Ethel Chop: Avoiding Filth
Ethel Chop is described, on her own website, as ‘Australia’s favourite octogenarian’. The following is a further excerpt from her controversial 2007 ‘self-help’ book, ‘Strain Your Gherkins’, followed by a rant that recently defiled the otherwise tasteful ‘Botica’s Bunch’ on Perth’s MixFM.
Maintain Your Home on a Budget – Use Boy Scouts
If you’re strapped for cash in these difficult economic times but you’d still like to maintain an efficient home, try this affordable option. Boy Scouts – they’re free! Not only can you get your property in order, you’re helping kiddies learn skills and earn badges, or whatever the hell it is they do in those halls of an evening.
The other day, two dear little Boy Scouts knocked on my door, wanting to do some odd jobs. I thought it might be nice to give them some little employment. So I set them to work on my blocked guttering – you know, I don’t think they’d been done for twenty years. But, I’m sorry to say, I heard nothing but complaints about that: ‘Oh, it’s too high’; ‘Ooh, we’re only seven’; ‘Oh, please bring the ladder back, Mrs Chop’; ‘Ooh, I think I’ve broken my arm’. You know, real whingers. The way they carried on, you’d think they were in the war.
But I’m not a hard woman, so I said, ‘Well, you’d better come and do some nice inside jobs then, you couple of nancies.’ First off, I pointed out a maggoty bag of burst rubbish under the sink – I’d been putting that off for weeks. Then they rasped my bunions and set my hair. Didn’t do a bad job, either.
Now, at this point, one of them seemed to take ill and had the audacity to ask for a glass of lemonade. I said, ‘I didn’t realise I was throwing a party!’ And when I up-ended a basket of my smalls for them to hand-wash, the pair of them burst into tears and ran from the house. Useless! I tell you, that’s the last time I help out the local community. Dib dib dib dob dob dob my back passage.
How to Stay Healthy this Winter
If you want to remain germ free this winter, and you don’t want your home turned into a toxic mucus-riddled influenza hell house of bunged-up sinuses and bronchial infection, then it’s quite simple – hibernate.
If you stay inside all winter, you can avoid contact with vile congested kiddies and dirty unhygienic strangers eager to infect you with their germ-ridden filth. However, if an unavoidable visitor happens upon your door, before you allow them to state their business, ensure you spray them liberally with a can of Glen 20, or, if you haven’t got that, Mortein will do just as nicely. Don’t be shy, get it right in their face. They won’t like it but we weren’t put on this planet to please other people.
Oh, and whatever you do, don’t go overseas! That’s where all the disease comes from. My husband, Reginald, went overseas in 1942 and he came back an amputee. So, let that be a warning to anyone thinking of an international holiday.
Another tip to avoid illness this winter is to wear clothes. Sound simple? Well, it isn’t quantum physics, young people. Put some clothes on! And I don’t mean a pair of Calvin Klein undies and a hair elastic. I mean a substantial fabric. Look, a cotton singlet is all well and good but without the added layer of a nylon blouse or a Crimplene pant, you’re just a walking Petri dish of contagion. I’ve stayed healthy all my life, thanks to synthetics. With neck-to-knee polyester, I never get sick. And I never get sick thoughts. Well, less often.
‘Strain Your Gherkins: Ethel Chop’s Guide to Life in a Modern World’ is still around if you look hard enough. Details, along with beauty tips and several startling photographs, can be found at Ethel’s website.
Andrea Powell is a Melbourne-based writer-performer, and the long-time manager of Ethel Chop.
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