Mince pies in mid-July? It is just wrong. I was so bemused to see the festive pile in Woolworths a few days ago that my trolley almost took out the display at the end of an aisle. Then I remembered some people get out the bunting and cook a turkey midwinter, pretending to be in the ''old country''. Strange.
Bar100 at The Rocks about 7.30 last Friday evening: paying $32 for a Dirty Martini (light on the dirty and a single shot). That was wrong, too; I'm not made of money. But the Grey Goose vodka could have laid an egg in the time it took the barman to locate the bottle and we were just grateful to grab it and escape the DJ's music to the adjoining quiet and rather ecclesiastical-looking room. The same drink on the second round was charged at $28. Strange.
An apple that doesn't go brown. How strange is that? It has the US in a tailspin. "This week in creepiness: apples that don't turn brown,'' an American website pronounces. "Do we want non-browning apples?'' another asks.
The affront to the country's apple-pie order is a genetically modified fruit with a synthetic gene that reduces production of the enzyme responsible for browning. Its creator, Canadian company Okanagan Specialty Fruits, is seeking regulatory approval for the Arctic Apple in the US. If it goes ahead, the first fruit will be Golden Delicious and Granny Smith but it is a long way down the track, with trees being sold only now.
''Lemon juice is an inelegant solution to browning apples, and I ain't carrying lemon juice around with me,'' Robert Wilson wrote on Twitter. It was a strange - no, bizarre - comment, but the wider concern focuses on the fact the Arctic Apple will be one of first genetically engineered fruits in a country where processed foods with some genetically modified ingredients have been widespread since the 1990s.
The product will appeal to food industries and supermarkets. Think cut fruit in supermarket packs.
All that would be fairly academic if it weren't for the fact that a few years ago Australia launched Enchanted, an apple that doesn't go brown and was bred in Western Australia using conventional breeding techniques. It is sourced from Lady Williams and Golden Delicious and tastes similar to Pink Lady, also an Aussie creation.
Enchanted has been 20 years in the making. But why, oh why, don't we scream from the top of Capital Hill about this?
Why are we so bad at selling our extraordinary achievements? There's something strange about that.
