Wake Up and Smell the (Rancid) Roses

It’s time to reveal a secret. In primary school, I always had crushes on the weird boys. The shy viola enthusiast with the triple-barrelled South African surname; the clinically unattractive boy in year three who helped me win a state-wide French Olympiad but who had unusually wide, child-bearing hips and corrective eyewear; the boy who told me that if he had girls as children he would cry because boys are just so much better (actually he was a 18 year old man that I made out with in a skeezy bar, but he was still a dud) – it was a veritable roll-call of poindexters who were not exactly plucked from the high boughs of the social tree. You knew who those boys were. After all, you never saw Lisa Meanhair hanging out with boys who wore wrist guards in co-ed Division Five Netball.

As with boys, so with cheese. I have an uncanny ability to pick out the craziest, funkiest and health-department-contrabandiest cheeses in any store and bring them home to meet mum and dad. Today was no different.

When I pick out a small piece of cheese with “Tallegio” on the label, I expect a creamy Italian number that would go down well with a nice chianti.

Instead, I brought home a cheese that smells like roses…and not in the good way. It smells like the rancid leavings of the rose bush that used to shed its petals in the midsummer sun behind the school gym in primary school – petals that decomposed on the scorched bricks during the day, and at night mixed in with the heady aroma of Impulse Perfection body spray and Lynx Regret while you kissed Joost van der Velt de Vere before returning to the school dance. Soundtrack? Informer, by Snow.

This time the bad choices didn’t rest with you telling your friends that you broke up with Joost because he tried to hold your hand. The bad choice was opting for an adolescent tallegio that was going through some serious changes and taking on a musky scent of its own.

But if you get over the smell of this particular cheese, (just as you got over Ed’s corrective eyewear and Charles’ insolent comments about girls not being able to play tennis) there is something charming at its heart. Creamy, with a touch of saltiness that is offset nicely by a glass of red, this is a cheese complex enough to be enjoyed on its own. Just like the lyrics of Snow.

So although it smells like hell and may leave you with a bitter aftertaste (just like the break up with Joost, rendered in biting green text on the cold screen of a ICQ chat window) this is the kind of cheese you look back on with fondness. If for no other reason than it helps you to slowly work your way to finding The One when you’re all grown up.

Work-appropriate Cheese

There’s always someone in the workplace who wears inappropriate clothing. Her name is Jasynta, and her daily garb will normally include a variation of distressed denim jeans with sub-cheek derriere ripping and a low slung Sass & Bide singlet with contrasting bra (you trend-setters think this is cool, but it's not...and your bra is ugly).

The question of work-appropriate attire is as old as the workplace itself, and if I understand the film 9 to 5 correctly (which, I’m sure, I do) then appearing at work is all about rocking a stylish shirt-dress and showing the boss that he can’t push you around, no matter how fab your perm is.

But today we gather to talk about a very different matter indeed – workplace cheese.

Last week, I visited a local deli on my way to work and picked up a copy of The Cheese Mag (more on that in my next post) and a wedge of pungent Comte-style Le Ceviste de Scey. 

I won’t go into the details of just what this cheese smells like, but suffice to scey its pungent stench is more of a knockout than Dolly Parton’s character in 9 to 5, Doralee Rhodes.

No matter, I thought. I’ll just take it along to work. I’ll buy myself some crackers and enjoy a little nibble for morning tea!

Ahhh there’s the rub. To enjoy this cheese, I would need to eat it standing up in the kitchen like some sort of hind-legged sow, with my little trotters vainly attempting to grasp the biscuits without looking foolish. (For some reason, this conjures an image of the tightly-timed lunch breaks at my old workplace).

Or, I’d need to eat it at my desk. So I brought it back to Auxiliary Cubicle 2B (my loving name for my desk) and discretely pecked away.

My workmates are accustomed to seeing me eat a snack at elevensies, but they were notably silent on this day. I am a cheese lover and I was acutely aware that it was borderline too stinky for me (of course it wasn’t, that was a test, I love all cheese).

But the awkward desk stink did remind me of another situation at my old workplace, when a co-worker took off her shoes and our office accountant leaped up with his head over the cubicle divider and exclaimed, “What is that smell? It smells like something has crawled up into the air conditioning units and died there!”

To avoid this situation in the future I have two lessons that we can learn:
1. Future desk cheeses will either be of the un-aged cheddar or mild brie variety.
2. Don’t ever take off your shoes at work. They smell like sweat cauldrons and you know it.