the halcyon days of grabbing an invoice from the printer, entering it into the system, filing it away, high-fiving the room and obtaining an icy-cold congratulatory “another job well done” blood orange with one lazy reach of my arm and the Rocky theme tune blaring (I didn’t used to be Inspector Gadget, despite wishing for it every year on my birthday, we just had a way smaller, rubix cube sized office and one CD which was the Rocky II Soundtrack).

And while all major decisions are still being put to the Magic 8 ball, and nothing will ever get in the way of Beanie Swap Tuesdays or Coconut Ice Entourage night, things are happening and, don’t tell anyone, but I think we might be cooler than we used to be…

In fact, you could say we’re just like J.Lo. It’s what I would say, and do, a lot. And not just because we know how to shake it on the dance floor and stop the press in a plunging green Versace-esque gown (the Magic 8 ball did strongly advise against that one. And yeah, maybe a floor length navel exposing gown was a little much for a Saturday morning farmers’ market, but there’s only so many times you can be told to “ask again later” before an eventual “don’t count on it” fails to hold much gravitas). Mostly we’re like J.Lo because from humble beginnings we’ve built careers as successful singers slash actors slash tracksuit designers… Okay okay, that was a lie; my vocal range is two notes and something that sounds like a Jurassic mating call, and our spring line of velour press-up pants won’t be released until at least October 2012, but mineral water we’re good at. We’re doing for local mineral water what J.Lo’s done for the perfume-designed-by-celebrities-who-don’t-know-anything-about-fragrances-or-even-basic-chemistry-and-make-everything-smell-like-vanilla-and-cat-sick industry. But in a good way.

You don’t have to take my word for it though, John Lethlean wrote it all down in The Weekend Australian on Saturday. Have a read of our story! He doesn’t make any direct references to the J.Lo connection, but the subtext is there. And if he had to spend the rest of the day smelling like vanilla cat sick because he’d gotten over excited with a bottle of J.Lo Glo he might be comparing himself to Jenny from the Block a lot as well…

Do cities have a taste? Apparently, or else I don’t know what that whole Taste of Melbourne thing that happened on the weekend was about. The key thing to keep in mind when pondering this question is not to take the phrase as literally as, er, some people might be inclined. To find out what a city tastes like don’t, I repeat DON’T get down on your hands and knees and lick the steps of the State Library. Ditto that for the walls of Parliament House, double it for one of the seats in the Southern Stand at the MCG. Because they pretty much all taste the same (although I’m pretty sure I detected hints of tomato sauce at the MCG, it was right after the Hawthorn v Collingwood game, I also found half a chicken burger which was a bonus because I hadn’t had any dinner).

Anyway, it seems the seven different types of bacteria poisoning I contracted were a total waste of time and ipecac because there’s a much cleaner, less crazy-bird-lady way to go about discovering the tastes of Melbourne: you just go to the Taste of Melbourne – which is what we’d apparently planned to do all along with Keg Bike, lots of cups, and our tongues kept firmly inside our mouths.

Just quietly, being at the Taste of Melbourne was more fun than licking warm plastic benches. We made a fort out of mineral water boxes which is just like making one out of cereal boxes when you’re a kid only now we’re grown-ups, so it was bigger and more awesome and after I explained to her that it was for work, Mum didn’t make me take it down. After we stopped pretending that we were all knights and that Keg Bike was a battering  ram that we could use to siege our neighbouring stalls, we realised that hydrating the masses with rainbow coloured mineral water delights was equally as rewarding as taking pretend prisoners to feed to not-real dragons. And far from being our enemies, our next door neighbours Longrain had some serious speakers for music making which meant we could wow the crowds with our killer dance moves and enviable-yet-accessible coolness. Which we did. A lot. Ask anyone.

But if you somehow missed us at Taste of Melbs (maybe you were confused too and spent the weekend licking the platform at Flinders Street Station?) never fear! Because us, our Keg Bike, our impenetrable cardboard fort and our trademark water-sprinkler moves are heading to Master Chef Live in Sydney on October 7^th.  And since we’re (ahem) the preferred mineral water partner of the event, you’d best come by to visit and more importantly, to check out what’s shaping up to be a very elaborate, highly choreographed multi-stage dance routine. Just don’t try to siege our fort or pillage our women because Keg Bike will feed you to a dragon faster than you can say, “but this water doesn’t taste anything like the Yarra.”

And dibbs on using the “oh, I thought this was Taste Of Master Chef” explanation when I’m found licking George Calombaris an hour into the event. Get your own excuse.

Everybody knows that “Red Heads,” “Gingers” or, to use the politically correct term, “Rangas,” aren’t the same as regular humans. They tend to be more afraid of sunlight than Edward Cullen but without the attractiveness and superhuman strength to back it up, their skin seems unnaturally determined to turn the same colour as their hair at every mildly embarrassing moment, and I’m not sure but I’m guessing that they’re less good at all the cool things like hopscotch and Spiderman Monopoly and regular Monopoly and cartwheels and blogging. Which is probably why they’re a dying breed and will be extinct in 100 years, just like dinosaurs or Louie the Mortine fly.

Still, having once been confused for a Red Head – which is weird mostly because my hair is not red – I can identify with the underdogs of the gene pool. Life must be tough knowing that the odds are always against you. Which is why we’ve created a salute to our disadvantaged brothers and sisters with a brand spanken new Organic Ginger Beer.

Although much more attractive and awesome than its human namesakes, like them, Ginger Beer’s had to fight for survival. Sooo many obstacles that it’s had to outwit, outplay and outlast (it probably wasn’t fair that we sent it out into the jungle on rice rations and kept offering it a spoonful of peanut butter and a hot-dog in exchange for immunity and a chance to become the ultimate Survivor, but as Ron Weasley or Ginger Spice will tell you, life’s not always fair). Anyway, just like the tormented career of Lindsay Lohan, Ginger Beer built us up with the piggy-tailed innocence of Parent Trap and then tore us down with its inability to get out of a taxi without flashing its private parts and its you’re-not-fooling-anyone blonde highlights. One day I’d be promised Ginger Beer within the fortnight, the next it was a mere phantom of a thing, a ghostly whisper echoing in a licked-clean peanut butter jar abandoned in the Amazon.

It reminds me of the time my brother told me that if I pulled my tooth out and left it under my pillow I’d get five bucks from the Tooth Fairy because the market for adult teeth is much more lucrative than the fledgling baby teeth one. Well, the Tooth Fairy never came and now I’m tired because I was only pretending to be asleep last night so that I could see her and I’m also a little concerned because I googled it and it seems that adult teeth don’t grow back like baby teeth do and my brother’s not taking my calls and he said I wasn’t allowed to tell Mum or the whole operation would be a bust, which if you ask me, it is anyway and I think I’ll stick to my guaranteed cash cow  (rainbow-end hunting) from now on.

Luckily, unlike my cheque from the Tooth Fairy, our Organic Ginger Beer really did arrive this morning! And even though the newly exposed nerve endings in my gums tingle in the hurty way every time I take a sip, I can’t get enough!! So get on board the ginger train! And whenever you take a swig of the coolest soft drink going round, spare a thought for our disadvantaged fire-haired brethren, and then thank your lucky stars that you’re not one.

Once you’re a grown-up, any “toys” you may or may not own are generally not something you want to tell your Mum about. But occasionally one comes along that’s so taboo, so exhilarating, so unbelievably controversial that there’s nothing for it but to cast off the suffocating shackles of the vacuous hoi polloi and sing out its praises liberated and inappropriate to anyone who’ll listen (so… Mum then… pretty much exclusively… oh…) Like for example, the limited edition Buzz Lightyear doll with detachable cape, sensory voice activation and dual LED light rocket ship I got for a steal last week from e-bay seller AndysMom63, “Mum! Mum! Did you see how Buzz’s wings expanded on the backwards loop-de-loop? Did you? I’ll do it again – watch!!! To infinity, and beyoooonnnd!!! Well it works better if I’m wearing my cape – have you seen my cape? I’ll put it on – go get Dad!!”

Spring has sprung early at DHMSCO. When we realized that bee-keeping was going to be the next big thing we just couldn’t wait the extra months to flaunt our brand new bespoke bee-keeper masks with customized GaGa-inspired netting, detachable monogrammed ear protectors and scratch and sniff honey scent patches (pair with a preppy Oxford shirt and any kind of Italian hand-embroidered soft mahogany leather loafer to take you from the office to the hive to drinks afterwards). And as is customary in Spring, there have been some new additions to our mineral water family:

Keg Bike…office windows… a blowfly named Angus that won’t stop circling my head (possibly a direct result of the honey scented apiarist mask I’m wearing)… the puppy I’m pretty sure I’m getting for my half-birthday… and of course, Lindy.

When our little bundle of joy and galvanized iron arrived we were all the proudest of parents. Certain members of the family had been lead to believe that an actual baby was on the way and had spent weeks excitedly knitting pink booties and nurturing a now redundant cabbage patch – it’s all very well to refer to your machinery as “he” and “she” until you’re on an all coleslaw diet waiting for your thriving cabbage crop to run out. Still, weighing in at a healthy 6,261 pounds, 12 ounces, Lindy arrived and she was perfect. An early bloomer who was already walking and could lift over twice her own weight, she may not quite have been the sister I was hoping for but she could hold her own at a monster trucks rally which is more than can be said for my human sister who’s afraid of monsters. And anyway, she looks like a character from Brum which is awesome.

But now that the initial excitement has worn off, I can’t help but be somewhat suspicious of Lindy. At first my contempt and my unwillingness to share my new Tron suit were dismissed as a textbook case of sibling rivalry. But I swear this is bigger than Freud and my love of dressing head to toe in sci-fi gear and thwarting imaginary attempts to destroy the Pentagon. There’s just something about Lindy that makes me think there’s more to her than meets the eye. Beneath that orange veneer is a seedy underbelly of a corrupt and troubled past I just know it!! So I did what any suspicious person wearing a Tron suit would do, I googled it.

Tell me that’s not Lindy in that video!! Now I know how Charlie must have felt when he found out Coach Bombay was dating his mum. It’s not that it happened, it’s that she didn’t tell me… Still, even though I’ve just discovered that my forklift sister has a penchant for destruction, I think I’m going to give her a second chance and I might even let her play with my spankin new Tron Legacy Light Cycle later. Besides, I need to get out of the office for a while because it’s day 18 of the coleslaw diet and the ventilation in here is less than ideal and let’s just say I’ve never been more grateful for scratch and sniff headwear…

I don’t know much about cooking. I mean I can tear open a packet of mi goreng with an unnecessary amount of ceremony and knife work. And I’ve no doubt that should Matt Moran ever sample one of my cups of cold Milo, he’d hold it up triumphantly, praising my delicate balance of flavors and my bold decision to partially dissolve the powder in boiling water before adding milk. What a risk taker. And yet despite these michelin worthy skills, I’m not above sampling the culinary attempts of others. So when it came time for a mineral water family dinner last week, Chin Chin was the proposed locale and after being assured (lied to) that they would probably have instant Indonesian noodles on their Vietnamese menu, I was happy to go along and no doubt engage in some seriously heated debate with the chefs about degrees of package tear, the best ratio of red to black sauce and how long a person can realistically exist on a diet of noodles and milk before a colonial case of scurvy sets in.

Now now, I know what you’re thinking: Chin Chin is the new cool kid on campus and we, well, we are halfway through our biannual Golden Girls marathon. Still, with season 4 episode 3 on pause (Blanche and the girls are off on a Caribbean holiday – never gets old) we were out on the town and looking more Goldfinger than Golden Girl. This was not to last. If you’ve spent the better part of an afternoon eating Wagon Wheels and eagerly watching the romantic escapades of four 65 year old women unfold, there’s really no coming back from that. And besides, once you’ve decided you look like James Bond, making a pretend gun with your hands and humming the theme tune while you dart around corners and shoot at bad guys is pretty much unavoidable. Two minutes in the door and we’d just managed to blow the non-existent bullet dust off our imaginary guns and put them back into their make-believe holsters when we spotted our water in a bar fridge…