Sunday, January 19

A sad end to yesterday's post, this morning I found the body of our potoroo in the front garden.  It's an intriguing mystery why the creatures come around the house to die.  Romantics might say they come towards humans looking for assistance and Marilyn thinks they might have been born here and are returning home to die.  It might be something as simple as that they associate the house with the food I often throw out.

Whatever the reason I now have a funeral to carry out this morning.

Saturday, January 18

Among the animals which inhabit our garden is a potoroo with a damaged foot.  He/she hobbles along quite reasonably but, if an emergency arose, it might be difficult to run away.  We often see it nibbling grass outside our windows and it's easy to pick out because of its injury.  It always scurries away when we come close.

A couple of days ago, Marilyn commented that it was hiding under a table we have outside.  Later, we noticed it was huddling under the cover we put over our mower.  It's been sleeping for a couple of nights under the cover, or under the front verandah.

I've mentioned before that, over the years, I've had to retrieve a couple of dead wallabies from under our back verandah and wondered if our cottage is like some kind of elephant graveyard, only for wallabies - the place they go to when they sense the end is near.

Let's hope not.   At the moment, it's huddling under our bedroom window not 6 feet from the ramp up to our back door.  I've put out water and some carrots, which the potoroo has sampled, but there's not much more I can do.  As Tennyson wrote: it's nature, red in tooth and claw.

Friday, January 10

We're still enjoying our little holiday at Jamie's although I'm surprised at how much I miss being surrounded by my technology toys.  Of course, I've brought my iPad with me but I spend an inordinate amount each day on the desktop computer and enjoy listening to podcasts through my headphones.  Being out of my regular routine is unsettling. 

The other thing we notice is how much quieter it is in Hadspen than it is in Dilston, yet Hadspen is so much closer to the city.  At Dilston, we can hear the noise of traffic on the highway, and Alan next door has every mechanical gardening tool known to man.  When he's out in the garden he moves from his mower, to his whipper-snipper to his chainsaw to his mulcher, and so on.  We're surrounded by 5 acre blocks and everyone seems to be an enthusiast for adapting the environment.  At this time of the year, we live with the windows open so every noise is a distraction.

At Hadspen, I think everyone goes off to work in the morning and, when they get home, they shut themselves off from the world, ignoring the neighbours and not impinging on their privacy.

Jamie's off to work so Marilyn and I will head off to Dilston to check the mail and feed the birds.

I'm taking the chance to catch up on my reading; I've found a new series of crime novels by Michael Leese about a fellow with autism who is a consultant to the police.  The main character is written as if he is a super-hero so it is bit hard to take but the basic premise is reasonable: that someone with the characteristics of Aspergers Syndrome might have skills which could be useful to the police.  I'm only half way through the first book and not ready to chuck it in the bin yet.

(Check out my new blog JCpoetryblog.blogspot.com)

Thursday, January 9

To celebrate our anniversary yesterday, Jamie took us to an interesting restaurant which he and Nera frequent.  It's Chinese but not in the sense that we normally expect it.  The food was outstanding, fresh  and not expensive: various entrees, prawns in butter sauce and chicken something, but the highlight of the meal was the bubble tea.

I know it has something to do with tapioca and has little bubbles of flavour but the recipe is a mystery.  I was convinced to have black tea, lychee flavour and passion fruit bubbles.  Fantastic!

Wednesday, January 8th

It's our Wedding Anniversary today - 54 years since we walked down the aisle of St Alban's Church in Corrimal in front of family and friends.  As they say in the classics, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then.  (More details in my memoir 'Never Lost.')

I wondered just how common it is for people to reach their 54th anniversary and found there is all sorts of information on the Internet, but it depends what question you ask.  For example, Marilyn and I are members of an exclusive group of 6% or just one more pair in a mob of 50%.

I though I would rather be in the 6%, and found that that ratio applied to the question 'how many married people have been together more than 50 years?  But of course, in that situation, we're being compared with people who've been married for 49 years, those who've been married 1 day, and everyone in-between.  In fact, 6% seems quite a lot.

In the other scenario, the question is, 'how many people who married in 1966 are still married?' And the perhaps surprising answer is 49.8%.  All the other are divorced, separated, widowed or dead!  All things being equal, I think I'll stick with the second scenario.

There's probably a generational factor at work here.  Looking at our cohort of friends who married at around the same time as we did, we can think of just three couples who eventually split.  We're told now that, today, 1 in 3 marriages end in divorce, even though people stay together for around 12 years before ending it.  Our generation can certainly beat that:  maybe 1 in 10 failed, although who can tell what's around the corner.

Sunday, January 5th (2)

Jamie and Nera flew off to the Philippines on Christmas Eve to attend her youngest sister's wedding.  Kisia Mae in on the local council of their area, so is something of a celebrity.  The wedding was a grand affair and attracted much attention, even getting a mention on the Philippines equivalent of Good Morning Australia.

Nera will stay there until later in the month but Jamie has already come back.  He is enjoying his new job and doesn't want to adversely affect his clients.  Marilyn and I have moved in to their house in Hadspen to keep Jamie company and to enjoy the extra space, and their new 75 inch TV set!  There are a few movies we want to see and the giant screen is almost like being at the movies - without the smell of popcorn.

We had a small fire opposite our house at Dilston the other evening.  There were a couple of fire trucks from the local brigade there, and a helicopter dropped a couple of buckets of seawater on it, so it didn't come to much.  However, there was a note in our letterbox to alert us to the fact that this fire and a couple more had been started by 'fire-bugs'.  I can't get my head around what would possess someone to put property and lives at risk by starting a fire, and I can't imagine what sentence would be appropriate if and when they are caught.

Sunday, January 5th

I've been very remiss with this blog for the past few weeks, instead concentrating on my new venture JCpoetryblog.blogspot.com, where I am gathering some of the poems I've encountered over the years.  However, there's so much happening in the world at the moment, I need to keep this platform active as well.

Watching our hapless Prime Minister flailing around trying to give the impression of being a leader is a tragedy in itself, and yet our focus has to be on the real tragedy affecting the lives of other citizens of Australia, and the countless animals who need our protection.  This is not something we will simply endure for a few weeks and then get on with our lives.  Serious decisions need to be made about preparing Australia for a hotter, drier future and still we have a bunch of overpaid, barely literate MPs denying there's a problem.

And at the same time, there's another failed PM touring the world on the strength of his $300 000 pa pension, spouting the nonsense about a 'climate cult'.  Open your eyes, Tony, the times are a-changin'.