Saturday, September 4th

 We’ve had a few days break from the busyness of the Census so took the chance yesterday for some overdue shopping.  They say it’s a good therapy but I’ve usually found that it’s more of a chore than a pleasure.  However, now that our lives are in the slow lane, we take our pleasures where we find them. 

Marilyn wanted some new linen for the bed and we decided to invest in a ‘topper’ for the mattress in the spare room.  The mattress is not particularly old but this topper will give it a new level of comfort: 2000 gsm of duck down should make a difference.  All we need now is a visitor or two to occupy the bed and the possibility of interstate travel seems no closer.  No doubt the politicians are right when they say, “We don’t want your diseases here,” but I thought we were all in this together. 

With time on our hands, we’ve decided to go through our wardrobes and discard anything we’re not wearing.  Old t-shirts and jumpers are easy but I have a very flash dinner suit I bought at Tramps in Wollongong; it’s a Hugo Boss and cost me a small fortune.  I’ve worn it a bit but I weighed 106 Kg when I bought it and hope never to be that weight again. 

What do I do with it?  On reflection I bought it in 1995 so it’s almost an antique.  Op Shop, I think! 

We have Archie with us this weekend.  Nera and Jamie are in Hobart so we’re dog-sitting.  He’s very good company but he wants to sleep in our bed with us, burrowing down under the blankets and generating enough heat to keep me awake.  He’s used to sharing food with humans and fronts up for his portion when I’m having a biscuit for morning tea.  Of course, vets say we shouldn’t give dogs human food but that’s easier said than done.  We console ourselves with the fact that he’ll be going home in a day or two and they can worry about it. 

Talking about the census, we’re on the final leg.  Each of us had about 250 houses in our area, we’ve made sure they all had their booklet delivered and have made two return visits to make sure they’ve been filled out.  After all that, I still have 29 whose form hasn’t been received so I have a third, and final letter to deliver this week.  If that doesn’t stir them into action, they could be fined but that process is left to the heavies in Canberra. 

In five year’s time, would we do it again?  It’s been hard but we made the mistake of taking an area each.  If we are still fit enough when the next census comes around, we might take one area and share it, because we have enjoyed the experience.  But, let’s not plan for the future.  Live for today, the philosophers say and that’s probably good advice. 

Thursday, August 12th

 I’m at a bit of a loose end this morning. Marilyn has gone off to her Book Club meeting at the library and I’m left at home to look after Archie.  Normally, I’m pretty good at filling in time: I always have a book or two on the go, or I’ll work on a story for my Writing Group but, for some reason, I can’t get motivated today. 

Perhaps it’s the let-down after a couple of weeks of intensive concentration on the Census, or perhaps it’s just a bout of boredom.  Whatever the cause, I’m wandering around looking for something to occupy my mind.  I’ve finished my story for tomorrow’s Writing Group: 764 words on The Bookshop.  I’ve written about a little shop in Cambridge called The Haunted Bookshop I visited in 2013.  It was a quirky little place with piles of second-hand children’s books everywhere. 

I’ve decided I won’t turn on the TV.  I can’t tolerate free-to-air with the know-all talking heads and the usual fare of daytime shows is too much to tolerate.  I could watch something I’ve downloaded but I don’t think I have the concentration to get into something meaningful.  Youtube is often worthwhile but you have to wade through so much dross before you find something watchable. 

Over the last few weeks, I’ve planned future trips to Japan and New Zealand, ready for the time that the world is safe for travellers.  Of course, that’s another futile exercise because costs change so rapidly that today’s plans may be unworkable in a few months’ time.  I find no pleasure in planning without considering costs: I prefer to set a budget, $4000 say, and see how much I can achieve with that limitation.  Recently, I mapped out 10 days in Japan: airfares, rail passes, accommodation, within that budget.  Sadly, it depended on return airfares of $686 each which disappeared from the website within a week. 

New Zealand is another example of what might have been possible if we had been able to leave within a month.  $4000 would buy us return airfares to Christchurch, train trips to Picton, ferry to Wellington, train across to Aukland, 8 nights’ accommodation, visits to Hobbiton and wineries, and flights home.  Well, it might have if we were able to fly within the next month. 

Perhaps I need another hobby. 

PS - I've just realised that today is August 12th - the Glorious 12th, opening of the Grouse Shooting season in UK.  some wit called it the sport involving the Unspeakable shooting the Uneatable.  Now, that's a hobby I haven't considered.

Wednesday, August 11th

 It's raining again today but we have no plans so will probably have a day at home.  We're in that hiatus period of the census, having put out all our booklets and are now awaiting the nod to start the process of  chasing-up the people who haven't got around to filling them out.  I've no idea what percentage of people just ignore the forms when they arrive on their doorstep but, having filled ours out yesterday, I wouldn't be surprised if it's quite a lot.  It seemed to me to be quite unnecessarily complex with irrevelent questions,  Who cares what religion I profess?  My answer is probably a lie anyway.

The way the system works is that all the dwellings I have visited appear on an app on my phone.  As people complete their forms, the icon changes colour so that it is easy to tell who needs a hurry-up.

On the last day of my putting-out the forms, I went back to one area to check on a collection of letter-boxes at the end of one bush track.  There was an old fellow from a house up the hill checking his box.  He recognised me and told me that he had also received a form in the mail.  Wasteful, you might say.  But more importantly, if he chooses to fill out the form he received in the mail, I won't receive that information on my phone and will have to chase him up, unnecessarily!

I'm having a little trouble with my computer.  I use it every day for one thing or another and really can't imagine life without it.  Although I say the same thing about my Surface tablet, ebook reader and Android 'phone.  Life was much simpler in the days before such technology.

I complain to Jamie that my computer isn't doing its job. "When did you buy it?" he asks, "March 31, 2015," I say, "And it cost me $860."  "Well, that's less than $3 per week over that period,"  he says, "It's cheap entertainment."

What he's implying, of course, is that I should buy a new one.  The equivalent model is now only $497 and, at $3 per week, would be 'paid for' in just over 3 years.  Tempting, but is that the answer?  I'll have to think about it.

Working for the Man

Marilyn and I must be on a list somewhere because we often receive invitations on email to apply for part-time jobs with the government, Federal or State.  The latest one was encouraging us to take part in the forthcoming Census.  Our inclination is to apply: the money we earn is handy but, more importantly, it keeps us in circulation with other people and helps us feel we are not totally useless.  Not knowing what was expected, we both applied and were pleased when we were accepted.  Perhaps we should have been suspicious with the quickness of the response but, not having worked in this area before, we were free of any concerns. 

We applied for general dogsbody jobs but a friend ticked the box to be a supervisor.  He is 80 years old and has been a farmer all his life so couldn’t understand why he was picked.  Was there nobody else out there, younger and more experienced in this sort of thing?  Apparently not. 

Our jobs started a couple of weeks ago and we had been allocated to two different supervisors.  Both were bemoaning the fact that the response to the ads had been poor and they were both short of enough workers to cover the amount of work.  If we had known what was expected, we might have been inclined for only one of us to apply and the other to act as (unpaid) support. 

We were each given an area on the map and our role was to develop a database of every dwelling in that area.  We might expect to get around 200 houses each.  Both areas were rural but mine was more small-town with houses closer together.  Marilyn’s was full-rural:  large farms, some with multiple dwellings, muddy tracks with shacks inhabited by hippies and people who had chosen to live ‘off the grid’.  We used an app on our phones to record the details of the dwelling, and pin-point it on a map, deliver a census form to each householder and encourage them to fill it out at the appropriate time.   

This is fairly high-level data input and outside our experience.  To make matters worse, it rained every day we were out.  My habit was to go out to my area for two or three hours every morning, then pick up Marilyn and attack her area in the afternoon for 5 or 6 hours.  Her area was so widespread (it was 16km from one side to the other) that we might cover 200km in an afternoon.  We finished on Thursday but our job will resume after the Census date when we will have to go out to remind anyone who has neglected to fill out his form. 

As I said, the money is always handy and we might normally use it for a holiday.  But, where can we go? 

Saturday, July 10th

 My determination to write more in this blog has come unstuck already; it's been almost three weeks since I last scribbled a message.  In my defence, I might say that nothing much has happened in that twenty days, and that would be true, but a competent diarist should be able to finds something to say, even about nothing.  I've also been busy writing in  my Poetry blog and that's better than nothing.

Marilyn and I are in the habit of watching one of a plethora of UK quiz shows on the TV in the afternoon.  We find most of them on You tube but the availability is a bit random as it depends, I believe, on some nerd with nothing better to do, to capture the program from the TV, translate it into an appropriate format and upload it to Youtube for our enjoyment.  I gather there is some way he might get a modest income if people watch the shows but I have no idea how that works.

Our latest find is 'Only Connect', claimed to be the most difficult quiz show on TV.  The basic format is that contestants are asked to find the connection among four random items.  It is fiendishly difficult and, if I can get one right in a show, I'm delighted.  The presenter is Victoria Coren who, in her other life, is a professional poker player with a net worth of over 2 million pounds sterling, all earned at the poker table.

I picked up a book at the library called For Richer, for Poorer, the story of how she got started in this business.  A well brought-up English girl from a middle-class family, with a First class degree in English from Oxford, it seems is happiest when she is in a seedy, smoke-filled London gambling club or a glitzy, raucous, Las Vegas casino.

Sunday, 20th June, 2021

 I mentioned in my last post that it might be time to consider a holiday.  Since we retired in 2010, we always seemed to be on holiday, or were planning a trip somewhere.  But something happened in the middle of 2016 that made us apply the brakes.  Our last overseas holiday was a cruise around Papua-New Guinea.  I recall it was a belated celebration of our 50th wedding anniversary, and it was great.  We had a cruise around Thailand for our 40th anniversary in 2006, we sailed around the top of Australia and ended up in Perth for our 45th and had another cruise in 2016 for our 50th.  So, there has been nothing since then apart from a few trips to Wollongong.

Our 55th Anniversary passed us by, almost unacknowledged, in January this year but it would be great to celebrate this milestone, even if it is somewhat belated.  We will probably never go on another cruise: the Covid pandemic has highlighted severe flaws in the cleanliness routines of most ships.  With the best will in the world, ships crews can't ensure that everything on the ship is germ-free.  Passengers are people, with all the dirty habits that people everywhere share.  When we were younger and healthier, we coped but in this new Covid world, it's not worth it to take the chance.

New Zealand beckons.  It has dealt with the Covid pandemic better than most countries, it's only a few hours flight away and the native speak English (of a sort).  I looked at some options.  There are lots of coach tours but that's not for us; there are drive-yourself deals but car-hire firms don't like renting to 78-year olds.  We could fly to one of the big cities and go on excursions from there or we could make use of the wonderful trains and enjoy the scenery for the comfort of a warm carriage.

Tentatively, I've mapped out an itinerary: fly into Christchurch for two or three days, take a train to Picton and a ferry to Wellington.  After a few days there, take the train to Auckland.  After a few days there, we would fly home, probably via Sydney.  The next problem is when we can fit it in.  We're booked to work at the census between July and September, We always help with Exam supervision during November, and the pundits are suggesting we might have an election this year, if the PM thinks he might have a chance of winning.

So, I have only  three possible dates: October 7th, November 25th or January 6th.  And, if Sco-mo calls a snap election, we would have to think again.

Wednesday, June 16

 As Jamie and Nera are both at work each day, we've got into the habit of driving to Hadspen each morning to pick up Archie the Chihuahua so he can spend the day with us.  We've decided he will get lonely and fret if he doesn't have company, and then he might start attacking the furniture in his frustration.  I don't know what happens to every other dog in the world whose owners leave them at home when they go to work but that's not our concern.  Maybe we're being too fussy but if dog loneliness weren't a real thing there would be no call for Doggy Day Care Centres and they're popping up everywhere.

Clearly, Archie enjoys it.  When we arrive, he rushes to the car, hops into the back seat and waits for us to put on his safety chain.  He responds to every turn we take on the trip and, by the time we're in our street, he's bouncing up and down with excitement.  It's nice to be appreciated.

Browsing the TV channels for something to watch we stumbled across a British show called the Masked Dancer.  I vaguely recall a show called the Masked Singer a while ago but we didn't watch it.  However, with nothing better to do, we sat down to see what it was about - and were immediately hooked.  It's crazy, there's nothing in the show to recommend it and the production seems aimed at 12-year olds, but something about the presenters is compelling.  Maybe it's senility kicking in.

We received an email a few weeks ago inviting us to apply for jobs at the upcoming census, and we're always looking for interesting things to do and the extra dollars will always come in handy.  There was a follow-up asking us to apply for a Police Check so the wheels are turning.  In November, we have the Exam Supervision and there's a chance there might be an election soon. Any cash we can accumulate will be put towards a holiday.  It seems so long since we were able to leave the state and we can't wait for the chance to do it all again