Monday, December 15

 

The story goes that Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the famous poet, woke up one night ‘from a fevered dream’ with a poem fully formed in his head. It is suggested he might have taken opium. The poem was Kubla Khan and it has become one of the best known poems in the world.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure dome decree

Where Alph the sacred river ran

In caverns, measureless to man,

Down to a sunless sea.

 

I had a similar experience this morning, waking early with a poem rattling around in my head and I had nothing stronger than coffee before retiring. I had to get up to write it down before it disappeared.  In fact, one line (that’s 20% of the poem) had disappeared and may never be seen again.

There are some things I need to get at the shop

And some library books I need to swap

And I wish the voices in my head would stop

If there’s whisky in that bottle, I wouldn’t mind a drop.

Saturday, December 13

 Nera has family visiting her at the moment.  Her sister with her husband and baby, and another brother arrived late last night and are driving to Hobart this morning to see the sights of the big city.  Marilyn and I were woken at about 8 o'clock with Jamie dropping off Archie on the way.

I am pondering on the details of that situation: for years I have prided myself on being up and about by 7 o'clock every morning.  You could set your clock by my regularity.  But that proud reputation has fallen in a heap and I have shown myself to be as weak as the next man.  This morning I was still in bed at 8 o'clock!  Disgraceful!  I'm blaming the physiotherapist at the exercise class who worked us too hard in yesterday's class.  Is she expecting too much of her elderly clients?

Tuesday, December 2

 I seem to have become addicted to a website called Quora.  It's a question and answer forum and mostly US-based.  The format is that someone poses a question, and other people offer their responses.  Many of the questions are political like ''Where does Donald Trump get off calling Marjorie Taylor Green a 'rino'?   The questions vary though and this morning I read "Is it ethical to keep cats as indoor pets when some people believe it's wrong to keep animals in captivity?"

It's harmless stuff, mostly, and I find myself being sucked into the nonsense.  Perhaps it's because I secretly enjoy reading how ignorant some people are and that feeds my feeling of superiority.

This morning, I realised there are other people who also share my feeling of cleverness.  One regular subscriber is called Nicholas Stone and he writes about trains in the UK.  I was surprised how many people ask about train travel in the UK until I realised that Nicholas must be writing the questions himself.  He can then show off his knowledge and attach a picture of a ,train with his beaming face in front.

I love the captions to the photographs, something like: A Cross Country XPT in festive livery,  Photograph taken by Nicholas Stone, the author of this article.

I suppose everybody needs a hobby.

Thursday, November 27

 We were half-watching an Escape to the Country episode on Youtube yesterday, set in some obscure village in, maybe, Somerset, when I glimpsed a familiar name on the screen.  The prospective home buyers were visiting a restored cinema and were being shown the elaborate theatre organ which had been restored to its former glory.  I wasn't particularly interested until I deciphered the name carved on the hinged flap where the organist would stand his music; the name was Christie.

Hurrying to the computer, I searched for 'Christie Organ', not knowing what I would find.  What I discovered was that in about 1923 a company called Hill, Norman and Beard was involved in manufacturing large theatre organs and they were in great demand to meet the growing popularity of 'moving pictures'.  Silent movies were always accompanied by an organist.

The company was bought out by a prosperous entrepreneur called John Christie (Yep! Another one!) and the company went from strength to strength.  Mr Christie opened an Australian branch in 1927 and organs were installed in all the major theatres including the Lyceum Theatre in Sydney.  A particularly good example of a Christie organ is in the College of Advanced Education in Brisbane.

Of course, the empire fell apart with the advent of 'talkies'.

Tuesday, November 25

 It's a miserable day and we're not too enthusiastic about leaving our comfortable lounge-room.  Still, there are things to be done and we need to give ourselves a shake.  Matilyn might have gone to her 'Friendship Group' this morning but has given that a miss because we have a couple of appointments this afternoon. At our age, you have to pace yourself.

November 25th ... it's my Dad's birthday (and nephew Simon's as well).  Dad was born in 1918 in the dying days of World War 1.  He grew up in the period when Britain was trying to re-build and married just as World War 2 was getting underway.  With his wife, he made the decision in 1950 to bring his family to Australia in the hope of a better life and he must have been pleased when that hope eventuated.  Sadly, he died before his 69th birthday but I think he would have been chuffed that he succumbed to something as exotic a Legionnaires' Disease.  I can hear him saying, "It you have to go, you might as well go in a blaze of glory."

This post is a bit gloomy, perhaps, but I suppose I can blame the weather.

Sunday, November 21

 We woke up to a blackout this morning.  It's not a frequent occurrence but certainly a pain; for one thing, there's only one way to boil a kettle in our house so coffee is out of the question.  When I notified Marilyn that her morning coffee was on hold she said, "Then I'll have to drink champagne." (And she wonders why I call her Marie Antoinette.)

I noticed there was a message on my 'phone from Tas Networks saying that there was an outage in Burleigh Street and they were investigating.  How did they know it was just in Burleigh Street and were we the only ones to get the message? They must have an impressive setup for them to be so specific.  Then I notice another message: 'Caused by a vehicle accident.'  I had read that once before so I suspect it was a leftover from a previous incident but, nevertheless, I hurried outside to look up and down the street, in case I was missing some human drama..

There was nothing to be seen, apart from the fact that the street was deserted. There were no other onlookers, no people on their morning walk, and not a moving vehicle in sight.  I went back inside for breakfast (coffee-less) and the lights came back on.  Just another day in Paradise!

Tuesday, November 18

I note that my last post was a few days ago; I've clearly had nothing to say since last week and that's not surprising since our lives have become much narrower since passing our eightieth birthdays.  I was up this morning at my usual time of about 7 o'clock but I have nothing planned until 2 o'clock this afternoon.   I fill that time by reading, watching Youtube videos and drinking cups of coffee.  It's not very productive but that's just how it is.

We've been watching a UK TV show called Escape to the Country where people living in UK cities go through the process of uprooting themselves, seeking happiness in a rural setting.  In most cases they go to Dorset or Devon where there are still relatively wide-open spaces and not so much hustle and bustle.

Last night's escapees, for a change, wanted to move to Lanarkshire in Scotland and, of course, Lanarkshire is where I lived when I was younger.  I wouldn't have thought it was 'country' but it turned out there were isolated areas where you could easily escape the madding crowd.  One of the properties the couple was shown was in Motherwell where my father was born but they opted for a more rural farmhouse.  It intrigues me that none of the couples in the show give any credence to modern comforts.  They'd rather have 'period features' no matter how uncomfortable they are.  I suppose there is a touch of nostalgia in all of us but my feeling is that modern house-building techniques are what they are for very good reasons.  Nostalgia won't keep you warm

Thursday, November 13

 We went to bed a little earlier last night; Marilyn put her head down but I reached for my Kobo reader intending to finish a chapter or to before lying down.. The reader was flat!  I had intended to charge it during nthe afternoon but forgot.  Luckily, I had my little tablet there and I knew I had a couple of books downloaded on that.

I found a story called The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion.  He's a New Zealand-born Australian author and his best-known books are about Don Tilman who has Aspergers Syndrome.  He marries Rosie and the books explore the complications of living with this disorder while being married to someone wo is neuro-typical.  They are very funny but quite poignant.  I've read them before but they're definitely worth a re-visit.

Wednesday, November 12

 I had a very slow start this morning: up at the usual time but I had to have a shower and get dressed to get to my Probus meeting for the 10 o'clock start, and I found myself rushing.  We have more than twenty members but there were only 11 there; even the President wasn't in attendance.  I wonder sometimes how we can survive into the future but I suppose having a target group of retired men is against us.  Probus stands for 'Professional and Business' and that's too small a cohort in a Tasmanian country town to allow for easy recruitment.

The guest speaker was a bloke who, with his wife, volunteers to look after remote lighthouses while the regular keeper is having a break.  There are several remote lighthouses around Tasmania and he seems to have worked at most of them at one time or another.  I suppose it's not particularly exciting work but when he thought it necessary to put up a list of the exotic weeds he had to deal with at Maatsuyker Island, I wondered when he would get to the interesting part.

Looking out the window, I see that it is clouding over but that's not a problem.  Marilyn and I have no plans for heading out today so the weather can do its worst and it won't affect us.

Tuesday, November 11

 There was a bit of a hiccup in my morning routine today:  I made the coffee and sat down to watch Youtube  but found, to my horror, that I couldn't access it.  What to do!  Marilyn came through to see what was the matter and suggested I needed to look elsewhere for something to watch.

I finally checked ABC iView and found a program we used to watch twenty years ago: Spicks and Specks.  It was the same old faces and 'old' was certainly the right word.  Myf, Adam and Alan are more mature, of course, but the format was the same, which is reassuring, and I still l couldn't answer any of the questions.

I'll have to remember to look for this again when I'm feeling nostalgic and want the reassurance that the world is not leaving me behind.

Anyway, Youtube finally appeared and I found a program about railways in the UK, with Michael Portillo who is pompous and insufferable but I can overlook that.  Today;s program was about railways in the north-wets of Scotland.  Good stuff!

Monday, November 10

 Planning for this coming week is pretty simple.  I have an appointment tomorrow afternoon with Specsavers and my Probus meeting is on Wednesday.  Ostensibly, the Specsavers' appointment id for an inspection of my eyes to make sure there is no deterioration since my last appointment.  The real reason, however, is that Specsavers has identified that they are eligible to claim a fee from the government for providing me with a check-up.  The fact that I have not noticed any deterioration in my eyesight and would not have thought there is any need for me to spend an hour of my life peering through lenses is irrelevant.  Never get between a medical provider and a government subsidy.

Nera's sister has arrived from the Philippines for a visit so we're looking forward to seeing her and hearing the news of the family.  Marilyn and I have many good memories of our time in that country and since Jamie and Nera have married we feel a strong link.  

Sunday, November 9

 One of the regulars I watch on Youtube is a fellow called Ken.  His channel is titled Ken Abroad and he seems to focus on Asian countries and is usually alone, although we've seen his Mum a couple of times and rare appearances from a girl-friend. I was a bit tired of the sameness of his exploits so haven't seen him for a couple of months.

This morning, though, I noted he was in Tokyo so I switched it on to see if I recognised any places.  I was amazed at the nostalgic feeling which swept over me as I watched him navigating the confusion of the Tokyo Railway Station.  I don't think of myself as being particularly emotional but perhaps as I get older I am developing a more sensitive side.

I'm trying to think how many times I've been to Japan.  I had at least three trips when I was Principal at Gib Gate, visiting our sister-school in Kanazawa.  Marilyn and I had three or four trips, including a time when we took our grand-daughter, Madeleine for her birthday, visiting Tokyo Disneyland, Disney Sea and Universal Studios.

Perhaps our best trip was the time we booked a unit in Osaka through our Timeshare program and, at the end of that, joined a cruise ship in Yokohama for a cruise north which included visits to ports in Hokkaido, Vladivostok in Russia, Korea and ending up in China,

Of all the places we've visited, it would be Japan I would choose as my favourite destination in the world so it's no wonder I'm a little nostalgic.  Now that I've finished this post, I'll go back and see what else Youtube can show me about this remarkable country.

Friday, November 7

 I'm reading a book at the moment, written by Tony Black.  I've read one or two of his before and enjoyed them.  They're pretty standard detective stories, set in Edinburgh so I assumed he was Scottish.  However, it turns out that he is, in fact, Australian who spent much of his life in Scotland and Ireland.  Moving from Australia to Scotland?  It's usually the other way around.

This novel is called Paying For It and it's not like the others I've read.  It's almost like an American hard-boiled detective novel, with that glib, tough-guy speech which doesn't ring true and I can't imagine it going down well on the streets of Edinburgh.  In this novel, the author even slipped into an American usage which drives me mad.  Talking about a character who had fallen on hard times, the detective, Gus Dury, says, 'I could care less!'

It's "I couldn't care less!", you cretin.  'I could care less' doesn't make sense in the context in which it was used.  If you wanted to show that you had no sympathy for the character's difficulty and that she deserved all she gets, you would want to say that you don't care at all: that 'you could not care less.'

I wondered whether this was a novel aimed at the US market and written accordingly but I note that it was his first published work.  I suspect if I had come across this novel first, I wouldn't have bothered with any of the others.

Thursday, November 6

 After our exercise class on Tuesday we wandered into the local supermarket for a couple of things: six slices of corned beef from the deli, a loaf of bread, four cooking apples ... and in the fruit and veg department I picked up a bag of green grapes, probably from Nicaragua or somewhere.  At the checkout, the young girl, probably on work experience said to Marilyn, 

'Did you realise this bag of grapes is $29?'

Marilyn recoiled in horror. "Take them, back,' she ordered, 'and get the red ones.  They'll be cheaper.'

'Yes, dear,' I muttered.  

It seems we've reached a stage in our lives when members of the public believe we need looking after and I'm not sure what I think about that.

Wednesday, November 5

 I'm writing this on my tablet because my desktop computer refused to start this morning.  I have poked and prodded it, pulled out the plug and replaced it, even muttered some threatening words to it, but to no avail.

Jamie will call by later and he might have more success.

I haven't had it long so I would not be happy if I had to replace it

UPDATE: Everything is working as it should.  I worried, of course, about the worst-case scenario and checked the Officeworks website to see how much it would cost to replace the computer,  The beast must have sensed this because, when I tried to boot it again, it did so with no complaint.

Monday, November 3

When you pass the 80-year old mark, life becomes quite narrow.  In our previous life we worked hard and kept up an active social life but, nowadays, when we are retired and getting on in years, our program is much narrower.  Looking at our diary for this week, for example, we only have two items listed: activity classes on Tuesday and Friday at Toosey.  In the past, Marilyn might have gone to her Craft Group on Tuesday but the Activity Class has superseded that.  Later this month we'll have our Probus meetings and, no doubt, there will be a hair appointment and something medical, but they're not yet on the horizon.

On my desk is a reminder from Specsavers that I'm due a check-up on my eyes and I have a half memory of receiving something similar about my hearing but I'm not treating those as urgent.  I'm happy with my current spectacles and haven't worn my hearing aids in months so I can leave those appointments on the back-burner for the time being.

In the meantime, I'll fill my days in the usual way: reading, fiddling with my tablet, checking Youtube and drinking coffee. It's not a bad life.

Friday, October 31

 There's a terrible mess outside the front of our unit; I noticed it when I opened the front blinds. An 8-foot section of the paling fence opposite is streaked with bird droppings, The concrete driveway is covered with droppings and the path up to our front door.  There was a mess even under the chairs on our front deck.  When I went out to have a closer look, I noticed that there was just as much mess on the roof.

Clearly, there had been a bird convention here overnight and Marilyn and I, sleeping at the back of the unit had heard nothing.

My first thought was that we had had an influx of seagulls but we are quite a way from the sea, and Jamie suspects the culprits were cockatoos.  Longford is well-known for being a haunt for Black Cockatoos but I rarely see them.  Maybe the purpose of their visit was to remind me that they still exist.

I went for a wander around the other units but none has had the treatment we have enjoyed so it remains a bit of a mystery.

Jamier has promised to bring over his Karcher and we can make an attempt to clean it all up.  

Wednesday, October 29

 It's Garbage Collection day so there's a string of bins lined up in front of our units.  There are five units in our set , so ten bins this week.  The kerb space between our driveway and the one next door isn't wide enough to accommodate the ten bins so Paul from Unit 1 leaves his the front of the next house.  The -other eight bins fit snugly in the available space with about 15cm between each one and the next.  Looks alright to me.

However, Bertine from Unit 5 isn't happy.  She thinks they're too close together so she hung around one morning  to chat with the garbage men.  She reported back that they would like half a metre between each bin so that it would be easier for them to manipulate their grabber between them to pick them up.  I suggested that the only way that this might happen is if a couple of us dragged our bins to another section of the street, in front of someone else's house.  Would she like to volunteer?

Nothing's happened about that of course and the garbos seem to have retained the skill to fit the arms of the grabber between the bins.

Sunday, 26 October 2025

 There was a celebration in Deloraine yesterday to mark the 30th Anniversary of the establishment of Giant Steps School for Autism.  For the first five years it muddled along under the direction of a group of parents but when it was a bit more established they decided to appoint a Principal.  I started at the beginning of 2000 and I think it was the most interesting period of my working life.

There was more to the job than managing the program.  I found myself being advocate for the school, negotiating with and educating government, fund-raising and extending the school's footprint by buying adjoining properties and building extra classroom space.

It's been over fifteen years since I retired and there have been three other principals since then.  The current boss was appointed by me in about 2005 as a Teacher Aide and has now taken on the job as Principal.  The school is unrecogniseable with new buildings and reorganisation of facilities.  When I became Principal there was always the danger that we would have to close our doors but those days are long gone.

It was great to see that Giant Steps has gone from strength to strength and is now very well-established.  It's nice to think that I played a role in that.

Friday, October 24

 I came across an interesting story this morning about a group of convicts who escaped from Tasmania in about 1830, hijacked a merchant ship called the Cyprus and sailed it towards New Zealand, through the Chatham Islands, past Tonga and along the coast of China before arriving at a small island called Tebajima in the south of Japan.  The local population of Samurai families were very suspicious of the intruders and frightened them away with cannon fire.

This is probably the first encounter between Japan and Australia, and not very diplomatic.

Our cleaner is here this morning, a young man from Nepal, so I'm hanging around at my desk until he leaves and I can get my shower.  It's all very well having home-help but I resent the invasion of my privacy.  Marilyn and I have an exercise class this afternoon.