Saturday, November 27

I've been out, for one reason or another, every day this week so I was looking forward to a day at home.  There were two jobs pending: mowing my 18 sq m of lawn and sending out a reminder to Probus members about a visit to a fuchsia farm.  With careful management, I could look busy all day.

Marilyn, though, had other ideas. It was a beautiful day, she said, and she wanted to go out for a drive and have lunch somewhere.

"Where do you want to go? I asked, co-operatively.

"Somewhere different," she replied.

I pulled up the local map on the computer and found an establishment about 20 minutes away called Dr Harry's Clucky Chook Cafe.  The Dr Harry mentioned is Harry Cooper who was a celebrity TV vet many years ago.  He's moved on to Queensland now but his ex-wife is still trying to cash in on his name.

The idea didn't appeal to Marilyn who said she wanted 'somewhere nice, like a winery.'

Jamie and Nera have gone to Hobart and we're babysitting Archie so we need somewhere nice which will welcome dogs so we set off to check out the vineyards on the Tamar River and found ourselves driving past the Rosevears Hotel.  This classic old Australian pub must have one of the best situations I've ever seen.  Built 100 years ago on the banks of the Tamar, it overlooks a narrow part of the river and over the water to the beautiful suburb of Windermere.

There are a couple tables on the front verandah of the pub so we pull up and check in.  It could not have been better.  The proprietors were delighted to see Archie, the food was fantastic and Marilyn was able to sample some of the sparkling made virtually next door.

"We won't have dessert here," she suggested. "We'll call into the strawberry farm at Hillwood on the way home.; so we did.  I hadn't been here for years and it has grown exponentially since then.  The hillsides all around are covered with polytunnels and I know this growth is replicated all around the area.  I could name 6 or 8 other berry growers who are experiencing the same growth.  The demand for berries must be enormous.

The agronomist for this particular establishment is one of Marilyn's ex-students.  I know that most of the soft fruit in Tasmania is picked by Pacific Islanders here on short-term visas but Andrea says that her core staff is made up of refugees from Nepal and Bhutan whom the government, in its wisdom, has settled in this area.  Andrea says they are fantastic workers.  In the peak season, she uses Pacific Islanders whom she houses in a guest house in Mowbray where they are fed and looked after.  She doesn't use back-packers nor reluctant locals because they can't be relied upon.

All in all, a great day and the lawn will have to wait until tomorrow.

November 25, 2021

 Today is my Dad's birthday.  Sadly, he died young and I regret never having taken the time to talk to him more in his last months.  He always deferred to my mother in matters such as maintaining relations with his family.  If he happened to answer the phone when I rang, he would always say, "I'll get your mother."

I've decided to take on the project of writing something of his life.  It won't have much detail because he never talked about himself but I hope to put, in some sort of order, the memories I have.  Here are the first few sentences of my first draft:

 

Marilyn will often say to me, “You’re getting more like your father every day” and it pleases me, even though I know she’s pointing out that I’m adopting one or more of the little quirks or eccentricities which made him an individual.

He’s been dead now for over 30 years but we still smile when we think of him, in his tattered orange jumper, sitting at his old typewriter, which was stained by the smoke of the unfiltered, full-strength cigarettes he preferred, and which eventually killed him.

He was a quiet man who often said mockingly, “My wants are few” to which one of us would say “but constant.”  There was truth, though, in his statement.  He demanded little from life, never struggling for a new and bigger car, never showing off his possessions, and never putting anyone down to make himself look better.

Sunday, November 21

 

We have a flower show in Longford this weekend; Longford Blooms, when people are encouraged to visit 13 of Longford’s best gardens, check out the stalls on the Village Green and marvel at the floral displays in the Town Hall.

 

It sounds like the setting for an episode of Midsomer Murders, compounded by the fact that there was a news report last night that police had been called to an incident in a Longford street.  Apparently, shots had been fired and a man had been injured.  The address was Goose Green Place and, if that’s not a Midsomer location, I can’t imagine what is.

 

I just wonder whether there was trouble at the Flower Show between two long-term rival gardeners.  Did tempers flare when one criticised the other’s display of pansies?  Was one offended when he was accused of putting too much fertiliser in his herbaceous border?

 

People can become very passionate about their gardens and you don’t want to be insulting a hot-headed enthusiast who is holding a heavy, sharp garden implement, or who has a gun in the garage.

Saturday, November 20

 Archie was very excited this morning, barking for no apparent reason.  He does bark a bit, if a delivery man comes to the door, or our neighbour, Jen goes out for her run, but all those things happen at the front of the house.

This morning's little rant was different; it was happening at the back, where our little bit of lawn is.  Marilyn went to investigate but more to quieten him down.  We don't want complaints from the neighbours.

She came back in quite excited.  "We have a visitor," she said.  "Are blue-tongued lizards poisonous?"

And there he was: the most beautiful creature.  He's been hanging around our garden for a couple of hours and it's nice to have his presence.  Archie doesn't know what to make of it and we need to keep them apart. 

Wednesday, November 17

 

It’s Sports Science today with 40-odd students in two rooms.  We’ve been warned that this subject attracts students who are keen; they are prone to do stretches and they drink lots of water.  I imagine that might lead to a greater number of toilet breaks.

The young woman who is my offsider is relatively new and offers to take the lead.  I’m happy to play second fiddle. She’s already spotted a mistake in the running sheet, which I might have missed.

An hour has passed and there’s a flurry of activity in the office along the corridor.  The Assessment authority has identified two errors in the Exam paper and the students need to be notified.  Neither seems significant but we write them on the board, nevertheless.  I wonder whether heads will roll.

Nobody has failed to attend, nobody leaves early, nobody requests water and only two ask for a toilet break.  All good!

When I come back to the office I find I am obliged to  fill in daily question on the board.  'Choose a name and note what they should be famous for' or something like that.  I choose Marilyn and suggest she might be a modern-day Florence Nightingale.  She chooses me and nominates me as Poet Laureate.  Nice!

Tuesday, November 16

 

Apparently, a wild storm passed through Launceston yesterday while I was locked in the Exam. Room.  There were hailstones and even snow.  I’m pleased that I missed it and my car, waiting patiently in the carpark opposite, was unscathed.

 

I have Japanese again this morning, with just one student who has permission to use a computer if she needs to.  Jamie has the main body of Japanese students in another classroom and Marilyn has no exam duties today.

 

It was disappointing to read an article in the newspaper this morning criticising successive NSW governments for allowing developers (the same ones who donate generously to both political parties) to drive the agenda in the provision of more housing in Sydney’s western suburbs, particularly around Penrith.

 

It suits the developers to build houses with a large footprint on tiny blocks where there is not even room to plant a shady tree.  The houses will likely have a dark roof, which is fashionable, and an air conditioner which blows hot air towards the neighbours.

 

The author of the article says that governments should be promoting housing which takes note of our climate and builds accordingly, and more multi-story apartments designed with the well-being of the tenants in mind.  Instead, the decision-making is driven by the profit expectations of the developers.

 

Even though the focus was on NSW, the same criticism can be levelled at other states.  Our unit is on a tiny block, with a black roof and a yard too small to plant a shady tree.  Our air conditioner blows its excess hot air straight towards our neighbour’s back yard.  But we love it anyway!

Monday, November 15

It’s a bit warmer this morning and I encourage the students to take off their heavy jumpers and jackets.  They look at me as if I am mad.  Can’t I see that the effect of the ensemble would be ruined if the centrepiece was deleted?  The first thing I would do if it were hot would be to remove my cap but I’m just an old fogey who has no idea.

 

Anyway, we have a stock of bottles of water if anyone looks like expiring.

 

Twenty-five students doing Economics!  I’m in Room 218 for the third time.  It’s set up for 36 so we have a bit of spare space, though we’re probably exceeding Covid requirements anyway.  Apparently we can relax the rules a little and the Premier tells us the borders will be opened on December 15 – only a month away.

 

My offsider has decided that I will read out the instructions and make the announcements and she will keep track of the times.

 

The students have three booklets with several questions in each.  After 10 minutes, one girl puts up her hand to say she has run out of room for the answer to Question 1.  We supply her with a supplementary booklet.  I notice her focus and how she writes furiously; one to watch maybe.

 

This morning, as we arrived, we were asked what we would like to be famous for.  I was not allowed to be honest and say that being famous would be my worst nightmare so I mumble ‘writing a novel’.  My offsider says she would like to be a famous golfer.  Each to his or her own, I suppose.

 

One of the first things we have to do before each exam is to check the students’ IDs, to see that they are in the right place.  There was one fellow yesterday who sat in the wrong seat and began to complete the paper using someone else’s ID stickers.  I’m always interested when I see common Tasmanian names like Cresswell, Archer or Field but, more and more, we see the results of our immigration policy.  In normal times we would see a number of FFPOSs (Full Fee-Paying Overseas Students) but Covid has slowed that program right down.  Launceston College works hard to attract students from overseas and has even designated one of the rooms on this level as the Overseas Students’ Lounge – local riff-raff not admitted.

 

Even without that program, at least 30% of the students in this group have non-Anglo names.  Once upon a time, Tasmania had the reputation of being a little Anglo-Saxon outpost in the South Seas, but no longer.

 

By 10 o’clock, one over-dressed individual is forced to remove his Tommy Hilfiger jacket but he perseveres with his cap.  It, too, has a logo but it’s too small for me to read.

 

Its’s now pretty close to finishing time and no-one has left early.  It’s an interesting group – no absentees, everyone is very focused and only a few take a toilet break.  Let’s hope they all go on to Uni, and become public servants in the Treasury Department, but it’s more likely they will all be aiming to make their first million before they’re thirty.

Sunday, November 14

 

Today was the first day for a long time that we’ve been able to spend a full day at home.  I wrote a little bit, read a little bit, watched a little bit of youtube and drank a few cups of coffee.  We were looking after Archie but he was content to spend most of the day in his basket with the occasional excursion to the yard to do his business.  We had a pet door put into the screen door when we ordered it and Archie has taken to using it with great aplomb.

 

One of our friends from Probus rang me to talk about an idea he has to organise bus trips for members.  It’s a great idea, I’m sure, but I can’t get enthused about it.  At the moment we all take our own cars for our visits but he thinks we can do better.  He has visions of people changing their seats regularly on a bus to have someone else to talk to but I’m not a fan of enforcing connections like that.

 

He was with us one time on a trip to the Philippines where we hired a bus to carry our small group to the rice terraces in the north of Luzon.  He became quite annoyed when Marilyn and I refused to play the game and insisted on sitting with each other.

 

Deep down, I know he is right and one of the aims of Probus is to encourage friendships and to provide support for anyone who has lost a partner, but I know I’m not a social animal and am happy to leave that responsibility to someone else.

 

I’m reading a book at the moment called Diamond and the Eye by Peter Lovesey.  It’s Book 20 in a series about a police detective who lives in Bath in England.  The background is interesting and I enjoy reading about the various historic sights and the famous people who lived there.  Both Marilyn and I enjoy series, seeing how the characters develop and how their lives change.  We each go through two or three books a week; thank goodness for the library.

Friday, November 12

 

One of the issues with this job is that most of the supervisors I work with are ex-secondary school teachers of a particular generation.   The women are mostly fine and happy to talk about what they are doing now, but the men, too often, want to talk about their days in the classroom.  I don't enjoy re-living the past and my years since retirement have been much more exciting.

 

A surprising number start the conversation by saying, “I had one rule (or  two or three),” then go on to outline them.  Just today I heard another list of three magic rules.

 

1.     Don’t swear.

2.     If you need help, put your hand up, and

3.     When I’m talking, you shut up.

 

No doubt these were useful guidelines to set up a classroom environment for young people a generation ago but today's students are different: I suspect they would not be so accepting of arbitrary imposed regulations.  This fellow went on to say that he never had any trouble but I suspect that’s not entirely true.  It’s in the nature of young male teenagers to challenge the people in charge and setting up a ‘rule’ is an invitation for a 13-year old to try to break it.

 

Much better to try to set up an environment where the students won’t see the need to flex their muscles.  Teaching well is not easy but there’s nothing to be gained by setting yourself up for a fall.

 

I had just one student to supervise this afternoon – a girl who has been allowed an extra thirty minutes to complete the paper.  She has also been given permission to bring food into the room and a blood sugar monitor.  In the end, she doesn’t bring either.

 

Her exam is French and, as part of it, I have to play a CD which she responds to by writing her answers in English in an answer booklet.  It’s a three-hour exam but, with her extra time, I don’t expect to finish until 4.45pm.

 

The CD takes about an hour and she’s now beavering away at the rest of the paper.  Another supervisor arrives at about 3 o’clock to give me a break, which is welcome but my student hasn’t shown any sign of wanting to stretch her legs.  Impressive!

Thursday, November 11

 

It’s Remembrance Day  - Nera rang me last night to ask my advice about what she might write in a note to her staff at the Vaccination Centre.  It’s an interesting exercise, trying to get the balance right: not too blasé and dismissive and not too jingoistic and over the top.

 

Marilyn is at her Book Club meeting and I’m in a classroom with just 6 students who are being examined on their knowledge of General Mathematics.  It’s a three-hour paper and this group has been allowed an extra 30 minutes for one reason or another.  With reading time we’ll be here for 3 hours and 45 minutes.

 

Three boys and three girls is a nice mix.  I have an offsider who is happy to take the lead so I can sit at the back of the room and scribble my notes.  I look around for inspiration for the content of this daily report  but it doesn’t look promising.  Everything which might be distracting has been removed from the walls so there is nothing to write about here.

 

The exam paper is interesting.  Old fogies complain, “They should teach them real world situations like buying a house and working out the finance” – and they do.  The paper is vastly different to the ones I remember which was mostly about Arithmetic.

 

One thing I notice is that every classroom is set up for audio-visual presentations.  There is a ceiling-mounted projector which can be controlled by the teacher’s laptop – what a boon to be able to illustrate any point you want to make, and the full power of Youtube to call on.

 

Out the window I have a panoramic view of an old colonial-era windmill which is now the centrepiece of the Pennyroyal Resort and is a nice counterpoint to the relatively hi-tech environment of the school opposite.

 

Well, that’s occupied about 15 minutes, only 210  to go.

Wednesday, November 10

Jamie has today off from Exam Supervision so has driven down to Hobart to spend the night with Nera. Marilyn and I were both rostered on in the afternoon.

 

One of the co-ordinators tries hard to keep up our spirits by getting us to respond to odd questions she writes on the board: what is your favourite car, and so on. Today we were asked where we would choose to live if we couldn’t live in Australia.  Our immediate response was New Zealand but, on reflection, I changed my answer to Japan.  New Zealand was my ‘head’ answer but Japan was from the heart.

 

Our exam was Psychology and we were in different rooms.  I suspect that it’s a policy to make sure we focus on the task at hand.  I was with an older woman who had been regaling the staffroom with her ideas on mobile phones – she refuses to carry one on principle because she hates to see young people chatting on them as they walk along.  I tried to get her to take the lead in the supervision but she is an old hand and knows how to find the easy path.  She had a puzzle book in her handbag to help her fill in the time; that’s a major no-no but she knew I wouldn’t dob her in.

 

Marilyn had the same oppo as yesterday, the oldest one of the supervisors who has been doing the job for too many years.  I think she is his designated minder to make sure he doesn’t make too many blunders.

 

There were 22 on my list and 3 didn’t turn up, so it was an easy afternoon.  The paper was three hours long, there were no dramas and nobody even needed to go to the toilet so I had a chance to practise my observation skills again. The gender mix is 16 girls, 3 boys; maybe the boys don’t see Psychology as being macho enough for them.  Of the 3 males, 2 are bearded.  Of course, this cohort is about a year older than we were in our final school year and kids of today mature earlier, but I still find it incongruous to see school students who are not clean-shaven. 

 

One of the bearded students is the most interesting person in the room. He’s tall, well-built and has a significant tattoo on his left forearm.  I wonder how he paid for it.  Did his parents encourage him to get the tattoo and agree to fund it? Or did he have a part-time job and this was how he spent his earnings?  When I looked closely, I saw it was a long-stemmed rose, not exactly what I was expecting.  I imagine what my father would have said if I had gone home with my first 10 shilling pay packet and announced I was saving it up to get a long-stemmed rose tattoo on my forearm.  Every penny I earned in my part-time jobs went into clothes or the latest Everley Bros record.

 

The boy has let the front and left-side of his hair grow long.  He’s bleached it and died it pink.  It hangs down over one eye and one ear like a curtain and he constantly plays with it. 

He has a dangly silver earring in his right ear but I can’t see what’s in his left for the curtain of hair. He also has a habit of tossing his head so the hair flies out. 

 

It’s not a particularly warm day but the other boy with a beard is wearing what I think might be called a muscle shirt: tight with no arms, designed to show off his physique. 

I notice one girl is left-handed and looks awkward with her writing.  I wonder, idly,

 how many other students are also left-handed.  I think I read somewhere that it’s about 1 in 10 people, and it’s often associated with individuals who are creative or artistic.  Looking around, the only other ‘leftie’ I can see is the boy with the pink hair.  Hmm!

 

Glancing at the clock I notice it’s time to make another announcement.  One hour has elapsed and there are still two to go.  Ho hum.

 

Tuesday, November 9th

 

It’s the biggest day for the exams today when every HSC student at the College is sitting the English paper.  They will be spread over several rooms and I am looking after one of the biggest: 43 spread across 6 columns of desks with a reasonable space between them.  Every supervisor available is rostered on including Marilyn and Jamie who are elsewhere in the building.

 

Three of my students haven’t turned up which is, apparently, par for the course.

 

The room is very hot and the students are too close together for comfort.  The air conditioner is not coping so the college staff are running around to find fans to help circulate the air.

 

I have two offsiders, neither of whom has worked in this situation before so I am warned by the coordinator that I must play it by the book and not cut any corners.  As if I would?  Deb is nice and keen to get it right but the other fellow has read and memorised the instructions and wants to show off his knowledge by reminding me of the procedures.  My instinct is to put him back in his box but that could be counter-productive.  Probably better to roll with the situation and take advantage of his keenness.

 

The students are the usual mix of scholars, strugglers and time-wasters.  Their self-discipline is, as usual, exemplary and I don’t have to worry about looking out for cheating, etc.  How would you cheat in an English exam, anyway?

 

I find myself perusing their shoes, looking for trends and patterns.  Most wear generic sneakers but a couple of girls prefer Converse basketball boots.  Two or three girls favour heavy leather boots with 7 or 8 pairs of eyelets.  A surprising number of boys have brands like Asics; their parents are certainly indulging them at $180 a pair.

 

There’s nothing startling about their clothing and many look as if they have slept in their clothes.  There are a couple wearing baseball caps which I always think looks gormless, and one boy, who happens to have a full, bushy beard, is wearing what used to be called a stocking cap.  Wool, of course, in this heat!  His t-shirt has a logo celebrating the Battle of LA, a particular battle I somehow missed.  He finishes early and is gone by 10.15.

 

An Asian girl has a t-shirt which says Je Ne Sai Qua and a boy’s logo proclaims Hockey Dad, with 5 yellow flowers.  I don’t get that one so I’ll have to look it up.

 

Everything goes as it should and three and a half hours after the start, we usher the last of them out of the door. 

Sunday, November 7th

 

We had an interesting visitor the other day: the young man who bought our house in Dilston happened to be in our street and saw me taking in the garbage bins.  He followed my tracks and rang the doorbell.  It turns out he has bought the house opposite us and was settling in a new tenant.  It’s just 12 months since he bought Sherborne Drive and he is already on his next purchase.  He is certainly a young man in a hurry.

 

It was good to see him and hear of the changes he’s made to the Dilston House.  He’s started to fence it so he can run a few sheep to keep the grass down, he’s brought in a new driveway from the side street and is levelling an area to build a bigger shed.  He tells us he and his girlfriend are selling their house to buy a bigger property at Lilydale just to the north of Launceston.  They will live there, his parents will move down from Victoria and live in the Dilston house, and he will continue to collect the rents from his houses in Mowbray and Longford.

 

I think he’s about 24 years old.

 

Since his new tenants have moved in, we’ve noticed a change in the ambience of the neighbourhood.  Faintly, in the air, we can feel the thumping of the bass line from rock and roll songs.  I can’t identify exactly where the sound is coming from but as these people are the latest to move into the area, I’m prepared to name them the culprits until I hear otherwise.

Thursday, November 4

 

I was reading an article in The Guardian commenting on moves to modernise the Modern Pentathlon for the Olympic Games.  It’s an anachronistic event designed to celebrate the ‘romantic rough adventure’ of a cavalry officer trying to deliver a message behind enemy lines.  The five elements of the event are pistol shooting, swimming, fencing, horse riding and cross country running.  These might have appealed to impressionable young men in the early 1900s but seem a bit out of touch with modern sensibilities.

 

The newspaper asked readers for their suggestions for alternative events.  Some ideas were mundane: replace horses with mountain bikes, add rowing, and so on, but other were more radical - hand-to-hand combat, Mixed Martial Arts, etc.

 

I liked the suggestions from the nerds who thought that drone flying might add a bit of lustre but the idea I related best to was the one from the long-suffering older gentleman struggling to deal with the demands of a technological society:

 

1.     Finding the remote control

2.     Working out which one actually turns the TV on

3.     Plugging a USB cable in the right way

4.     Finding your way around a room without turning the Big Light on

5.     Finding the paper jam in the printer

 

It’s a bugger getting old but it helps if you can laugh about it.

A beautiful day in Deloraine.

 

Tas Craft Fair

It’s another beautiful day in Tasmania and we had promised to lend a hand at the Craft Fair.  I resigned from Rotary years ago but we still help out with their activities from time to time.  The Craft Fair is Deloraine Rotary’s main fund raiser.  I directed four Fairs in past years and probably turned over close to a million dollars in the process.  Of course, the profit is only a small proportion of that but a lot of crafts people, suppliers and other organisations do well out of it.

 

With Covid, the last two Craft Fairs were cancelled, so a lot was riding on this year’s effort.  Mainland exhibitors could not be invited so a reduced Fair was set up with about 160 local artists involved.  We were only there for the last afternoon but, apparently, crowds were good over the weekend, exhibitors have made some money and the Club will have turned a profit.

 

The Government insisted that everyone involved wear a mask.  At Ulverstone yesterday, there were something like 150 people in the little theatre with not a mask in sight; today, at the Deloraine Showground where we were stationed, there might have been 150 people at any one time in an area of about 2Ha, in the open air, and everyone was wearing a mask.  Seems a bit odd.  Still, it was great to see that nobody was whinging and everyone was happy to go along with the regulations.