Saturday, October 24th

 

 

I needed an ultrasound on my ankle and my GP sent me to a clinic in an unfamiliar part of town.  We had no trouble finding it and presented ourselves at the reception area.  It was a good-size room with the most prominent feature being an enormous Old English Sheepdog, sprawled across a mattress along one wall.  The creature’s head kept slipping off the mattress onto the shoes of a waiting patient who had, for some reason, chosen to sit as close to the dog as possible.

While I was waiting, an elderly woman came in, presented herself to the receptionist who checked her details.  When asked her date of birth, she proudly announced, “27^th of October, 1942,” turned around and looked at me and repeated as if to challenge me, “1942!”  Taken aback somewhat, I responded, “Well done! You’ve beaten me by several months.  I wasn’t born until early 1943.”

After she sat down, the receptionist called out to her, “Have you ever lived in Carrins Avenue?”

“Oh, no,” said the woman, “but the last time I came here you had builders in and I had to go to a room down the back of the building.  I don’t think I could find my way back there now.  My address is 72b Penquite Road but, before that, I lived in Carrins Avenue.”

The receptionist just smiled.

A buzzer rang and I was shown into an adjoining room where the lights were dimmed.  A cheerful young woman said, “Hi, my name is Mandy.  Do you need a hand to take your trousers off?”

Life is full of surprises, isn’t it?

Friday, 9th October

 Time drags a little when you're recuperating and the weather has been pretty miserable, confining us to indoors more than we might like.  To fill the time, I've been browsing our family tree and one interesting line caught my eye.  I've always been aware there's a strong Irish flavour: my grandfather's name was Donachie and he was descended from Owen Donachie, born around 1842 and who moved to Scotland around 1860, working as a farm labourer in Ayrshire.  Owen was my great-great grandfather. I was delighted to find that he was born in the famous Irish town of Longford.

There's a nice symmetry that some 160 years later, Owen's descendants have settled in another town called Longford.

Friday, October 2nd

 It's another quiet day in Longford and my recuperation continues.  I'm not getting out much but I'm told that the weekly special at the cafe is Curried Rabbit Pie.  It's nice to think that some local kids might have delivered the results of their trapping to the cafe but Longford has the largest abattoir in Northern Tasmania so an occasional twenty-minute run of rabbits is probably not unlikely.

I'm supposed to complete a series of exercise three times a day but the success of that depends on getting an early start on the first round.  If I prevaricate, and attempt the first lot after morning tea, I'm likely to run out of time.  Sadly, exercising has never been a passion of mine and any excuse is reached for when it comes to the crunch.  

Today should be the first day of my return to Writing Group; it will be held at the normal venue, with all sorts of Covid-19 restrictions but it's just too hard to contemplate.  Friends, Jim and Di, have sent me a couple of books to read to assist in my understanding of what an essay is so I'd rather spend some time on that.  One of the books is the Boyer Lectures of Geraldine Brooks and the other is by Clive James.  Now, he is an author worth imitating.

First, though, thirty minutes of exercise with a new gadget, recommended by the physio at the hospital.  He smiled at me, as young fit people are wont to do and said, "Maybe you could borrow a skateboard from your neighbour's kid."  He didn't call me Grandad, which I appreciated but I didn't appreciate the patronising tone.  What I needed was a dolly: 300mm square, flush top, 4x casters and a hole, 2000Kg rating, but he clearly thought the name 'dolly' might confuse me.

Jamie popped into Bunning, spent $16 which affected our trade imbalance with China but just what I needed to help me practice my 'foot slides' and 'knee bends.'  The dolly is a great example of effective industrial design so I can muse on that as I carry out my rotations of 15 forwards and backwards.