Saturday, January 27

After our day in the sun yesterday, we braved the weather once again to go to a garden wedding, of one of MarIlyn's 'girls' from Grammar.  With the temperature pushing 30 degrees, the men were all in their suits, long-sleeved shirts, ties and big hats, while the women more sensibly reflected the weather in their summer dresses.  After the ceremony, the men who could changed into shorts and t-shirts while the rest of us made do with taking off our jackets and rolling up our sleeves.

We haven't been to a wedding since Jamie and Nera tied the knot so Marilyn was quite excited to be able to dress up and she made a point of choosing a shirt for me that matched her outfit.  Once again, I fulfilled the role of accessory.  

It was a typical Australian country wedding: no overt formality but heaps of goodwill and everyone out to have fun.  They didn't have the Wedding March; instead the bride walked across the lawn to a song called You're the Centre of My World.  One American guest said he could have been in Alabama, without the drunkenness and fighting.  I'm glad I don't go to the weddings he attends.

All in all a good day but we're a wee bit tired this evening.

Friday, January 26

An embarrassing moment today when Facebook put up a 'memory' from three years ago - a photo of me, wearing the same shirt I had on today, and I still think of it as my 'new' shirt.

Thursday, January 25

A couple of times a year, I receive a reminder from my doctor's practice that it's time for my regular check-up with the Practice Nurse.  I don't know how long this has been going on but it involves 45 minutes with the nurse, followed by a quick visit to the doctor to follow up any anomalies.  The nurse checks my blood pressure, height, weight, blood sugar, etc and quizzes me about any changes in my day-to-day life.  He gives me pep talks about achieving a healthy lifestyle and reinforces the benefits of exercise.  Ho hum!

It's pretty lucrative for the practice, of course; I signed a chitty for Medicare which totalled $298.  If I were paying, I'd find a good reason to avoid it but, generally, it is a useful exercise in keeping me on the straight and narrow.  It's a bit worrying, though, when he cheerfully informs me that my height is now 179cm, when I've been telling people I'm184cm since I was a teenager.  Maybe his tape measure is faulty.

After the most recent visit, Marilyn and I decided we would become more determined in our use of the treadmill on days when we didn't go out: three stints of 10 minutes each for a start, building up over time as our fitness improved.  Marilyn asked me to find a Step Counter app for the phone but it turns out our iPhones count our steps, whether we like it or not.  When I checked, I was informed I had walked 5416 steps on one day last week, and walked up one flight of stairs.  Big brother watching me and checking up!

The only drawback is the device only operates when it is in my pocket.  If I leave it at home when I am rowing on the river, nothing is recorded and nobody believes me when I tell them how virtuous I am.  The solution is obvious and a wonderful opportunity for a new piece of technology - a fit watch which I can wear all the time and it will send information to my phone wherever it happens to be.

On to eBay to check the possibilities.  The search goes on but I have already rejected one luxury model which has a function to remind me when I have been sitting too long.  That I can do without.

Saturday, January 20

When I wrote about the number of UK Prime Ministers who went to Eton College, I thought of the famous quote: 'The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton', supposedly said by the Duke of Wellington.  Apart from the fact that the Duke hated his three years at Eton, the school didn't, in fact, have any playing fields until much later, so he probably never said it.

Matthew Arnold, the poet, was quite scathing:

The aged Barbarian [ie: a member of the English upper classes] will, upon this, mumble to us his story how the battle of Waterloo was won in the playing-fields of Eton. Alas! disasters have been prepared in those playing-fields as well as victories; disasters due to inadequate mental training - to want of application, knowledge, intelligence, lucidity.

And, George Orwell, writing in 1942, picked up this criticism.

‘Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.’

He went on to elucidate that, since the 1850s, all wars involving England (sic) have been marked by a series of early defeats, and eventual victory has been attained by the efforts of people socially inferior to the chinless wonders in command (often Highland regiments or Irish volunteers).  Orwell said the quote was an example of 'interested knowledge' where the words supported the position of the powerful.  He believed that knowledge is generated and sustained by 'the elite' and we poor mugs just accept what we are told.  And the fact that more than one-third of Prime Ministers went to Eton can't just be an accident. I wonder what would happen if the quote wen't something like this, 'the disaster on the Somme had its birth on the playing fields of Eton.

Friday, January 19

We're on the midst of the early-January torpor when, every year, nothing much happens.  We still make our couple of trips each week to Launceston for various appointments and take the chance to catch up on our reading between times.  Jamie's ride-on mower broke down in mid-December and wasn't returned until last week, so there was the beginnings of a significant wilderness developing at Dilston.  Jamie put out a cry for help,so we spent a day giving him a hand.  I rode the mower while he and Marilyn raked up grass and carted it away for future burning.

There's a mis-conception that operating a ride-on mower is an easy job.  That may be so when tidying-up a carefully maintained football field, but struggling around a rough piece of ex-pasture land takes skill, dedication and endurance.

Over the last few days, we've watched the second series of The Crown on Netflix.  We enjoyed the first series but the second is outstanding.  Part of the attraction is that it is talking about our history, and people we think we know.  But, of course, our memories are flawed and we probably didn't have all the facts at the time, anyway.  They covered the Suez Crisis, the Independence Movement in Africa and the Kennedy Assassination, and showed them in a whole new light.

The class system was alive and well in Britain in the sixties.  The political class came from a very narrow group of people.  Since the 1700s there have been 56 prime ministers in the UK; 19 attended Eton College.  The latest is David Cameron, and another old Etonian, Boris Johnson, is waiting in the wings.  In any sensible society, Boris would be seen for the clown he is, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did eventually become PM.

Checking some details on the internet after the final episode, I came across a little questionnaire: Which cast member of The Crown are you?  We answered a few questions and discovered that I was most like Winston Churchill, and Marilyn was just like Princess Margaret.  I suppose they might have got one right by a fluke, but to get both right is remarkable.

Tuesday, January 2(2)

Reading back over this morning's post, I realise I was a ltlle unclear about what we had been doing.  The trip to Devonport yesterday followed on from a previous trip on Sunday, when we had lunch at a beach-side restaurant called Drift and walked around the Bluff to a lighthouse.

Devonport has the reputation in Tasmania of being a bit seedy.  It's something of a poor cousin in many ways.  The local legend is that, in years gone by, all the crooks and shysters in Victoria, trying to escape the law, would get on the Tasmanian ferry, and end up in Devonport.  A reputation like that sticks and it's only recently that people have started to appreciate the extraordinary attributes of the place.  It's about the same distance from Deloraine as Launceston and we might start to look more in this direction for shopping and so on.

Tuesday, January 2

It was such a nice day yesterday, we decided to go out again.  There's a long walk along the foreshore at Devonport, which we have never done, so we retraced our steps from yesterday, packed a lunch and set off.  We were very impressed; the area is stunning and well looked after by the council.  Hordes of people were enjoying the sunshine, on foot, bikes, or skates and there were lots of pleasant greetings.  We really are lucky in Australia, to live in such a civilised environment.  In the warm Devonport sunshine, all the negative news headlines fade away.

There's a Vietnam War Memorial on the foreshore, built on a breakwater and it's very popular with fisher-people.  Once upon a time I would have said fishermen, but it's an equal opportunity occupation now with just as many females as men.  There seemed to be lots of fish being caught, too, so it was not just a way of passing time.

One of the nicest things about the beach here is that, as well as sand, it has long banks of beautiful rocks. I'm surprised that some entrepreneur hasn't seen an opportunity to make a quid flogging them off to landscape gardeners, and I'm glad they're still here for us to enjoy.  

All-in-all, another great day.