Thursday, August 31

I'd missed the development but it seems that an important icon of my wardrobe is under threat.  My treasured white polo shirts have suddenly become the garment of choice for white supremacists.  How do I know?  Because, more than you would expect of the torch-bearing marchers at Charlottesville sported pristine white shirts with neat collars and two buttons at the neck.  Apparently, someone decided that white polo shirts would give an air of respectability.  As if!

What's the world coming to?  Nobody really knows whether polo shirts grew out of British polo players in Argentina or India, but they soon became associated with sports like polo, yachting and golf, games which necessitated access to a horse, an ocean-going vessel or a dozen or more hand-tooled clubs. The polo shirts soon became an aspirational garment.  I know, when I wear one of mine I'm treated with more respect.  People don't know whether I have a yacht tied up in the Meander River so go out of their way to be deferential.

Coloured polo shirts don't have the same cachet as white ones and the bizarre invention of long-sleeved polos will soon be confined to the dustbins of history.  .Ralph Lauren seems to be the brand of choice, with the famous man on a horse logo.  David Jones is selling them this week for $139.  I have a couple of similar shirts I bought in Manila - called Santa Barbara Polo and Racquet Club with a similar man on a similar horse.  I think I paid about $39 for them.  

The question is: do white supremacists buy genuine Ralph Lauren, made in China by sweat shop labour, or do they buy cheap knock-offs, also made in China by sweat shop labour?  It's a tricky ethical question.

Sunday, August 27

I had a teacher at school called Fred Smith who was a bit eccentric.  He drove an old car (something like a Model A Ford) and was ostensibly in charge of the Wednesday afternoon Tennis program.  His involvement took the form of identifying where tennis could be played and allocating budding Rosewalls and Hoads to appropriate venues.  After the last lesson on Wednesday morning, we would grab our Bluebird racquets, catch a bus and head to our court of the week.

In all the time I went to tennis, Fred only came once to check that we were there.  No doubt, he had lots of venues to patrol, and maybe Brian and I had shown early signs of becoming responsible adults and didn't need close supervision. Whatever the reason, our Summer Wednesday afternoons were treasured.  In the winter, of course, it was Soccer and that was regarded as a real sport and teachers made sure we turned up and had our names ticked off.

I thought of that today when I came across a Richard Fidler conversation podcast with someone called Fred Smith: the Musical Diplomat.  His real name is Ian Campbell,Smith and he works for the Department of Foreign Affairs.  His work is interesting but his hobby is more so.

He plays guitar, sings and writes songs.  The first song he wrote was called The Ballad of Jose and Charmaine.  He envisaged them as a waiter and waitress in a small restaurant in Wollongong.  Even if you move to Tasmania you can't escape your past!

Friday, August 25

I was half-watching a TV program last night about tourism in Scotland.  I suppose I was hoping to get a glimpse of places I knew but, apparently, the most scenic parts of Scotland have passed me by.  Then a comment by the presenter made me prick up my ears.  Talking about mountain climbing he made the extraordinary statement that, after the First World War, working-class men from Glasgow and Edinburgh started to get involved in climbing on their free weekends.  My first thought was, why does the fact that they are working-class matter?

But, of course, in that era, sport was very much the bailiwick of the idle upper classes (I've always wanted to use that word).  Who can forget the great film Chariots of Fire with the talented amateurs, who were not obliged to make a living, putting their energies into Olympic participation.  My favourite scene is the one where Lord Andrew Lindsay, played by Nigel Havers, puts a full champagne glass on each of his hurdles while training, to make sure he didn't bump them.

When I was young, I used to read stories about a working class athlete called Alf Tupper, the Tough of the Track.  'Tough' had a particular meaning: it wasn't necessarily derogatory but differentiated the working class men from the 'toffs'.  I revelled in the fact that Alf used to win his races despite the efforts of various upper class twits putting obstacles in his way.

Of course, with the appalling loss of upper class twits during the First World War, organisations like the Alpine Club had to look further afield for new members, even if they had to accept people who wore flat hats and drank beer.  The older members might have had to change their attitude a bit.  One of their journals of the time gave some advice to prospective mountaineers:

1. Make your travel arrangements through Thomas Cook. 2. Keep your ice axe firmly in front of you. 3. Follow the guides because they know the way.

The new working class mountaineers were more likely to travel on their bicycle (if they were lucky) and the idea of paying for a guide would have been laughable.

Anyway, the new egalitarian approach to mountaineering paid dividends right across Europe with the conquering of faces like the Eiger, and eventually Everest itself.

Finally, I love this contemporary photograph from 1937 highlighting the gulf between the toffs and the toughs.  It was taken the Eton-Harrow cricket match.  The two boys from Harrow are waiting to be collected to go home for  the weekend; the 'toughs' have wagged school to try and make a bob or two at the match opening taxi doors and carrying luggage and so on.

Thursday, August 24

A couple of times a week, soon after finishing my dinner, I am wracked by a sneezing fit - between a dozen and fifteen explosive sneezes with teary eyes and massive amounts of phlegm in my throat.  Not a very pleasant subject I agree but it's been happening for years and I've never been able to identify the trigger.  I suspect it might be food-related, but we've thought about links with afternoon sun coming from the wrong angle, a cold breeze coming from opening the freezer, or some unidentified pollen infiltrating the room.  But none of these fit.

The human body is certainly affected by triggers.  Things we see on TV send our minds back to our childhood, a person's mannerisms can remind us of someone we met years ago, and thought we had forgotten.  Hearing particular songs can be evocative of experiences we had previously.  I heard Daryll Braihwaite singing Horses the other day and I thought of a particular party I had gone to.  Neil Diamond songs always trigger memories of our flat in Homebush in the early 1970s.  The Beatles' song I Wanna Hold Your Hand reminds me of a camp at Bundeena.

Smells are particularly powerful triggers - the smell of cooking, or a particular perfume can unlock recollections of childhood.  The smell of boot polish always takes me back to polishing my new winkle-picker shoes ready for the first time I wore a dinner suit.

I have to be careful when I smell a cup of coffee because it triggers me to reach for a biscuit and my diet doesn't allow that any more, but the oddest trigger which I have to deal with is when I clean my teeth.  When the first tang of peppermint meets my tongue or gums I have an uncontrollable urge to go to the toilet - even if I have just been.  Like the dog marking his territory, I have to squeeze out just a couple of drops, just so the urge is satisfied.

Wednesday, August 23

Marilyn has gone out tonight, leaving me to watch a documentary I downloaded, called 'Growing Up in Scotland'.  The first part concentrated on Education which was interesting enough but Part 2, which looked more at the social history, was very confronting, particularly of the period following World War 2.  That, of course, is when I lived in Scotland.

My memories are narrowly focused and I'm sure we were always warm, well-dressed and well fed, but it seems most of the population at that time lived in the most appalling conditions.  The tenements of Glasgow were so bad they were featured in illustrated magazines all over the civilised world.  The Gorbals became a byword for the very worst of slums.  The images of children in the late-1940s and 1950s were often heart-breaking but two women who were interviewed talked about a happy memory of an artist who visited often, drawing the children in pastels.  Joan Eardley became famous and her child subjects remember her with warmth, especially because she usually rewarded them with a 'treacle piece' and a threepenny bit.

The images are easily found on the Internet but here are a couple of examples:

Tuesday, August 22

It's nearly a fortnight since I wrote my last blog.  I haven't been particularly busy, so I can't use that as an excuse, and there's certainly been a lot happening in the mad world of Australian politics which is deserving of comment.  No, I think it is the weather.  There's a lot written about how bad weather can slow you down, like a mild form of hibernation.  But, whatever the cause, I've enjoyed the past couple of weeks, allowing the world to pass me by and avoiding anything which suggests work.

While I've been vegetating, the local farmers have been busy.  There are lots of lambs around and the word is it has been a great season with a huge number of births and few deaths.  Carrots are also on the go.  The harvest is in and there have been huge trucks up and down the highway, taking the crop to wherever carrots go to be washed, graded, processed, weighed, packed, stored, etc.  For all I know, they might also to be DNA-tested, de-sexed, made halal and injected with hormones, but why would you bother.

Some farmers have not done as well as others.  There's a 2-acre field just outside town which was planted with carrots this year but something has gone wrong and, the other week, the ground was turned over and the whole crop has been left to rot.  I don't know whether there was a growing problem, or the farmer lost his contract, but it has turned out to be a bad year in that family's life.

We usually buy our carrots at Woolies or Coles at $1 a bag, small, insipid and bland, but today we were given a bag of the biggest carrots I have ever seen - freshly picked and coated with red Deloraine soil.  Nera was given them by one of her workmates and she shared them with us. They remind me of the carrots that Bugs Bunny used to eat: large, wedge-shaped and bright orange.  Looks like Curried Carrot Soup is on the menu (or Carrot and Ginger, or Cream of Carrot ....).

Wednesday, August 9

Our Rotary meeting last night was held at Ashgrove Cheese.  There's a big expansion program going on there and we wanted to look at it before production started and visitors would be banned.  Cheese making started at Ashgrove around 1989 when the Bennett family took the plunge to extend the scope of their dairy farm.  One of the daughters, Jane, was sent off to England to learn how to make cheddar, and her father and uncle approached the bank in Deloraine for a big loan.

The company has been a real success, gaining an international reputation.  The new extensions will enable them to make 6 tonnes of cheese per day.  That's only working one shift.  If demand increased, they would be able to double or triple that output.  The basis of the new production line is a pair of 7000 litre stainless steel tanks from New Zealand.  Other bits of equipment were sourced from Canada and Italy, apart from the pieces that were available in Australia.

Like many Tasmanian enterprises, Ashgrove blossomed without any Government support.  At the time, one of the brothers was on some high-powered industry body and he used his influence to bring the top people in the field to Deloraine to advise on the project.  Last night, we were served a beautiful meal with smoked salmon, ham, various salads, many cheeses, followed by home-made slices and ice-cream.  Drinks included wine, cider and fruit drinks.  Everything was produced within a ten kilometre radius of Ashgrove.

We are certainly fortunate to be living in such a productive part of Australia where the famous can-do spirit of the old-timers still flourishes.

Thursday, August 3

The conversations which occur on the bus I drive to Swimming on Wednesdays are amazing.  My passengers are all long-term residents of Deloraine and have a farming background, so they can talk with equal authority on the town gossip and things agricultural.  Yesterday, there was a comment on dung beetles and my ears pricked up.  I didn't even know we had dung beetles in Tasmania.  I thought they only lived in Africa, living their miserable lives shoving around great lumps of elephant manure.

But, yes, there are a couple of native species, and they have been supplemented in recent years by the introduction of other species from Africa and Europe.  Checking the Internet, I found a company called Dung Beetle Solutions (am I the only person who finds this hilarious?), and a 1950s Government initiative called The Dung Beetle Project.  Apart from being a great film title, this is a good example of the 1950's thinking that all our perceived problems could be solved by introducing another species - think cane toads.

It began with arrival in Australia of Dr George Bornemissza from Hungary who noticed that our paddocks were covered with ugly brown cowpats.  This was unlike Europe where the local dung beetles did a sterling job keeping the fields green and disease-free.  It turned out that our Aussie beetles would only deal with marsupial poo.  So was born The Dung Beetle Project and, after Sixty years, these industrious little creatures have worked tirelessly to clear our paddocks.

Everybody is happy, except my ladies who can't get a decent cowpat for their roses.

Wednesday, August 2

Our Probus club celebrated Christman in July yesterday - a day late and fewer people than we expected.  It's well known that it's impossible to organise a function in Deloraine and expect to predict numbers.  I asked several times who was coming, who wasn't coming and who hoped to come but, as the day approached, I was no wiser.  I crossed my fingers and told the pub 18.  In fact 14 turned up, including two I thought were overseas.  The pub proprietors just shrugged their shoulders; they've seen it all before.

Our meal was nice, three meats on a bed of mash, and a Bain Marie filled with various vegetables.  The meats were turkey, pork and a slice of ham: not my favourite meats but Christmassy enough for the occasion.

I've never been a fan of roast pork.  I think it goes back to my childhood and the books I read, Drums of Mer, The Coral Island, etc which talked about cannibals.  Humans were called long pig because the story was that they tasted just like pig.  In my fevered imagination the corollary must also be true: pork must taste like human flesh.  No thank-you, I'll stick to lamb.

There's also the tale of the Edinburgh barber, Sweeney Todd who slashed the throats of his customers, tipped their bodies into the cellar where his accomplice baked them into pork pies.  

And, it's no coincidence that the criminal classes call policemen 'pigs', and I believe surgeons can transplant pig valves into a human heart.  Are pigs and humans interchangeable?

As you can imagine, I also have an aversion to pork sausages, but that's another story entirely.