Wednesday, December 28th .....

So that was Christmas! For us it was a very quiet time. We had great food and enjoyed the fact that there was no pressure. The pressure is on now, of course, to use up the mass of leftover food. At least, with the internet, there's any number of recipes and we've had garlic prawns fettucine, ham quiche and leftover turkey lasagne to excite our tastebuds. My favourite Christmas meal is a fry-up of ham eggs and fruitcake. In the old days I would also have black pudding, tomato and mushrooms but, with the simplicity of the times, I've pared the dish down to its essentials. Great stuff!

It's dangerous to count the cost of Christmas and we don't. Even the surprising number of presents to people we hardly know must add up. Marilyn likes to buy chocolates or biscuits for the people she sees regularly: the hairdresser, the chemist, the lady who does the ironing and so on, and a heap of small boxes of chocolates for the unexpected. She decided on Tuesday morning she would leave out a box for the garbage man, thinking back to the time when it was expected that the garbo, the milko, the baker, the ice man and anyone else who called regularly would all get a Christmas hand-out. The norm was a bottle of beer left standing in a conspicuous spot. In those days when most of us had outside toilets, the dunny man who changed over the full pan for an empty one would also get his bottle. I suppose when he got home his wife would have to wash down all the bottles to remove the smell.

Nowadays, of course, we have two garbage men who never get out of the truck. No matter, we'll leave the boxes on top and stand them up so the men don't miss seeing them and drop them into the truck with the rubbish. At least they drive from the left-hand seat so they should see them easily. With the help of a few stones to hold them up, it was done and before long, we heard the first truck coming up the hill. It pulled up near the bin, the garbo jumped down and grabbed the box, tore off the wrapping and, as he pulled away stuffed the first chocolate in his mouth. Success!

We’ve had terrific weather for the whole of the Christmas season and today we’re expecting another 27 degree day. I took a break from mowing for Christmas Day but I’m back into it now, striving to keep the summer growth under control.

I’ve been busy with the family tree. When I discovered that June Gillies had a mass of information about the Gore family, I made an effort to flesh that out and see what I could discover about the Donachies. There’s a site called Scotland’s People where, for a fee, you can get access to lots of information: birth, death and marriage records, census, etc. I spent a few dollars and have now pushed the Donachie line back to about 1820, when the family first came from Ireland, and the Gore family back to 1762. With one or two exceptions, all the males were coal miners and the women worked in the weaving mills.

I’ve found people who died young, others who had two or three marriages and others who never married. Nobody seemed to stay long in one house: in a 10-year period, it was not unusual to see three or four moves, often within the same street. It would have been a hard life, living on the edge. At the time, mining would have been one of the most dangerous industries, wages were pitifully low and families were large. My generation climbed on the shoulders of those who went before and grabbed the opportunities and advantages that the 20th century made available. We should remind ourselves every day how lucky we are.

And that's my century - 100 posts in 2011!

Friday, December 23rd .....

Christmas comes to Dilston in a very nice, old-fashioned way. Jamie and I were working in the garden last weekend when an old red Tarago van pulled in to the driveway. A young girl jumped out and ran over to me with a couple of colourful little parcels. Happy Christmas, she said. I’ve no idea who she was but it was a wonderful gesture. The van continued on, stopping at letter boxes to drop off some more parcels.

We had also received a flyer in the letter box warning us that the Rural Fire Brigade’s Lolly Drop was being held on Sunday evening. Sure enough, at about 5.30 we heard sirens and horns tooting and three fire vehicles came over the hill and turned into our street. A hand came out of the window and a few lollies were chucked over to us. The houses are well spread out in this area but someone’s trying hard to develop a sense of community.

The only worry is that we might get carol-singers on Christmas eve.

I’ve been to two Giant Steps’ Board meetings this week. The Chairman received a resignation letter from the Principal so we’ve been considering how to respond and make sure the school operates effectively when classes resume after the new year. Anne had only been in the job for two years but had never really settled down and will be happier returning to the Education Department. We’ve decided to appoint the Deputy as Acting Principal for a term while we advertise for a permanent replacement. Of course, the Deputy will be seriously considered but we have to look at all options.

For me, it means a bit more involvement with the school as I’ve been asked to act as an advisor in the first few weeks.

We’ve had some rain overnight and it’s overcast this morning. We’re heading out to Deloraine for a meeting and we’ll stop on the way to pick raspberries. It’s a shame they’ve had some rain on them as they won’t last as long but we’ll just have to eat them more quickly.

I notice that this is my 99th post for the year; the pressure is on to make the century. Watch this space!

Tuesday, December 20th .....

I got so much information about the Gore family from June Gillies’s family that I thought I should make a special effort to push back the Donachie line as far as I could. Nobody else online seemed to be interested in this family so I had to do all the work myself. It’s surprising how quickly the framework fell into place. I’ve now printed out birth certificates for my grandfather, Alexander and his father, John. I’ve discovered that John was a pit pony driver and his wife, Elizabeth had an illegitimate child before her marriage. This child, James Rodger, was accepted as a full member of the family and was listed as stepson in the census.

My mother mentioned to me that there was a fellow called Jimmy Rodger in the family but she didn’t know where he fitted in, so now we know. Going back another generation, I came upon Owen Donachie who was born in Ireland. He first appears in Scottish records, in the 1851 census as a 9-year old in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire where his parents worked on a farm called Graham Land. His father, James, was a Thatcher and his older siblings worked as Tearers, whatever that is. One was listed as a Calico Tearer, but that doesn’t help us particularly.

In the 1861 Census, Owen is working as a labourer at a property called Knecocklav, in Loudon Ayrshire. The farm is 150 acres and owned by Mrs Elizabeth Gilchrist. Also working there is Janet Morton, an 18-year old domestic servant. Owen and Janet marry in 1865 and produce 11 children, one of whom is my great-grandfather, John.

There is a family tradition that one of my ancestors was left as a foundling on the steps of Limerick Castle. It doesn’t seem to be Owen so my next project is to check whether it might be his father, James. Irish records are not as accessible on line as Scottish ones so it’s not going to be easy.

Saturday, December 17th .....

Looking across the range of entries for the Gore family, it is interesting to see the same names recurring from generation to generation; Janet, Helen, Grace, Robert, William, and so on. The same thing occurs in the Christie family. We have lots of Alexanders, Andrews, Johns, Janets, Janes, etc. The Scottish tradition, of course, was to name children after relatives, the first-born son was always named after the paternal grandfather, the second son after the maternal grandfather, the first girl after the maternal grandmother, and so on. It makes things very confusing and you often find 2 or 3 cousins in the same generation with the same name.

I came across an Upstairs, Downstairs moment when I was sorting through the information on Jane Gillies’s tree. Helen Gore was born in 1847, one of a large family and was employed as a domestic servant. In 1871, when she was 24, she workd for the Menteith family in their home in Glasgow. The Menteiths are one of the great families of Scotland and the head of the family has the title of Earl. They are part of the powerful Graham clan.
In 1872, Helen left their employ because she was pregnant. That part of the Gore family believes that the father was Alexander Menteith. Alexander seems to be the name reserved for the Earl, so could it be that she was impregnated by a member of the nobility? Of course, it could just as easily have been the Under Footman, or even the Boot Boy, but not nearly as romantic.

Jane Gillies has discovered that Helen’s child, Janet, was born on January 7th, 1873, at 66 Dalmarnock Street, Glasgow. I’ve found a sketch of the rear of a nearby house in Dalmarnock Street, showing the open, rear staircases, the only access to the upper floors. The note with the sketch also mentions that the only running water to the house was at ‘primitive external sinks’, which would have been installed after 1862, in an attempt ‘to deal with the insanitary conditions in housing if the epidemics which ravaged Glasgow in the 19th century were to be controlled’. Before that, it would have been stand-pipes in the street, with an open drain if you were lucky.




I was also interested in the history of a later family member, Grace Gore, born in 1925. Grace was a Bus Conductress in Glasgow, and that’s enough information for any Glaswegian to know all he needs to know about Grace. Bus Conductresses during and after the Second World War became notorious for their crude and abrasive attitude to their customers. When an American soldier, or a recent immigrant tried to get on a full bus, the conductress would shout, ‘C’moan, Get aff! (Come on, Get off!) The poor old newcomer wouldn’t know whether he was coming or going.
Anyway, Grace married Sid Carter and they moved to Australia in 1960, settling in Carlingford. Their daughter, Elaine, married William Murphy and had three children. Lisa, born 1967 and her sister Nurel, born 1970, now live in Launceston. Their brother Paul Murphy, was born in 1974 in Battery Point, Hobart and is now a chef. I suppose we could pass in the street and wouldn’t know our connection.

Friday, December 16th .....

Five or six years ago, I became interested in building up our family tree and I was amazed at the amount of information I could glean from the internet, mostly from research done by other people willing to share their information. A fellow in Gourdon, Scotland contacted me and offered to search through the archives in the local library on my behalf. He gave me a hand-drawn family treecovering three generations. We were also lucky enough to have a Mormon in our ancestry and another descendant had compiled a fantastic amount of information which was all available on-line. It was great and I ended up with quite an impressive overview of where we had come from in the past 300 years.

However, there were two significant black holes: the line of my mother’s father, Alexander Donachie, and of my father’s mother, Janet Gore. The Donachies still elude me but yesterday I came across a great mass of information about the Gores, gathered by an enthusiastic researcher called June Gillies. She’s managed to push the line back to 1762, and fill in a lot of the significant gaps in the ensuing five generations. It’s a story of the Scottish coal mining industry as most of the men were miners, working in one or other of the large number of mines in the Lanark area near Glasgow. One or two of the women were in domestic service but others were skilled workers in the weaving mills before marrying.

Reading a list of names and dates doesn’t tell you much about the times, but reading between the lines can tell you a whole lot about the conditions under which these people lived. One of the early family members was Janet Davie who was born in 1806 and married John Gore. Janet came from a big family but, when you look at the names of her brothers and sisters, you can see that there was a William born in 1788, a Margaret born in 1790 and a Grizel, born 1798 (Grizel was their mother’s name). Then you notice there is another William, born 1796, another Margaret in 1799 and a second Grizel in 1803. The implication is that the children born earlier had died in infancy and their names were recycled when new children came long.

Another clue to their lives can be seen in the addresses reported in the censuses of 1881 and 1901. Several of the families resided at Watsonville, others at Old Logans Row, and others at Camp Row, Motherwell. The mine-owners, in those days, built rows of tenement houses close to the pithead which were rented out to their workers. They must have been pretty grim. I found some 1914 reports on some of the premises which certainly tell the tale:

Watsonville, Motherwell (John Watson, Limited)
These rows are known as Watsonville, and are situated in the centre of Motherwell Burgh. They are a very poor type of house, and were built over forty years ago. Water is supplied by means of stand-pipes in the street, with an open channel to carry off the dirty water. There is a meagre supply of washhouse accommodation, and grave complaints were made on this score. The streets and back courts are in a very bad condition. [Evidence presented to Royal Commission, 25th March 1914]


Old Logans Rows, Motherwell (Merry & Cunninghame, Limited)
This property is on the side of the Glasgow Road, Motherwell, and consists of a long row of single- and double-apartment houses; rent, 3s. 8d. for single, and 5s. 8d. for double houses per fortnight. Water-closets and washhouses have been erected within the last few years; no coal-houses - coal put under the bed. The single houses are built back-to-back, and are in a very poor condition. [Evidence presented to Royal Commission, 25th March 1914]


I particularly like the comment that they would have to keep the coal under the bed as there was no coal-house. I imagine each miner would get an allocation of coal, probably in bags, and it would be used for cooking as well as heating so would be precious, especially in winter. The old photograph is of a row of miners' cottages at Coatbridge and typical of the day. You can see the open drain down the middle of the road. These are one-storey cottages but many of the 'rows' were two-storey with residents sharing toilets accessed from the outside and wash-houses or sculleries. Most would have only one bedroom and children would sleepon makeshift beds in the kitchen/sitting room or beds set into the walls. It didn't stop the people having large families. In these Victorian times, Scotland had the lowest wages in Europe, the smallest children and the highest mortality rate. It's no wonder they also had a very high emigration rate - to the Americas and the Antipodes. Scotland's biggest export for 100 years was its people.

Thursday, December 15th .....

I’ve never been able to understand the concept of a leaf-blower. I see the eager gardeners out on a Saturday afternoon, blowing leaves and grass clippings off their driveway into the gutter, and watched the wind come up and blow them back again. Or the debris is blown onto someone else’s driveway, and I wonder what’s the point of it all?

I suppose the blower makes a satisfactory noise and, for a fleeting moment, the yard looks better but the job isn’t finished, the problem hasn’t been solved. The problem has simply been moved to another place and, at best, becomes someone else’s problem.


I did wonder when I walked through Bunnings this week and saw all the various models of blowers lined up that perhaps the purpose of a leaf blower is just to give another Christmas gift option for the father who has everything else. It looks good, comes in a range of attractive and masculine colours and, when wrapped, makes a very substantial looking present under the tree. It beats hankies and socks, hands down.

They’ve just finished the last little bit of the new highway outside our house. The asphalt layers have been out this week completing the last two sections of the road surface so that we can have an uninterrupted 100Km/hr ride home. The last part of the process of sealing the road is to spread a layer of fine blue metal on the road. I suppose it stops the tar from sticking to tyres, or it’s a final hard-wearing layer which sinks into the asphalt to extend the life of the road. It’s a dangerous time for drivers because the little chips can be thrown up and can break windscreens, and that’s a particular problem here because the road was built to cater for log trucks going to and from the proposed pulp mill and the drivers have the reputation of being notoriously uncaring of fellow road-users.

Anyway, I’ve noticed that a certain amount of blue metal finds its way to the road edges where it just lies, seeming to cause no harm. However, for some reason, the builders of our highway have decided that the surplus stones have to be shifted off the road. Who knows why! So, there’s a fellow in an orange shirt, armed with a leaf blower walking sideways along the road blowing the stuff into the grass verge. Apart from questioning whether the grass is the right place to shove the stones, I’m astounded at the decision to give him a leaf blower. The nozzle is about 3 inches wide and stones are a lot heavier than leaves so I watch him virtually using the nozzle as a scraper to push the rocks away.

He’s been on the road for three days now. He has a little truck, a sign which encourages drivers to slow down to 60 Km/hr (fat chance!) and 5 or 6 orange cones to give him some protection. He’s on his own and I wonder whether the job has been invented to keep a recalcitrant worker out of sight and out of mind. It’s ludicrous! The section of highway is probably 10 Km long so, in effect, he has a job for life. The thing is, if he had a 15 inch broom, he would do the job in a fraction of the time and wouldn’t be burning fossil fuels into the bargain.

Thursday, December 8th .....

Jamie came across this Canadian ad somewhere. Maybe we should be looking for royalties!

Our proposed trip to Japan, still 24 weeks away, looks set to become the most over-organised holiday ever. The internet certainly draws you in and I find myself following up question after question. When we were in Japan last, in 2005, we discovered that we could travel from our hotel to the Tokyo Railway Station without ever standing on the surface. We simply took the stairs down to the nearest subway station and, by judicious following of our noses, we found ourselves emerging where we wanted to go.

I was interested in seeing whether this might be possible in Osaka. There are 6 railway stations, main line and subway, within 15 minutes walk of our hotel and it didn’t take me long to discover they are all connected underground, not just by tunnels but by shopping malls. Osaka claims to have more underground shopping than any city in Japan, and possibly the world. This may be so because there are many kilometres just near where are staying without looking at other transport hubs in other areas of the city.


So, within 100m of the hotel, we take the stairs down to the Diamor Shopping Mall and walk through to the station we want. On the way, we can get a meal or a snack. There are several coffee shops, two MacDonalds, a couple of noodle shops and, our favourites, bakeries.
Japanese bread is delicious, a little sweeter than ours but that’s not always a bad thing. Certainly, Madi got a taste for their buns and we got into the habit of buying a bagful before we got on the train. Each of us took a tray and pair of tongs and chose what we liked best. How many can I have Grand-dad? was the constant cry. Sometimes the answer was three, sometimes four, but I was never sure I was on the right track.

We keep discovering new forms of wildlife on the ‘farm’.
Today, we noticed a very healthy-looking echidna snuffling through the grass. When he heard us, his snout started twitching as he tried to find where we were and he curled into a ball hoping we would leave him alone. We did!

Monday, December 5th .....

Well, it’s official, we’ve passed the criteria and are now classified as ‘rural’. The first two criteria were easy: our property is too big to kick a football from one side to the other, and we drive a perpetually-dirty 4WD, but the last two eluded us for a while.

We could have got a goat to keep the grass down or Marilyn could have joined the CWA and learned to bake lamingtons but they seemed a bit extreme. And then, as if by chance, we met two criteria on consecutive days.

Yesterday, we bought a chainsaw. Nothing (except perhaps a shotgun) epitomises ‘rural’ more than owning and using a chainsaw. I must say, we felt good and the local fire department will applaud our attempts to keep the property free of dead branches.

The last criteria was met this morning when I woke up to hear the farm cat, CB, yelling about something in the laundry. She sleeps in the laundry each night but has a cat flap to get in and out. Her yelling was to tell me that she had brought home a gift for us: a dead baby rabbit.

I couldn’t believe our luck, the fourth criteria, that the farm cat brings home prey bigger than a mouse, had been met.

So now we are rural. We have to learn to talk more slowly, wear a big hat, take our political views from Barnaby Joyce, show interest in the price of fat lambs, and wait all week for Macca on a Sunday morning. But, it’s worth it. No section of the Australian population has more leeway to whinge and complain. Now, if only I can work out a way to write off our overseas trips as farm expenses.

We decided we would treat ourselves to lunch yesterday. We went to a little restaurant in Gravelly Beach called Kouklis, ostensibly Greek but something for everyone. Jamie had Spanakopita, Marilyn had Fish Cakes with a Greek Salad and I had a Sicilian Fish Stew. Each time we do this we promise it will become more regular but it never does. The restaurant is just a few doors along from 303 Gravelly Beach Road, the holiday house we once had. It looks out over the river to Swan Bay so our current house was almost directly due East. As Jamie said, if we had a boat we could sail across for lunch and save the long drive around through town.

It’s just 9 o’clock here, the sun is shining and there’s not a cloud in the sky and all we have to look forward to is another day cutting down grass. I’m going to spray some roundup on the piles we laughingly call rockeries, and Jamie will get the chainsaw going – just another day in paradise.

Saturday, December 3rd .....

Dad’s folk (as they say in Scotland) came from a small fishing village on the East coast called Gourdon. His father, also John, moved to Lanarkshire to find work and married Janet Gore from Motherwell. Motherwell was the home of the famous Colville Steelworks which produced the best ship-building steel in Europe and supported the Clydeside Shipyards.


My grandfather, though, was a miner and worked in the Blantyre Mine. My father was the first of three children. A girl, Anne, died young and his sister, Janet, married and moved to England. Looking through Dad’s family tree shows that generations of his family were fishermen, although the earliest direct ancestor I have found, George, born 1785, was a Limefiller. There are a few masons and similar occupations among the generations but, essentially, fishing was the family trade. The next generation had a John (born 1821) who was a Whitefisher, a term used to differentiate them from fishermen who caught lobsters and crabs,etc. This John was the first in the family line of boys named John. I'm the fifth in the line, and Jamie (John James!) is the sixth.

The third generation John was born in 1852 and had 9 children but only two boys. George probably died young and John, my grandfather, left the sea behind to seek his fortune in the steel-making towns of Lanarkshire. Sadly, he died in 1946, aged 51. I have a faint memory of him helping my brother who was learning to walk but I would have only been 3 years old and I can’t guarantee it’s not a false recollection, based on family stories.

One of Dad’s aunts married a fishermen called Alexander Gibb whose boat was called the Tunbury Castle. It was a converted canal narrow boat. We visited them in 1950 in Johnshaven, the next village to Gourdon and I have strong memories of that trip. Dad had already sailed for Australia so there was just Mum and my brother and I. We travelled from Glasgow in a Bluebird Coach
and we each had a comic for the trip. We got off the bus at the highway and walked down the hill to the little cottage right on the foreshore in Johnshaven. Uncle Alex had an upturned boat in front of his house, a smokehouse in the back-yard and an attic, which my brother and I were keen to explore. That’s where I keep my ferrets, said Uncle Alex, so we didn’t dare go up there.

That’s where I ate my first crabs and the taste in my memory is as vivid as the day I ate them.

So Dad’s generation produced 2 sons named Christie, and my generation has produced three: my son, Jamie, and Sandy’s sons, Andrew and Simon. Jamie has only one daughter and Andrew has two girls. Simon, though, has two boys, Jack and Ty, so the Christie name continues into another generation.

Thursday, 1st December .....

Only 24 sleeps until Christmas and, for the first time in several years we haven’t planned a trip away. Last year, we were in Mudgee and the year before on the Diamond Princess but this year we will be at home. No doubt, we will find things to occupy us but it will be interesting to have a quiet Christmas on our own.

I was up early yesterday morning, pulled on a t-shirt and tracksuit pants and wandered out the back for something. Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of my reflection in a mirror and I had a sudden flash of memory. What I saw in the mirror was my father, hair uncombed, shirt collar askew, just as he always was in the morning. Old photos show that I was a bit like my father when he was in his twenties but I’ve never thought that I resembled him particularly.

Dad had an old orange jumper with holes in the sleeves. When he got up in the morning, he used to drag on this jumper over a pair of shorts or grey trackie pants and that’s how he would be for a good part of the day.
He had an old typewriter which lived on the kitchen table and always had a blue air-letter stuck in the top. He got into the habit of writing all the daily news to my aunt in Scotland and the air-letter stayed in the machine until it was full and he could send it off. Then he started a new one. He used to turn over the top and tuck it in so that we couldn’t read what he was saying.

The typewriter was dirty and stained from the cigarettes he used to smoke until the doctor gave him an ultimatum – give up smoking or die. He came home from the doctor’s, put his pack of Rothmans Plain on the mantelpiece and never smoked again (or so we believe!)

My father was a very quiet man. Marilyn and I moved away early in our marriage and we were in the habit of ringing home every weekend. He would answer the phone, Hello (in his Scottish accent) and, when he realised it was us, he’d say, “I’ll get your mother.” He couldn’t imagine we would ring to talk to him. Still, he rang Mum from work every day and she said he would tell her more then, than he ever did face-to-face

Unlike most Scotsmen, he didn’t drink and he lived for his family and his work. When we first came to Australia, he worked every shift available so that we could get a start in this new country. He refused to buy a house although he could have afforded it; perhaps there was some deep-seated philosophical resistance stopping him.
He was a very intelligent man with great organisational abilities but he had been born into a time when a son followed his father into the same company. His own father was a coal miner but Dad got a trade, fitting and turning, and didn’t go underground. At the AIS, where he worked for most of his life in Australia, he was promoted to engineer in charge of purchasing spares and so on for the maintenance department. His proudest possession was the gold Omega watch he received after 25 years with the company. I think he was happy with his lot in life and I’m not sure he would have considered changing it.


After retirement, he became interested in travel and, like me, he got great enjoyment from planning trips. There was no internet in those days so he would ring travel agents and collect brochures and study them meticulously. Sadly his health failed him and he didn’t get to enjoy his later life. He died in 1987 at 69 years and 4 months. It was his birthday last week.

As I write this, I’m thinking of the Eric Bogle song, Little Scraps of Paper. His father died young too and he thinks of his memories of his father as little scraps of paper. That’s how I see it too.

Wednesday, 30th November .....

It was a big night at Rotary last night. Following the Craft Fair, we always have a debrief to give everyone a chance to comment on things which went well, and things which didn’t. Typically, we have it at the first meeting after the Fair and it’s a bit of a free-for-all, with the usual suspects making the usual whinges, which are generally ignored by the incoming Director who has his own agenda anyway and doesn’t want to be distracted by the petty concerns of the common people.

The President had the idea this year of asking members to make their comments in writing or, at least, tell someone beforehand so that we would have a bank of ideas to play with, collate, categorise, manipulate, etc before they were put to a meeting. It worked brilliantly. Those who had contentious issues to raise had a certain anonymity, those who wanted to raise trivial matters felt better at getting them off their chests but didn’t waste valuable time at a meeting.

So after three weeks we ended up with about forty issues which could be palmed-off to the committee for discussion, and about 25 which deserved time at the meeting. This last group covered areas like the direction in which the Fair is travelling, the functions we have, prices, awards and so on. In reality, we only had about 30 minutes to talk about them but the discussion was robust and everyone felt they had been heard.

I’m looking out the window, hoping the ground will dry out a little bit so that I can do a bit more mowing. As often happens in Tasmania at this time of the year, we have heavy rain overnight, and quite pleasant sunny days. The problem is, when I get up in the morning full of energy to get into the garden, I have to wait for a few hours for the ground to dry and the mood leaves me. Still, there’s always Marilyn to remind me of my good intentions and my responsibilities.

Sunday, 27th November .....

After a couple of days of heavy rain, the sun is shining and the magpies are celebrating with song. I’ve spent a couple of hours this morning moving some piles of grass, most of it left over from Damo’s last visit when he knocked down most of the heavy growth. He couldn’t take it all away in his truck and both Jamie and I were recovering from operations.

No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t wish it away so we’ve been gradually collecting it and putting it on one large pile. Perhaps it will break down into compost over time, with some help, or we might start the process of taking it bit by bit to the green waste section of the tip. That’s a decision for another day; all we want to do now is get it off the ‘lawn’ and out of sight.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that we were planning a trip to Japan. At that time, it was just a pipe-dream, like so many of my plans. Perhaps 1 in 10 comes to fruition. The pleasure is in the planning and delving in to the internet to reveal its secrets. They say there’s a touch of Asperger’s in all of us and I am the last to deny that. I get great pleasure from working out timetables and schedules and investigating the various ways to get from A to B.

We had our eyes on Nagoya as a base because there is so much to do in that Chubu area. However, I discovered that I could get some reasonable accommodation in Osaka through our timeshare club. It was what they call a Bonus Week at a mid-range hotel in the middle of Osaka and just a few minutes from the main railway station.
It’s costing us just $179 for the whole week so we can’t believe our luck. We’ve never stayed in Osaka but it’s just a short train trip from Kyoto which we know pretty well. From Osaka, we can get out in various directions to some of the most beautiful places in Japan. It’s also only an hour to Nagoya if we want to look at some of the areas I had identified before.

And, it’s all booked! We fly in on May 27th, and book in to the hotel on that day. We will have a seven-day rail pass and that gives us the freedom to do what we like, and will join our cruise on June 3rd.
We have an outside cabin on Deck 6 of the Legend of the Seas which will arrive in Beijing on June 12th. Maybe, we will fly on to Manila from there. Who knows?

There’s only one thing we have to worry about: will there be anyone at the hotel who can speak English. It’s not a hotel which is open to the public and caters usually for Japanese members of the timeshare group? However, sign language has worked for us before and lots of smiles and nervous giggles can often carry the message just as effectively.

I’ve spent a couple of hours this morning trawling the internet for as much detail as I can find on getting to the hotel. It’s not listed under its English name but putting the address into Google Maps has pin-pointed its location. I even found a picture of the front entrance.
Apparently, there’s also a night club at the same address, which can only be a good thing. A couple of hundred metres from the hotel is a subway station called Higashi-Umeda. Umeda is the name of this part of Osaka, and higashi means east. From that subway station, we can move through an underground shopping mall to the main Osaka Station, as well as several other stations, including Nishi Umeda (West Umeda). Above the stations are enormous department stores and at ground level are some of the best restaurants in this part of Japan. I even found a video on You-tube of the underground mall. With all this information, how could we get lost? Ha! Wait and see!

Sunday, November 20th …..

We’re taking a break from gardening because there was a sudden rain shower which gave us a good reason to duck inside for a welcome cup of coffee. Getting the mower on Thursday spurred us to start knocking the 2 acres into shape so I’ve been mowing two sessions a day, Marilyn has been moving the piles of grass left by Damo on his last visit and Jamie has been sharing his time between whipper-snipping and gathering rocks to outline a new garden bed.

It’s certainly making a difference but 2 acres is a lot of yard and it will be a job like painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge: finish at one end and start again at the beginning.

Listening to the radio on Friday morning, I had a reminder of why we live in Tasmania. The ABC was launching its Christmas charity exercise, the Giving Tree. Apparently Tasmania is the only state where the ABC conducts a charity program like this. It started in 1988 and has become something of an institution. A huge tree is erected in the foyer of the ABC HQ in Hobart, and a smaller one in the Launceston studio. People are encouraged to drop in gifts to place around the tree, and there are several fund-raising activities to go along with it: quiz nights, bike rides and so on. In previous years, ABC staff would run a relay from Burnie to Hobart collecting from cars on the highway but that’s been stopped by the police. You can imagine the cries of Scrooge when that was announced.

Even though Tasmania is the poorest state by far, it has the most generous people and, per capita, they contribute more to charity than any other state. So there! Last year, 69000 gifts were received and over $100000 raised (and this from a population of only half-a-million)

At the launch of the Giving Tree, a celebrity turns on the lights. It’s a bit of an occasion with a choir and TV cameras and, of course, it’s broadcast on radio. That’s what I was listening to and the simplicity of it, and the sense of goodwill and the can-do attitude was moving – very Tasmanian.

The celebrity to turn on the lights this year was the Governor, Peter Underwood. He’s done it before but this time he brought along his wife, who is a noted musician, to play the piano. His speech was a delight: he talked about the updated version of the 12 Days of Christmas, while his wife, Frances, tinkled the tune on the piano. He said that, in the light of budget cuts, the partridge will be retained but the pear tree, which never produced the cash flow forecasted, will be replaced by plastic hanging pears, thus providing considerable savings in maintenance.

Two turtle doves represent a redundancy that is simply not cost-effective and, in addition, their romance during office hours could not be condoned. The three French hens will remain intact – after all, everyone loves the French.

The four calling birds will be replaced by an automated voicemail system with a call waiting option. An analysis is under way to determine who the birds have been calling, how often and how long they talked, and so on.

Frances finished the song and then moved straight into a sing-along with Hark the Herald Angels Sing. The Underwoods carry out their roles with dignity but are real people at heart and know when to let their hair down.

All good so far, and then the Launceston Examiner got into the act. Their report on the occasion stated: … Governor Underwood gave a humorous speech, accompanied by a pianist … As Groucho Marx might have said, That’s no pianist, that’s my wife! Only in Tasmania!

I must confess a personal interest. We’ve known the Underwood for more than 30 years. Marilyn and I were at their wedding (they had both been married before) and I taught Frances’s two girls, Sarah and Madeleine in Year 5. We used to visit them at their holiday house at Swanwick on the East Coast and spent a lot of time in their company. Frances was the Music Teacher at Friends for many years and Peter was a solicitor who finally agreed to become a judge. He became Chief Justice, Deputy Governor and, finally Governor.

We’ve had dinner with them at Government House, a very grand occasion and they opened the Craft Fair for me in 2008.

So, I can claim to knowing at least two people on the A-list (or at least the B+ list).

Thursday, November 17th …..

There are many things I have never owned in my life. I’ve never owned a red Ferrari, or a 40 foot yacht but I hadn’t realised until this week that I have never owned a mower. Can this be true? Apparently so.

When we built our first house in Campbelltown, I used to borrow a mower from my father-in-law. Moving to Tasmania, when we weren’t in a school house (where the school gardeners did the work), we were so busy with after-school activities and weekend sport that we employed a mowing man to keep the lawns in order, and he brought his own.

We lived only in school houses in Townville, Mittagong and Launceston until we retired, so didn’t have the responsibility of lawn mowing.

I don’t think I’ve missed much but now I am wondering if it is a requirement of Australian citizenship that every male must have a mower. It seems as ubiquitous as owning a car, but I’ve missed out.

The grass has been growing as we watch it. Having been a farm previously, the grass is a mixture of rye, lucerne, clover and other stuff, so it’s quite tall and thick – a great place for snakes so we have been forced into doing something about it. Damo would have been happy to knock it over but he charges $300 per day and I suspect we would need him every fortnight or so. So, the only reasonable alternative was to buy a mower and do it myself.

A ride-on costs thousands, so I have ended up with a quite robust motor mower with biggish wheels so I can keep the blades fairly high to accommodate the rough ground. It’s not a Victa which I could have bought on special, but looks more solid and should do the job. I had my first go at it yesterday and again today. It’s brilliant and, although the ‘lawn’ is not bowling green quality, it’s a lot better than it was. I plan to keep the grass close to the house under control, and Jamie will attack the outer ring with his whipper-snipper so, between us, we should make a difference.

Sunday, November 13th …..

It’s been a quiet weekend, one way or another. Jamie has gone with a female friend to the V8 Supercars meeting at Simmons Plains. He packed a picnic and went off with a spring in his step. This is the sort of thing Marilyn and I did before we were married. I remember going to Eastern Creek and Oran Park. Marilyn would pack a picnic and we would enjoy the time in the sun. Jack Brabham and Stirling Moss were among the top drivers of the era and there was another English driver called Hill. My aged brain won’t give me his first name; I’m sure it wasn’t Benny, but I can’t think who it was.

One day, I do remember, the bonnet of one of the cars shot into the air and just missed going in to the crowd. What a disaster that would have been. The other thing I remember clearly is all the boy racers who zoomed down the road after the races were finished, emulating their heroes and showing off their prowess to their girl-friends. All except me, of course: I was always careful and considerate of other drivers on the road.

I have a meeting tomorrow with the Craft Fair secretary. She has dropped the bombshell that she may not be able to do the job next year. She and her husband have just taken over the family farm and there are periods during the year (such as September) when there’s just too much work on the farm, without Craft fair as well. My plan is to talk her around and make whatever concessions I can. Marilyn has offered to be Assistant Secretary, picking up the slack where she can and this might be a solution.

I spend most of today working on a plan for a holiday in Japan. We’re always promising ourselves another holiday in Japan so I revisit this idea from time to time. We’ve been to Japan a couple of times and have seen a lot of the usual tourist traps so the plan this time is to focus on a relatively small area in Central Japan called Chubu.

We will fly into Nagoya and base ourselves there while we do day trips to out-of-the-way places. We will have a rail pass and will use the trains as much as possible. On Day 1, we will go to Toyama on the north coast and take a local train to Tateyama for the start of the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route. This mountain journey takes us by various modes of transport: cable cars, ropeways, trolley buses, ordinary buses, through tunnels and so on, ending up at Matsumoto where we will get our train back to Nagoya. We will be up as high as 2450m and the highlight of the trip is a drive through walls of snow up to 17m high. Unbelievable!

Another day we will go to Takayama one of the most beautiful small cities in Japan. It’s an easy 2 ½ hour trip each way from Nagoya. As well, we plan to visit two small villages on the Nakasendo, the overland road between Kyoto and Tokyo which was used by travellers in the Edo period, after 1600. The two villages, Tsumago and Magome have been restored and are in their original condition. There are no cars, TV sets or any sign of modern life.

Well, that will take up 3 days of our Rail Passes and there are still 4 to go. Clearly, I need to do some more research.

Thursday, November 10th …..

We treated ourselves to a show last night – Allo, Allo at the Earl Arts Centre. This local production has been running for a couple of weeks and has received very good reviews. It’s a very small theatre and our seats were right at the front and to the side, but we had a pretty good view of the naked thighs and had no trouble picking up the double entendres and sly looks.

This is standard British comedy fare, more than slightly bawdy and with frequent catch-cries, which everyone anticipates: Good moaning from the Idiot Gendarme who thinks he can speak French; It is I, Le Clerc, from the decrepit forger; Listen carefully, I shall say this only once, from Michelle the girl from the Resistance. The genius of the show is that everyone knows exactly what to expect and gets pleasure when it unfolds exactly right. Don’t expect surprises from Allo, Allo.

Everyone played their parts well. Rene was terrific but my favourite characters were Herr Flick and Helga. They showed great restraint in keeping serious faces even when they were involved in the most ridiculous situations.

Sister-in-law, Janet has gone home this morning. I think she enjoyed her few days in Tassie and has become quite interested in some of the crafty characters she met at the Craft Fair. Dianne who curated the Quilt Show, runs classes in quilting and Robyn from the sewing machine shop teaches how to get the most from the modern machines. I think Janet would find lots to do if she lived in this part of the world.

Now that the Craft Fair is over for another year, we start the process of reviewing the operations and analysing the comments and criticisms. We always receive lots of congratulations but, sadly, people are very quick to criticise. I’m starting to make a list of the comments which have been fed back to us to see whether we might do things differently in future years. The problem is you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

Wednesday, November 9th …..

It’s always a surprise, after the Craft Fair has finished, to discover that the world has gone on as usual and people have lived their normal lives as if the madness in Deloraine didn’t affect them. Reading Monday’s newspaper yesterday, I was surprised to see that the Westbury community, right next door to Deloraine, had held their Annual Show on the same weekend, the Apex Club in Latrobe had held The Truly Tasmanian Craft Exhibition, and there had been a Penny Farthing race in Evandale, just to name a few.

Surely, the organisers of these events would have realised that the world had slowed down while the Craft Fair ran its course, and that no-one would have the time to go to their events as well. The Latrobe one is interesting: clearly it’s an attempt to steal our crowd. Choosing the same weekend, and picking such a dodgy name is a blatant attempt to confuse our customers, appeal to the unthinking parochialism of Tasmanians (especially those on the North-West coast) and cash in on our reputation. The sad thing is that their Éxhibition’was started by disgruntled local artists who hadn’t been good enough to get a place at the Deloraine fair. And they have about 30 Tasmanian artists, while we have upwards of 180. However, we still get criticism that we are not truly Tasmanian and have too many mainland interlopers. Oh well, you can’t win them all.

The Westbury Show, like many other small-town shows, was only held on one day this year. Westbury is just 20 minutes from Launceston and most of the locals look there for their entertainment and community activities. There is certainly not the same feeling of anticipation as the date of the Show approaches as there used to be. Older residents still take part in the competitions and the local school teachers make a mighty effort to encourage their students to take part, but I’m afraid it is a dying event.

Still, the local paper continues to list the results of the competitions. M. Gibson once again swept the field in the Knitting and Crochet section, B. Dudman was the Most Successful Exhibitor in the Cooking, although P. Poulton’s boiled plum pudding took the prize in that section. In the Floral section, most exhibitors were listed with initial and surname, but one exhibitor is still featured as Mrs Fahey. I imagine an elderly lady who has been a stalwart of the show for decades and is known by everybody as Mrs Fahey (no first initial). Reading the results carefully throws up a few signs of the times: in the Photography section, there is a prize for the best digitally enhanced photo, and in the Primary Floral Art, there is a prize for ‘variety of garden weeds in a container’. That’s the sort of floral art I can relate to.

Of course, for the kids, it's the rides that matter. We can be cynical but the Westbury Show still plays a big role in the lives of a large section of society. It will certainly be a sad day when the last of the small, local shows closes its doors.

Monday, November 7th …..

Another beautiful day and our first duty at the Fair was at 10.30. I really enjoy working on the gates; it’s a chance to chat with people coming to the Fair for all the right reasons. Occasionally, you get a reluctant male dragged along by his wife but, in most cases, people are cheerful and looking forward to seeing the stalls and exhibitions.

During the shift one of the other Rotarians dragged me away to look at an idea he had, and I had a call from the local newspaper wanting an interview, so I wasn’t particularly reliable. A visitor from Caringbah Rotary relieved me at one stage and Jamie carelessly wandered by so he got roped in to take the money while I went off to the interview.

I was supposed to be the media liaison person but ended up with only four interviews. Everybody wants to talk to the Director, of course. The Director and I were interviewed together on Friday afternoon by Elaine Harris who runs the afternoon show on local ABC. She had been set up in a little tent near the main pavilion and ran her show from there. Elaine is blind and has all her notes on Braille sheets, which she fingers constantly. She also has a Braille writer so she can take notes as she goes. It is quite interesting to watch how she keeps control of what is happening while talking non-stop to her audience. A tall fellow, who acts like her husband, was hanging around the back of the tent, constantly checking that she had everything she needed, so she had a good support team around her: producer, technician and hubbie.

After our shift, Marilyn and I caught one of the shuttle buses to check out some of the other venues. Under the tree near the bus stop was a little family group sitting in the shade: Mum, little girl and littler boy. The girl had a CD player and a microphone, a shoe box for donations and a sign which read ‘Saving up for a real Karaoke player’. I dug in my pocket to find some change when Mum piped up, ‘Don’t pay her until you hear her sing.’ Fair enough, I thought steeling myself for an excruciating rendition of The Lion King, or something like that. Not so! She had a beautiful voice with perfect pitch and wonderful light and shade. 7-year olds don’t normally have any idea how to sing but this child was outstanding.

Because the bus driver wouldn’t wait I had to jump on so didn’t get the details of who she was. It’s a shame because Rotary might be prepared to help her develop her talent. I’ll have to pass the word around the Club and see if anybody knows her.

We were keen to see a glass blower at the Showground who was set up in a trailer that Rotary had built last year. It is a complete glass studio with furnaces, etc. We donated the trailer to this group called Fusion who are based in an old Hydro Electric Commission village called Poatina. They look after disadvantaged youth and run programs to give young people broader experience.

On the way back, we called in to an area called Rotary Park where we had set up several food vans and covered seating. There’s a pool there which the local Anglers’Club had stocked with trout. For $5, they will lend you some gear and help you catch a fish. There were about 10 ‘trophy’fish as well as many smaller ones so it wasn’t hard to catch something good. For lunch, we had Pig and Fig, a sandwich of Pork Loin steak, glazed with Fig and Apple – delicious!

We were all delighted when 4 oçlock came around and we could start taking down the stalls. It gets harder every year and I think we’ll have to look at new ways to set up. We’re all getting older and can’t bend and lift like we used to. However, with the help of some younger people from Apex, everything was stored away by 7 and we went to the Bush Inn for the wind-up dinner – and it was Roast Pork! Oh, well, it’s Roast Lamb tomorrow night so we can afford to suffer two meals of pork in one day, if there’s lamb the following day. Sister-in-law, Janet, has offered to cook the lamb so we’ll just sit back and enjoy a quiet day with a good meal to finish.

Sunday, November 6th …..

The crowd at the Fair today wasn’t as large as expected which is very surprising as Sunday is usually a big day and the weather was beautiful. However, there are just as many jobs to do whether it’s busy or quiet; there’s no rest for the Rotarians.

The day was generally uneventful although there was one unexpected treat. While I was doing my duty on one of the gates a small group of young women walked in, all dressed in white, with white faces and serious expressions. They were being shepherded along by a middle-aged woman who never spoke. The group assembled itself and posed, clearly inviting photographs. One of the young women placed a box, containing some money, at her feet.

It turned out that they were a group of dance students from the local High School. The shepherdess was their teacher and the exercise was designed to teach poise and the ability to hold a pose. They had obtained their clothes at the local op shop and painted them with various white paints. It was a delight to see them and they attracted the interest they deserved.

Today, I was determined to get a bowl of Tempura Mushrooms. I had missed out on the previous two days as they had sold out early, so today I turned up before lunch, successfully, and they were delicious. It’s hard to eat carefully at the Fair, not only because of the range of fabulous food available among the stalls, but because of the great (and free!) slices and cakes made by the ladies at the Hospitality Area. The ladies belong to the Inner Wheel, an organisation of wives of Rotarians. The Deloraine group is a particularly strong one, famous for their catering which is along the lines of the CWA – sweet and creamy and old-fashioned.

Saturday, November 5th …..

Day 2 of the Craft Fair began early. People were lining up at the gates by 8.15 and by 10 oçlock we had lines of cars backing up several kilometres. Saturday is usually a busy day but the arrival of people so early was unusual. The success or otherwise of the Fair often hinges on Saturday and Sunday. Friday is a working day and Monday is usually slow so we cross our fingers that the weekend days will be sunny and the crowd will feel moved to come along.

I spent all of the day around the main venue as I had done a bit too much the previous day and wanted to rest my hip as much as possible. We have a Hospitality Area where tired Rotarians can go for a break, a cup of coffee and a snack. I’m afraid I had three or four little breaks up there and I hope the ladies who were looking after the food didn’t think I was taking advantage. Still, the incident with my hip popping out is a cause celebre (pardon my French) and all the ladies are very concerned that I shouldn’t do too much.

Venue 5 where I spent the day is one of the areas where people come to eat. The Tempura Mushroom stall was doing great business and sold out by mid-afternoon both yesterday and today. Another stall is selling Rabbit Pies, and Wallaby as well and I can see that they are popular. The Raspberry ice-cream stall has a constant long line as has the coffee cart. The coffee cart is the first business open in the mornings as stall-holders and Rotarians line up for their heart starter.

This venue also has the Gourmet pantry which is an enormous hoecker with stalls selling gourmet food, mostly for the pantry rather than to be eaten on-site. The stall-holders can’t believe how quickly their stuff runs out the door. The Christmas Pudding lady always sells out on Saturday and has to rush in reinforcements. Last year a couple of stalls had no stock left by Sunday so packed up and went home. Every year, we have new participants who are gob-smacked by the potential to make serious money.

Apparently, we’re the only Craft Fair in Australia which gives out prizes. I mentioned the Hoffman Challenge yesterday where the second place winner received a fabulous new sewing machine. The winner of that competition received $1000 and, at the Award Presentation tonight, there were several other prizes worth $500 or $1000. The big Prize, the Premier’s Award, is a $10000 cheque sponsored by the Tasmanian Government. The jeweller who won had tears in his eyes; it’s not just the significant amount, it’s the recognition in the eyes of their peers. The judges are professional art critics and know what is outstanding.

Awards are presented for such things as Artistic Excellence, Stall Presentation, Best Working Exhibit and so on. The standard is rising each year and the judges are finding it harder and harder to differentiate the prize-winners from the rest.

The Award Presentation is a great night. We provide food, and drinks are available and the stall-holders have a chance to talk to their mates whom they might only see once a year in Deloraine.

Two more days to go! We’re starting to feel the strain and we’re not the ones who are working the hardest. For example, there’s a duo of Rotarians who look after the Food Area of Venue 5. They spend all day, wiping down tables, picking up rubbish and re-locating chairs. Ian is over 80 years old, and Maree is almost as old as I am. They’re typical of the volunteers who put in a ten-hour day making the Fair go smoothly. I’ve said it before: if Australia didn’t have its volunteer army, it would sink into the sea.

Friday, November 4th …..

There is always a lot of anticipation on the first day of the Craft Fair: will the weather be fine, will the crowds turn up, will everything happen as expected? Well, today is fine, the crowds have turned up and, apart from a couple of electrical hiccups, the organization has been flawless.

I spent most of the day around the Rotary Pavilion which, this year, has about twenty stalls and an exhibition of quilts. These are not the sort of quilts you might throw on the bed on cold nights; they are works of art and no more than 1 metre square. There are two lots: one group of 15 or so are the entrants in the Tasmanian Rotary Hoffman Challenge, and a second group of 20 which are the finalists in the New Zealand Hoffman Challenge.

The Hoffman Challenge which started in America is regarded as the ultimate competition for serious quilters. A few years ago, the New Zealand Challenge was set up and a local quilter here in Deloraine approached Rotary last year to base a Challenge in Tasmania. We only had a small number of entrants in this first year but hope to extend it more widely as people become aware of our presence. We have good sponsorship so prizes are generous. One of my tasks this morning was to present awards to some of the winners of the Tasmanian Challenge. One of the winning quilts was made by a Year 10 student at the local High School as a school project. It was her first ever quilt and a really nice piece of work. Another winner was a nine-year old girl who designed and sewed her own entry, a quilted bag she entitled Don’t Give a Hoot (because of the owl motif on it.)

I am astounded at what young people can achieve nowadays. Watching what the contestants on Junior Master Chef can produce in less than an hour shows that we often underestimate the capacity of children today. More likely, we don’t look in the right areas. We can identify outstanding potential footballers in primary school but we don’t identify those who have ‘intelligences’ in unusual areas, like cooking or craft.

Thursday, November 3rd …..

I flew home on Monday evening into the final few days of organization of the Tasmanian Craft Fair. Since then, I’ve had three trips to Deloraine and I am just starting to realise the realities of living so far away. A round-trip from Dilston is about 150 Km, which is OK for the occasional drive but just a bit too much for something that is done daily. I’ll need to look at alternatives when we get into the business end of organization of next year’s Fair.

Certainly, there is a possibility of parking the van here during the busy time and I can probably organize some office space in the town. We’ve already booked accommodation near Deloraine for the actual days of the Fair, because it’s a long way to drive home to Dilston after a busy, hot day in the sun.

When I was driving down to Deloraine on Tuesday, I noticed a white turkey wandering along the side of the highway. Now, that’s not something you see every day. I suppose it had wandered away from one of the local farms; maybe it had worked out that its days were numbered and Christmas is not that far away. Sadly, when I was driving down yesterday, there was a pile of white feathers on the side of the road and several interested ravens hanging about. I think the poor turkey met its end as road kill.

Everything is looking good for the Craft Fair. The hoeckers are all erected, the stalls are all built and today is the day that the stall-holders move in and set themselves up. We’re expecting 240 stalls and about 25000 people over the next four days. It will be fun but we’ll be exhausted at the end of it.

Saturday, October 29th …..

One of my strict rules is that I won’t watch any TV show with the word Grumpy in the title. I know there’ve been Grumpy Old Men and Grumpy Old Women and now, I believe, they’re showing The Grumpy Guide To ….

If the word, Grumpy, is not enough to turn me off, I gather that Germaine Greer is one of the Grumpy eminent persons. Another of my strict rules is never to watch a TV show with Germaine Greer in it.

One of the problems I have with these shows is that they are an excuse for old farts to whinge that ‘things aren’t what they used to be’. Of course, they’re not, but whinging about it won’t change anything. Most things change for very good reasons. And, of course, the programs are generally made by the BBC, so the whingers are Pommy Whingers, a subset of society which ought to be locked up, and kept silent.

If I were really honest, my problem with grumpy TV series is that I recognize myself too often in the characters. However, I only complain about changes which don’t make sense and result in objects which do not function as well as they used to before the design gurus got involved. Take the toothbrush, for example. When I was at school, toothbrushes were straight little pieces of plastic with a wodge of bristles at one end. Some bristles were softer than others and the plastic bits came in a range of pretty colours. Generally, they were about the same size so that school students could make toothbrush holders in woodwork lessons in the safe knowledge that the toothbrushes they had at home would fit.

Not any more: toothbrushes come in a variety of lengths and dynamic shapes contoured to fit your hand. Some have spaces to fit a battery, and there is no toothbrush holder in existence which can cater for the range you might find in a typical bathroom. What do woodwork students make now in their first semester?

Marilyn and I have a favourite toothbrush container which we take on our trips. It comfortably takes 2 circa-1975 brushes and a smallish tube of toothpaste. Our old brushes are starting to look a little tatty but do you think we can replace them? No, sir! Everything today is too long, or too fat, or is too bent.

And what about toothpaste? Once upon a time, toothpaste came in metal tubes (which were reputed to be made of lead, but I’m sure they weren’t), and when you rolled the tube up from the bottom, it stayed there so it was easy to, eventually, get the last squeeze out of the tube. The invention of plastic tubes which always returned to their original length was NOT an improvement. When you’re down to the last quarter, you have to push and squeeze every day to get the remaining toothpaste to the top so you can get a wee bit more out. It’s even worse if you have one of those maverick people in your house who squeeze the tube from the top, rather than up from the bottom. At that time in the morning when you need to be calming your mind for the travails of the day, you don’t need the hassle of fighting with a toothpaste tube. Who wants to be bothered with this sort of nonsense?

I suspect, though, that toothpaste tubes are becoming a thing of the past. Our latest paste dispenser looks like a mini-aerosol. It’s pressurized and impossible to predict how much paste will come out each time it’s used. I generally get too much so look like a rabid dog when I brush my teeth. And the residue left on the nozzle (which, by the way, is uncovered between uses) is disgusting. The air trapped in it makes a horrible froth which must attract the worst of bacteria. And, of course, they won’t fit in our travelling toothbrush container. Heaven knows what will happen if one of these modern monstrosities is packed in a suitcase and doesn’t cope with an un-pressurised aircraft hold. These new toothpaste dispensers are NOT an improvement.

And yet, we will be led blindly to use them, even though they will add to our stress and make no difference to the quality of our daily oral hygiene.

Thursday, October 27th …..

We’re still in Wollongong, even though I had planned to go back to Tasmania today. We’re staying at our friend, Robyn’s, place as she is in hospital having a knee operation. It seemed a nice plan for Marilyn and I to have a few days together while the opportunity is there. When we get back to Tassie, we’ll be straight into the madness of the Craft Fair so the relaxed time is a bonus.

We took Uncle Archie out for lunch yesterday at the Golf Club. We needed to arrange a disabled taxi and that meant long waits until one was available. People who don’t have disabilities wouldn’t tolerate having to wait up to 45 minutes for a cab, but it seems that people with disabilities don’t have the same rights. Of course, the drivers are apologetic but the reality is that there are not enough cabs available for the people who want to use them. The Golf Club is only 100m from the nursing home but our excursion for lunch took almost 5 hours, much of it waiting for a 2-minute taxi ride each way.

Very little else is happening. Every morning I check the freebook website as I always do. Most days, there are about 100 new books up-loaded every night by some magic process. Perhaps it’s caused by elves, or fairies but I’m just delighted that the supply seems to be endless. Most days I find a few of interest, but today there was nothing. Lots of romances, of course (it’s amazing how many romantic novels contain the words ‘highland’, ‘laird’, ‘glen’, or ‘chieftain’; as my friend Dianne tells me, romance is not dead in Scotland).

Just to digress, Dianne forwarded to me some lonely hearts ads from a Scottish newspaper. Here are a couple of samples:

Chartered Accountant, 42, seeks
female for marriage. Duties will
include cooking, light cleaning
and accompanying me to office
social functions. References
required. No timewasters.


Bitter, disillusioned Dundee man,
lately rejected by long-time fiancée,
seeks decent, honest reliable
woman if such a thing still exists
in this cruel world of hatchet-faced
bitches.

…and many more.

I tend to look at authors rather than titles although, from time to time, a title will catch my eye and I wonder whether I should take a look. Today, I noticed:

‘The Female Man’ (I’m not game to even open this one)
‘Sad Monsters, Growling on the Outside, Crying on the Inside’ (the mind boggles)
‘The Morbidly Obese Ninja ’ (Hmmm!)

I might stick to my crime novels; you can’t go wrong if the title contains the word ‘death’.

Thursday, October 20th …..

I apologise that this post is out of order but I don't know of any easy way to get it into the right place. I could, of course, delete the three which should follow it, post this one where it should be, and re-build the ones which should follow. What a bore! I'm sure you can work it out.

I’ve been waiting for this weekend for a long time, worrying whether my leg would be OK or whether I would have to cancel at the last minutes. But, no problem, and here I am at the airport waiting for the big grey bird to fly me to Sydney on the first leg of the journey to Canberra for the Nepal Reunion. It is shaping up to be a most enjoyable get-together.

Because I have about an hour to waste, I buy a coffee and bun and look for a seat in the arrival area, near the luggage carousels. It’s quiet here because no planes are due for a while. A young woman comes in, walking briskly and pulling a large purple suitcase. She heads straight for the Budget Rent-a-Car desk and hands over her documentation. Clearly she thinks she is at the check-in area for flights so she has to be gently put straight and directed to the other end of the terminal. As Effy would say, How embarrassment!

I watch her as she heads through the terminal and pauses at the security check-in. I breathe a sigh of relief as she moves on in the right general direction. Hopefully, she finds the right desk and gets clearance to board the ‘plane. It’s easy to get blasé about flying and the routine at the airport but, if you’re a novice, it can be quite daunting. Launceston airport has been refurbished lately and the rent-a-car booths have been situated where the Virgin check-in used to be. It would be an easy mistake to make if you haven’t travelled recently.

Anyway, the flight is uncomplicated and arrives in Sydney just a few minutes late. As arranged, Marilyn is waiting for me in the Arrival area and we collect my suitcase and head for the trains to make our way to Oak Flats where Robyn will pick us up.

Sunday, October 23rd …..

More food is arranged for today – we’re booked on a luncheon cruise on Lake Burley-Griffin. Dianne and Bob walk every morning but, with the best will in the world, Marilyn and I fail to wake in time to join them. It turned out to be a very lazy time and we were at the dock just in time to catch the boat.

What a great afternoon. There were a dozen of us and we had a table on the upper deck. The weather was stunning and the company was delightful. I haven’t mentioned that the Queen has been in residence in Canberra and we sailed past Government House where she is staying. She was at church this morning (with 105 invited members of the congregation) but was expected back at Gov. House by the time we sailed past. There was a bus full of media, all hoping to nail that exclusive story which would make their reputation.

The Queen is an extraordinary woman, by any measure. She came to the throne when I was in primary school and she is still going strong, while I walk around with a walking stick and soft cushion. And at her side is the Duke, 90 years old and still keeping up.

Canberra is a beautiful city and there is clearly a plan in place to maintain and improve its image. The new National Museum is fantastic, apparently not to everyone’s taste but a signature building with a memorable façade. Martin commented that it’s had a checkered history but perhaps the new director is giving it a better focus and direction.

At 2 o’clock we arrive near the water spout which, right on time, shot high into the air. Two groups of kids in pedal boats steered under the fountain so they would be wet with he spray but our captain kept us dry.

The three-course meal was great and, all in all, it was another terrific day.

Over the past few posts, I've shown photogaphs of the Nepal Party. On Friday, there was Marilyn and Dianne, and Rhonda in a pensive mood; on Saturday, there was Steve and Ann, and Beth and Trish; and today, Sue and Martin and the whole group with a couple of spouses and Dianne's sister.

The general feeling is that we should have another reunion in a year’s time, possibly in Tasmania. Some are keen to come to the Craft Fair in November so Marilyn and I have promised to think about a plan and spread the word.