Wednesday, November 20

There's a blackbird sitting on the fence just outside my window and only about 8 feet from me.  Apparently, he doesn't know I'm here or knows that he's protected by the window. He's wet so has just had a bath and is busy preening his feathers.  It reminds me that I am due a shower this morning.  When the weather is cooler as it is now, and we're not doing much, I only shower every second day.

When did this obsession with showering every day take hold?  I'm old enough to remember when normal people only had a bath once a week, and you didn't get exclusive use of the bath water: 'Hurry up!" someone would shout. "Your brother is waiting to hop in before the water gets too cold."  The good old days!

Paul, the fellow who is renting Unit 1, has just walked past the window on his morning walk.  He seems to be a single man and works at a local Call Centre. He must be on the 11 to 7 shift today.  He normally drives an old Toyota van but has a lovely old Lexus in the garage which he brings out on weekends to take for a run.  I know he has a couple of daughters who live in Hobart and he often makes the trip down to see them at the weekend.

Tuesday, November 19

I had an early start this morning, having to drive Jamie into town.  He is part of an interview panel at the hospital and parking there is impossible so I offered to drop him off. Marilyn has gone to her Craft group and I'm at home, babysitting Archie. I don't mind an occasional half-day to myself; it gives me a chance to catch up on some of the rubbish I watch on Youtube.

Another task I have on my list is to enter a competition online.  I enjoy quiz magazines and I've just completed the latest issue of Better Home and Gardens Puzzle book.  I can now enter my answers on their website which saves me finding an envelope and stamp to post in the entry form.  I don't know why I bother, though.  I've been doing this for years and have never won anything.  This particular issue is offering prizes like a washing machine, a mobile phone and a smart TV but, with my luck, the best I could hope for is a pair of earbuds. 

Really, though, anything would be gratefully received.  

Monday, November 18

 I mentioned that Marilyn and I have been re-watching Madam Secretary.  You have to take it with a grain of salt, making allowances for the fact that it's produced for an American audience and there will be a level of massaging of the reality of that country's place in the world. However, it's escapism at a reasonably intelligent level.

One of the main characters is the US President, a lantern-jawed, straight-shooting, decisive individual, well aware of the challenges of his position.  He always makes the right decision, no matter how complex or delicate the situation.

Marilyn and I have taken to playing a game, 'What would Donald Do?', trying to imagine what Donald Trump might do, or say he would do, in a similar situation.  It's great fun and we believe his 'go-to' response to any world crisis would be to invite everyone to Mar-a-Lago where he would charge everyone and their entourage full price for the accommodation, insist they play rounds of golf with him and not let them leave until the situation is resolved.

I suppose we'll have a chance in the next few years to see how close to the truth we are.

I wrote the following story in May this year:

AFTER TWENTY YEARS ….                                                                                31 MAY, 2024

 "G’day.  Long time, no see.  How’ve you been?”

“Is that the best you can do?  We haven’t seen each for twenty years and all you can say is ‘How’ve you been?’”.

 "Well, whose fault is it that we haven’t kept in touch? Certainly not mine.  I have sent out a Christmas letter religiously every year and I can’t remember the last time we even received a card in reply.”

“Haven’t you got a ‘phone any more?  Would it be too much trouble to pick it up and press a button or two?  Our number hasn’t changed, although it wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve lost it.”

“Hang on a minute.  ‘Phones work both ways.  You could just as easily have picked up yours and rung me.”

Geoff took a deep breath.  He knew it was going to be like this.  He and his brother had never been close and, if Geoff had any memories of their time growing up, they always included their frequent fights.

He took another breath and mentally gave himself a shake. He could handle this; he was a mature individual who had dealt with his share of difficult situations.  Dealing with his brother should be no harder than some of the other confrontations he had lived through.  Could this meeting be any harder than the time he had separated the two Italian grape-pickers in the Barossa winery, both brandishing knives?  Or the time in Fiji when two rival gangs hurled coconuts at each other, and he was the only overseer in sight?

But this was his brother, breathing fire, and it was always harder when a member of the family was involved.  Of course, he was handicapped by the fact that Harry wasn’t interested in winning an argument: all he wanted to do was to make his brother lose control.  If Harry could bring Geoff to the stage where he was screaming in annoyance, he was happy and would just smile, metaphorically rub his hands together, and leave the field of battle. 

It was one of the reasons that Geoff had moved his family to Alice Springs.  It was about as far from other Australian cities as you could get and so it was unlikely that Harry and his brood would drop in uninvited.  Yet, here they were: against all the odds, Harry, and his surly wife, Samantha.

Outside, Geoff could see the bulk of the caravan which Harry was in the process of towing across Australia.  Typically, Harry hadn’t let Geoff know that a visit was imminent.  He hadn’t even let his brother know that he had taken Long Service Leave and set off on the six-month trip. The first Geoff knew of it was when the ungainly rig pulled up outside their house, flattening a camellia bush in the process.

Of course, Geoff had to appear to be hospitable and invited Harry and his wife into the house.  Thankfully, there were no children to deal with as they had, long ago, left to make their own way in the world.  One of them, Geoff remembered, was a particularly difficult child, causing mischief wherever he went.  Probably managing a Fortune 500 company now, he mused.

“How long are you staying in the Alice?” Geoff asked.

“Oh, that’s typical!” Harry burst out. “We’ve only just arrived and you’re already counting the days till we leave.”

Days? thought Geoff.  Surely they’re not going to be here for days!

“Well,” said Harry. “It’s been a hard drive through the outback and we don’t have to move on for a week.  We’re a bit fed up with the caravan and I said to Samantha that you will find a bed for us.  It will give us a chance to catch up and, maybe, have a few hands of poker.  Remember the number of times you tried to beat me, but you never could.  I must have stung you for a few hundred dollars over the years. This’ll be your chance to win it back.”

Can things get any worse, thought Geoff?  Just when I thought my life was, finally, going along as it should, my idiot brother shows up.  It’s just like the old days – everything I do is spoiled by this insidious monster of a brother I’m stuck with.

He took a deep breath and looked at his wife, signalling with his eyebrows that she should say nothing.  “Oh, what a shame.,” he said.  “Rhonda and I are flying to Darwin tomorrow for a week but, I’ll tell you what, I’ll leave you the keys and you can stay here.  I’m disappointed we won’t be able to catch up but it can’t be helped.  Maybe another time.”

Sunday, November 17

 I think it will be an indoors day today: it's overcast and cold.  We have a couple of chairs and a small table on the little strip of concrete at the front door and it's a pleasant spot for enjoying a cup of coffee but that won't happen this morning. I've been up for an hour, watched a YouTube video of Steve Marsh on the island of Hoy and had my breakfast, but Marilyn has taken the chance for a lie-in.  

Yesterday was a big day in Longford when they had the Annual Blooms Festival.  As the name suggests, it has to do with flowers; there's a big display at the Town Hall and lots of open gardens.  There were little groups of pedestrians up and down our street all day walking from one garden to another.  I'm pleased that nobody arrived demanding to look at mine. Also, there was an 'Artisan Market' at the gymnasium at the top of Burghley Street.  I drove past and the carpark was full.

I had trouble turning into the supermarket carpark with the number of cars coming into town.  Longford seems to be the place for festivals: apart from Blooms, there's a regular Vintage Car Show, a Festival of Trucks, the usual Country Show, Art Exhibitions and a couple of Poultry Shows.  You could be at something every weekend if you were so inclined. (Hint: we're not!)

Saturday, November 16

 When I was diagnosed with diabetes, I resigned myself to a lifetime of watching my diet, avoiding the food I enjoyed most and taking blood sugar readings every morning.  I don't know how many years I have suffered the regular pin-prick to draw a drop or two of blood but, when I read somewhere that a smart watch could take a reading by magic, I determined that I would have one.

"We'll get you an Apple Watch," said Jamie, the last of the big spenders, but I reminded him that I didn't have an Apple 'phone so he switched tack and suggested an Android model for $199.  It would have been nice but I resisted and found a cheap copy on Temu for $28.  I've had it for twelve months now and it works brilliantly.  I plug it in each night and take my reading before I have anything to eat or drink in the morning.  This morning the reading was 4.6. I suspect it reads a bit lower than reality but have convinced myself that I should worry more about fluctuations than the actual number.  It looks just like an Apple watch, too, so I also have the 'show-off' factor.

This morning Marilyn asked me what else the watch did, apart from telling time, I had no idea.  I pressed a button on the side and a menu popped up.  I chose 'workout' and numbers started to appear under various headings.  An hour later, it tells me that my heart rate is 86 bpm, I've expended 327 calories. I've covered 217 steps and 0.16 km.  And I haven't even been outside.

Friday, November 15

 I seem to have lost the last two days but I'm back on track now.  The cleaning lady is coming this morning.  She does have a name but I'm never sure who it will be.  Because it's already 10.08, Marilyn is confident that it will be Sandra, (the others tend to come earlier), but we are ready to be surprised if it happens to be someone else.  We've filled in the time by doing a Coles order and that saves a trip into town.

We tried to sit outside this morning to have our coffee but a cold wind drove us back indoors.  Perhaps I was a bit premature thinking that Summer has come to Longford; we'll still have a few days of cold weather before we can enjoy being outside.

Nothing else is planned for today.  I might try to write something but it's more likely I'll get back into my book or even see another episode of Madam Secretary.  We're watching this series again and it's interesting to see the many ways in which the US manages to save the world from disaster in the space of a 43-minute episode.  The worry is that there might be people around the world who think that it is all true and wonder why all the rest of the world is not falling over itself in gratitude, especially now that D. Trump is back on the throne.  

Where would the world be without the US Republican Party?

DON’T ASK                                                                                          JUNE 12, 2020

Do you find, like me, that some people seem to have been born with the ability to irritate everyone around them without really trying, or meaning to?  I had an uncle like that.  Whenever he was around I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck start to bristle, obviously some sort of primitive warning that it was time for me to run away.  To be fair, he never did me any physical harm but he had a terrible effect on my state of mind. I’ve often wondered what it was about my uncle that attracted my aunt but she often spoke dreamily about Richard Gere and Harrison Ford so clearly she wasn’t looking for subtlety or depth in her ideal man.

I also tried to analyse what it was about my uncle that irritated me so much and there were several things which sprang to mind.  He had a perpetual smirk: an expression which seemed to signify that he had an innate sense of superiority.  I know you can’t choose the face you are born with but surely you can control to some extent the expression you put on it. 

To go with his smirk, he was what we used to call a smart-aleck.  No matter what the topic of conversation, he always claimed to have special insider knowledge not available to the rest of us.  And he used cutting expressions like: “Didn’t you know that?” and “What did they teach you at that University you spent so many years at?” 

His name was Lancelot. Yes, I know it’s bizarre but perhaps his mother had a romantic yearning for the days of King Arthur, and her husband was happy just to let her have her way, but it was an unusual name for someone living in a middle-class Australian suburb.  I would have thought it would make sense for him to use his middle name (William) or shorten his first name to Lance but, no, he clung to the incongruity of the name as if using it as a weapon to beat all the rest of us plebs.

Another of the things which irritated me most about Uncle Lancelot was his speech. He had a whiny voice, like a querulous bank manager complaining to a junior clerk about taking an extra five minutes for his lunch hour.  When he began one of his lengthy monologues about what the government should be doing about the current fiscal downturn or the pitfalls of our immigration policy, I had to use all of my willpower to stop myself from screaming.

And on the top of my list of things I hated about my uncle was his habit of turning any polite inquiry about his state of health or a throwaway remark about how he was going into a tirade about the extraordinary trials he was dealing with and the unfairness of life.  I confess, I didn’t have a comprehensive vocabulary of conversation starters but my tentative “How are you?” or How are things?” would invariably be met with a “Don’t ask!” and my heart would sink as I knew what was coming.

Tuesday, November 12

 Our electricity provider, Aurora, has introduced something called Power Hours.  Customers register a 3-hour period when there is no charge.  It's not regular; it's an occasional 'event'.  We chose 3 hours last Saturday afternoon. We postponed our showers to that time, did a big load of washing and I mowed the lawn (with our electric mower).   We save $1.46!  Hmmm. Not what I'd call a great success.

Marilyn has gone off to have a blood test. Apparently, she couldn't have it at the local facility and has had to go in to the whiz-bang clinic in town.  Jamie is driving her so I can get my paperwork in place for tomorrow's Probus meeting.  I made a mistake in taking on the job of Treasurer; it obliges me to go to the meetings and sometimes I'd prefer not to.  I've never been comfortable with men-only organisations; the Deloraine club was mixed and that was fine and I suppose I expected the Longford group to have a similar feeling, but it hasn't.  Being single-sex has an effect on choice of speakers, mood of the meetings, social occasions and so on.

My plan at the moment is to hang around until the next AGM in March, resign as treasurer and slip away gracefully.