Tuesday, September 7th

 At a recent meeting of our Poetry Group, I happened to mention a local poet whose work I had encountered.  The woman who runs the group became very excited, said that she knew him and offered to lend me a book he had written.  Not only that, he was appearing at the Library the following week and would I Iike to accompany her to the meeting? Be careful what you say, I thought. 

I’ve struggled with the book, in fact, but enjoyed his talk. He was not what I imagined a poet should be – foppish, languid, learned and other-wordly are words which spring to mind.  In fact, he was just another bloke like the ones who meet on Saturday afternoons to watch the footy.  You wouldn’t have looked twice if you passed him in the street.  It seems he was brought up on the north-west coast of Tasmania, and worked at the local sawmill and ‘on the peas’, which I assume means in the agricultural enterprise providing peas to the frozen food market. 

Clearly, I still think of poets as being in the same mould as Alfred, Lord Tennyson who only worked at being a Lord, or John Donne who was a country clergyman with lots of time on his hands.  Oh, yes, Robert Burns was a working-class poet but he was an anomaly. 

While I was waiting outside the library for Marilyn to pick me up, a four-wheel drive came barreling up the street with a young fellow driving. Another young bloke was hanging out the window, bouncing a yellow golf ball on the street and catching it. My immediate thought was not ‘how skilful is that?’ but ‘why aren’t they at work’ because, of course, work is the natural state of Man.  If we don’t work, we are nothing. 

As an aside, the ball-bouncer mis-timed a bounce, lost control of the ball and it rolled at my feet.  The fellow just waved cheerfully, and they continued on.  I picked up the ball and pocketed it, taking the situation as having some sort of significance even though I don’t know what it is.  The ball is sitting on my desk as a type this. 

One of our small pleasures now that we don’t work is watching Mastermind on SBS,  I’m always interested to hear the occupations of the contestants: lots of retired school teachers, of course, pretending they are intellectuals, consultants and IT specialists, but I look forward to encountering the occasional boilermaker with an interest in the Japanese mini-submarines which invaded Sydney Harbor during WWII.  Last night, there was a young woman who claimed to be a dilettante.  What a wonderful word!  I had to look it up to check the meaning.  I thought it meant someone who doesn't work but, in fact, it means someone who has a superficial interest in a particular area of study.  I think I’ll add that to my cv. 

Saturday, September 4th

 We’ve had a few days break from the busyness of the Census so took the chance yesterday for some overdue shopping.  They say it’s a good therapy but I’ve usually found that it’s more of a chore than a pleasure.  However, now that our lives are in the slow lane, we take our pleasures where we find them. 

Marilyn wanted some new linen for the bed and we decided to invest in a ‘topper’ for the mattress in the spare room.  The mattress is not particularly old but this topper will give it a new level of comfort: 2000 gsm of duck down should make a difference.  All we need now is a visitor or two to occupy the bed and the possibility of interstate travel seems no closer.  No doubt the politicians are right when they say, “We don’t want your diseases here,” but I thought we were all in this together. 

With time on our hands, we’ve decided to go through our wardrobes and discard anything we’re not wearing.  Old t-shirts and jumpers are easy but I have a very flash dinner suit I bought at Tramps in Wollongong; it’s a Hugo Boss and cost me a small fortune.  I’ve worn it a bit but I weighed 106 Kg when I bought it and hope never to be that weight again. 

What do I do with it?  On reflection I bought it in 1995 so it’s almost an antique.  Op Shop, I think! 

We have Archie with us this weekend.  Nera and Jamie are in Hobart so we’re dog-sitting.  He’s very good company but he wants to sleep in our bed with us, burrowing down under the blankets and generating enough heat to keep me awake.  He’s used to sharing food with humans and fronts up for his portion when I’m having a biscuit for morning tea.  Of course, vets say we shouldn’t give dogs human food but that’s easier said than done.  We console ourselves with the fact that he’ll be going home in a day or two and they can worry about it. 

Talking about the census, we’re on the final leg.  Each of us had about 250 houses in our area, we’ve made sure they all had their booklet delivered and have made two return visits to make sure they’ve been filled out.  After all that, I still have 29 whose form hasn’t been received so I have a third, and final letter to deliver this week.  If that doesn’t stir them into action, they could be fined but that process is left to the heavies in Canberra. 

In five year’s time, would we do it again?  It’s been hard but we made the mistake of taking an area each.  If we are still fit enough when the next census comes around, we might take one area and share it, because we have enjoyed the experience.  But, let’s not plan for the future.  Live for today, the philosophers say and that’s probably good advice. 

Thursday, August 12th

 I’m at a bit of a loose end this morning. Marilyn has gone off to her Book Club meeting at the library and I’m left at home to look after Archie.  Normally, I’m pretty good at filling in time: I always have a book or two on the go, or I’ll work on a story for my Writing Group but, for some reason, I can’t get motivated today. 

Perhaps it’s the let-down after a couple of weeks of intensive concentration on the Census, or perhaps it’s just a bout of boredom.  Whatever the cause, I’m wandering around looking for something to occupy my mind.  I’ve finished my story for tomorrow’s Writing Group: 764 words on The Bookshop.  I’ve written about a little shop in Cambridge called The Haunted Bookshop I visited in 2013.  It was a quirky little place with piles of second-hand children’s books everywhere. 

I’ve decided I won’t turn on the TV.  I can’t tolerate free-to-air with the know-all talking heads and the usual fare of daytime shows is too much to tolerate.  I could watch something I’ve downloaded but I don’t think I have the concentration to get into something meaningful.  Youtube is often worthwhile but you have to wade through so much dross before you find something watchable. 

Over the last few weeks, I’ve planned future trips to Japan and New Zealand, ready for the time that the world is safe for travellers.  Of course, that’s another futile exercise because costs change so rapidly that today’s plans may be unworkable in a few months’ time.  I find no pleasure in planning without considering costs: I prefer to set a budget, $4000 say, and see how much I can achieve with that limitation.  Recently, I mapped out 10 days in Japan: airfares, rail passes, accommodation, within that budget.  Sadly, it depended on return airfares of $686 each which disappeared from the website within a week. 

New Zealand is another example of what might have been possible if we had been able to leave within a month.  $4000 would buy us return airfares to Christchurch, train trips to Picton, ferry to Wellington, train across to Aukland, 8 nights’ accommodation, visits to Hobbiton and wineries, and flights home.  Well, it might have if we were able to fly within the next month. 

Perhaps I need another hobby. 

PS - I've just realised that today is August 12th - the Glorious 12th, opening of the Grouse Shooting season in UK.  some wit called it the sport involving the Unspeakable shooting the Uneatable.  Now, that's a hobby I haven't considered.

Wednesday, August 11th

 It's raining again today but we have no plans so will probably have a day at home.  We're in that hiatus period of the census, having put out all our booklets and are now awaiting the nod to start the process of  chasing-up the people who haven't got around to filling them out.  I've no idea what percentage of people just ignore the forms when they arrive on their doorstep but, having filled ours out yesterday, I wouldn't be surprised if it's quite a lot.  It seemed to me to be quite unnecessarily complex with irrevelent questions,  Who cares what religion I profess?  My answer is probably a lie anyway.

The way the system works is that all the dwellings I have visited appear on an app on my phone.  As people complete their forms, the icon changes colour so that it is easy to tell who needs a hurry-up.

On the last day of my putting-out the forms, I went back to one area to check on a collection of letter-boxes at the end of one bush track.  There was an old fellow from a house up the hill checking his box.  He recognised me and told me that he had also received a form in the mail.  Wasteful, you might say.  But more importantly, if he chooses to fill out the form he received in the mail, I won't receive that information on my phone and will have to chase him up, unnecessarily!

I'm having a little trouble with my computer.  I use it every day for one thing or another and really can't imagine life without it.  Although I say the same thing about my Surface tablet, ebook reader and Android 'phone.  Life was much simpler in the days before such technology.

I complain to Jamie that my computer isn't doing its job. "When did you buy it?" he asks, "March 31, 2015," I say, "And it cost me $860."  "Well, that's less than $3 per week over that period,"  he says, "It's cheap entertainment."

What he's implying, of course, is that I should buy a new one.  The equivalent model is now only $497 and, at $3 per week, would be 'paid for' in just over 3 years.  Tempting, but is that the answer?  I'll have to think about it.

Working for the Man

Marilyn and I must be on a list somewhere because we often receive invitations on email to apply for part-time jobs with the government, Federal or State.  The latest one was encouraging us to take part in the forthcoming Census.  Our inclination is to apply: the money we earn is handy but, more importantly, it keeps us in circulation with other people and helps us feel we are not totally useless.  Not knowing what was expected, we both applied and were pleased when we were accepted.  Perhaps we should have been suspicious with the quickness of the response but, not having worked in this area before, we were free of any concerns. 

We applied for general dogsbody jobs but a friend ticked the box to be a supervisor.  He is 80 years old and has been a farmer all his life so couldn’t understand why he was picked.  Was there nobody else out there, younger and more experienced in this sort of thing?  Apparently not. 

Our jobs started a couple of weeks ago and we had been allocated to two different supervisors.  Both were bemoaning the fact that the response to the ads had been poor and they were both short of enough workers to cover the amount of work.  If we had known what was expected, we might have been inclined for only one of us to apply and the other to act as (unpaid) support. 

We were each given an area on the map and our role was to develop a database of every dwelling in that area.  We might expect to get around 200 houses each.  Both areas were rural but mine was more small-town with houses closer together.  Marilyn’s was full-rural:  large farms, some with multiple dwellings, muddy tracks with shacks inhabited by hippies and people who had chosen to live ‘off the grid’.  We used an app on our phones to record the details of the dwelling, and pin-point it on a map, deliver a census form to each householder and encourage them to fill it out at the appropriate time.   

This is fairly high-level data input and outside our experience.  To make matters worse, it rained every day we were out.  My habit was to go out to my area for two or three hours every morning, then pick up Marilyn and attack her area in the afternoon for 5 or 6 hours.  Her area was so widespread (it was 16km from one side to the other) that we might cover 200km in an afternoon.  We finished on Thursday but our job will resume after the Census date when we will have to go out to remind anyone who has neglected to fill out his form. 

As I said, the money is always handy and we might normally use it for a holiday.  But, where can we go? 

Saturday, July 10th

 My determination to write more in this blog has come unstuck already; it's been almost three weeks since I last scribbled a message.  In my defence, I might say that nothing much has happened in that twenty days, and that would be true, but a competent diarist should be able to finds something to say, even about nothing.  I've also been busy writing in  my Poetry blog and that's better than nothing.

Marilyn and I are in the habit of watching one of a plethora of UK quiz shows on the TV in the afternoon.  We find most of them on You tube but the availability is a bit random as it depends, I believe, on some nerd with nothing better to do, to capture the program from the TV, translate it into an appropriate format and upload it to Youtube for our enjoyment.  I gather there is some way he might get a modest income if people watch the shows but I have no idea how that works.

Our latest find is 'Only Connect', claimed to be the most difficult quiz show on TV.  The basic format is that contestants are asked to find the connection among four random items.  It is fiendishly difficult and, if I can get one right in a show, I'm delighted.  The presenter is Victoria Coren who, in her other life, is a professional poker player with a net worth of over 2 million pounds sterling, all earned at the poker table.

I picked up a book at the library called For Richer, for Poorer, the story of how she got started in this business.  A well brought-up English girl from a middle-class family, with a First class degree in English from Oxford, it seems is happiest when she is in a seedy, smoke-filled London gambling club or a glitzy, raucous, Las Vegas casino.