People and their what?

 I’ve done it again.

I’ve put this forward as a title suggestion and now I have absolutely no idea what I was going to write about.

People and their foibles?

People and their dogs?

People and their opinions?

I could write pages and pages about people and their opinions. You only have to read a few blogs and you will very soon find out about people and their opinions. Most people have an opinion about most things.  It’s not only on blogs; try listening to that old fashioned medium known as radio.

People and their dogs. There’s a whole field open for discussion as well.

Search as I might through documents and folders, I can find no trace of the original idea.

It’s time to move on.

Bougainvillea  circa 2011 

 

Inadvertently stealing from the supermarket

 

When I came home from the supermarket today I unpacked the shopping and put it away.  Job done.

Later in the afternoon I picked up the Kitty Bag, a carry-all which accompanies me on most shopping expeditions. It felt heavier than usual; I looked inside and what should be sitting there but a mango. I knew immediately what had happened.

I have shoplifted a mango from the supermarket. I popped it into the carry-all, not the shopping bag and did not produce it at the check-out. It was definitely on the shopping list but not on the shop-lifting list.

What to do?

There are a couple of options. Do nothing.  Keep the mango, after all the supermarket has far more money than I and it’s not as if I make a regular practice of shoplifting, goody-two-shoes that I am.

However, I settle for another option; the next time I am at the supermarket I buy a mango and then circle around and put it back on the stand.

Debt paid.

Groundhog day and other mysteries

From time to time when I read blog posts and comments I feel as though I might live in another planet far out in the Universe.

Much is said about Groundhog Day and the movie of the same name, made in 1993.  How come I didn’t ever get to see this movie?  What was it about? When I look at the top 25 movies of 1993 and there are only a handful which I remember and the only film I recall seeing is Sleepless in Seattle.

And the background history to Groundhog Day?

It’s fascinating. And not more than a little weird. Apparently, this tradition goes back in time to Candlemas Day and the blessing and distribution of candles.  On this day, if the weather was sunny then the superstition was people could expect a protracted hard winter; if the sky was cloudy then warm weather would soon arrive.

Early German settlers arriving in Pennsylvania brought this tradition with them but somehow it managed to gain a new twist and this is where the groundhog came into the mix.  It all started in 1887 Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania when a newspaper promoted the idea.

Since then it has become quite a tourist attraction in Punxsutawney and these days festivities attract thousands of people.  I’d like to think no groundhogs are harmed in connection with all this hoop-la.

Will I be watching the movie?  I don’t think so.

Ground hog......

Doldrums

The Doldrums, as in the ocean area, are found close to the equator in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. These are low pressure areas where the prevailing winds are sometimes virtually non-existent; in the days of sail, many vessels were becalmed, time was lost and trade disrupted.

In these times there is much talk about climate change and how and what is causing it; there are some with the view that our climate problems are simply current variabilities in the flow and direction of the trade winds.

If this is so, it would go a long way to explaining how the Doldrums have moved away from the oceans in equatorial areas and drifted far south in the atmosphere, drifted in the windows of the Trash Palace and taken up residence.

For a few weeks now I have been unenthusiastic about nearly everything.  I sit about doing very little for long periods of time. I can’t be bothered doing anything.  How will I ever get the clean-up done?

I can only hope there will be a reversal of the trade winds situation and like a vacuum cleaner, all this doldrums malaise will be sucked out the window and taken off to its rightful place, far, far away from here.

The sooner the better.

A change of mind

Changing my mind through the first day of February wasn’t just a one-off.

It became a set pattern for the day. It was mostly a case of deciding I might do one particular thing and as the day passed by, I drifted in and out in mind changing mode.  It’s just too easy to decide to do something and then change my mind and do nothing.

All that was yesterday.

Today was a re-run of yesterday.

This time taking the compost to Strode Villa was the main item on the agenda.

Once again, I changed my mind. Not because it was too hot, because it wasn’t. Other things happened in the day, time was frittered away and then it was early evening and I had another change of mind. I’ll take the compost tomorrow.  Or maybe I will change my mind tomorrow and take it on Monday.

If I don’t watch out this whole month will pass by and the only activity will be activity of the mental sort, changing my mind.

Tram stop, glass pattern                February 2015

Shelf life

See a flat, unoccupied space.  Put something on it.

Just as nature abhors a vacuum, the Trash Palace will not tolerate an unoccupied, flat space.

Prior to the new windows being installed last year, access to the window ledge in the back room was difficult.

The situation has changed, sadly for the worse, according to the neatniks. The new window ledge is now wider and very accessible. Because I spend a great deal of time in close proximity to the window ledge it is now a repository for many things.  Mostly paper things. Of course, they have been placed there so they are in full view and therefore will be attended to immediately.

What a laugh.

There are a few newspapers with articles requiring a re-read. There is an issue of Reading’s book catalogue, available for another look. There’s laugh number two. Do I really need to add to my already overwhelming and physically impossible to read, list of books?

Short answer. No.

There are well overdue books to be returned to the library. If they sit in the sun for much longer the cover pages will have faded to a faint coloured blur and the titles will be illegible. 

There is a clutch of dockets and receipts which need attending to and filing, accompanied by a small pile of coins.  Sitting next to them is the instruction book for the new frying pan, together with an attachment of some sort which apparently fits on the pan somehow but seems to me to be quite superfluous.

Time has converted the window ledge into a shelf and it has taken taken on a life of its own.

Federation Square Atrium.    January 2007

Planning and a pie

I need to get to work and plan the meals for the next four days.

Where possible I avoid going out on days above 35C and I need to draw up a list and shop to get provisions right now. Salads and cold meats and a supply of sparkling fruit drinks will feature on the provisions list.

The first item on the planning agenda was straight forward.

Baker Kate is back from holidays. I will buy some decent bread and although the idea of a hot meat pie in the heat of a summer’s day may seem ridiculous, a meat pie is on the top of the list.

Fast forward to Baker Kate’s.  As I sit eating my pie, I listen to her tale of how things went wrong on the first day of business this year.

Early on that morning one of her staff phoned to give her the good news that an electrical fault meant one of the ovens would not heat. She jumped on her bike and pedalled off to work. Along the way Baker Kate had to brake sharply and the result was a somersault over the handlebars into an unforgiving brick wall. No work for her that day.

It’s all part of the unforeseen events which face owners of small businesses. Many operate on a narrow margin and this sort of thing puts a strain on the bank balance. Some strained negotiations were currently under way with the electrician who wanted to repair the problem without a financial quote or even an estimate.

Seriously man, do you see your customers as total fools?

Another item on my planning list is replacement plants for the balcony window box. The petunias have struggled on against the odds and put on a reasonable display in spite of a few days of withering heat. It’s amazing how they perk up with a drink of water after the sun goes down.

I’m considering mesembryanthemum, a good hardy plant able to withstand some heat while still putting on a decent display of vibrant colour.

And in the planning department there is still the ongoing organising of accommodation for the March holiday in Tasmania.   The Mah-Jong Queen is currently selecting the accommodation for the first three nights before we drive south to the island for a week.

She’s already expressed an interest in visiting the Design Centre in Launceston, so I’m sure we will be staying at least one night in that city.

That’s quite enough planning for me for the moment.

                                                               

                                                                              mesembryanthemum

Mid-January or thereabouts

Early January is a lizard slumbering in the sunshine.  There is not a lot of action.

The arrival of mid-January heralds the passing of the holiday season, the end of the lizard’s slumber and a gradual return to the usual routine.

At the Queen Vic. Market, I discovered a number of stalls were closed in the dairy produce section, with no indication of when the stall-holders would be back.  The following week this had been remedied – someone must have complained.  No, it wasn’t me.

Some of my usual cafes are closed and I make alternative arrangements.  This is no bad thing, it happens occasionally I discover another new café, which is just fine.  

 I also have to make alternative arrangements for my shopping but I know it’s only for a short time, so I just get on with it.

Sitting at the overview here in the Trash Palace living-room I see action at the distant building site.  Ant like creatures in orange hi-vis vests have appeared again, walking back and forth along the top section of the construction site. The enormous crane, which has crouched, resting over the work break, rears up into the sky and begins its daily work of lifting and moving slabs of concrete.

The ex-Newsline crew get together for their annual lunch, at the usual place.  Helen and Rob entertain us with terrible tales but true about train travel in Egypt. The most disturbing part of the train travel was the unclean state of their sleeping quarters. Especially the curtains. The curtains were filthy and stiff with grime. Everyone in the travel group complained about their filthy curtains. The guide placated them with bottles of red wine.  Much laughter at our table about the magical qualities of red wine for immediately improving the appearance of filthy curtains.

More laughter from our group when they told us a week in Thailand was needed immediately on their return, to recover from the trauma of travel in Egypt.

Poor things, life is tough for world travellers.

I listen regularly to radio programs through the day.  Over summer the programs of Radio National revert to re-runs of popular programs broadcast through the year. If I’ve heard a program and liked it, I can listen again. Sometimes a program is a re-run and it is new to me.

 I sat listening intently to a recorded interview from a regional Writer’s Festival earlier in the year. This program was new to me.  The guest was Lemn Sissay, a British writer and broadcaster. He was speaking about his childhood in England as an adopted child. It was a harrowing story, of being passed around like a parcel. A wrapped parcel, one which might be unwrapped, the contents glanced at, found to be wanting, the parcel repackaged and passed on.  A  story bound up by the social attitudes, opinion and prejudices of the time.

Lemn Sissay speaks quite quickly and I had to pay attention in order not to miss a word.  Half an hour passed in the blinking of an eye and I knew I wanted to listen to this interview again. 

I really must clear all those photos off my phone and get the app which will allow me to listen back to broadcast of interest on Radio National.

And in this way the first two weeks of January passed.

Kyoto street scene                            April 2016

Fiasco

You would think organising oneself to go along and see a movie would be a simple task.

Not so. 

This comedy of errors, (depending on your sense of humour) started last week, when I lined up for a ticket to see an early morning session of The Children Act. Too late - the session was sold out.

How can this be? I looked around and though Monday’s are popular - the reduced Monday prices makes them a big draw among the Senior age group - there seemed to be people everywhere.  Where did all these people come from?  It’s holidays.  Why aren’t they all down at the beach, not cluttering up the cinema?

The following week I smartened up my ideas and behaved proactively. I purchased a ticket the day prior. Easy peasy.

This pro-activity might have worked if I hadn’t pootled around the next morning and then realised when I stood on the station platform and had to wait for a train that I would be lucky to make this session as well. This is exactly what happened. Undaunted, I asked for a ticket for the evening session on the same day.  Sold out!  Again!

As it happened that was as well; when the time came around in the later afternoon when I would have travelled into the city, a great weariness overcame me and I was sound asleep in my favourite chair.

The fiasco continues…..

Rock detail. Warrumbungle National Park NSW   
                                         circa November 2006

Droning on...

I have no personal experience with drones; I’ve never seen one in action.  I would be interested in seeing how one operates but I have absolutely no interest in owning one.  What?  More stuff?  Get away.

The subject of drones hit the headlines before Christmas when Gatwick Airport in England, was closed for more than a day while the authorities attempted to track down the perpetrators. As for the actual outcome of that exercise the result seems to be a blank; suggesting there was no outcome or maybe there is someone, in a bathroom somewhere, still cleaning egg off their face. The presence of a drone in the airspace at Gatwick did however throw the travel plans of many people into chaos.

Closer to home, another drone flying incident caused problems when a bushfire started on Bruny Island, south of Tasmania, in December just prior to Christmas Day. It was not a huge fire but it needed to be contained and extinguished. Ground fire-crews, supported by water bombing aircraft worked hard to gain the upper hand over the fire. The water bombing aircraft were grounded when a drone was discovered flying in their airspace. Police were able to pinpoint where the drone was controlled from and put an end to this dangerous business. 

Drone owners have responsibilities and there are laws in this country governing the use of drones. It is possible, that in the excitement of unpackaging the drone and taking it out to a nearby open area, you might completely disregard the few guidelines suggested by the authorities. 

Do not fly your drone above 120 metres; above that you are in controlled airspace.  You must always be able to see your drone by line of sight and it must not be flown at night. Hard to see your drone when it is dark, you know.

Keep it away from crowded areas and do not record or take photos of people without their consent. All pretty straight forward but for those who like to push legality to its limit, maybe not so much fun.

Enough of this droning on….

Not a drone in sight here

Timor Rock.  Coonabarabran NSW                      Circa November 2006             

Being relaxed and easing into the new year

As opposed to being alert and alive and rolling up my sleeves and dealing promptly with whatever the next task is demanding my attention.

The above is not happening today and it didn’t happen yesterday.  And there’s a good chance it won’t happen tomorrow.

Yesterday I didn’t take up the invitation to the annual New Year’s Day lunch, over in the Sandbelt. I gave the idea some consideration and then phoned to say count me out.  Quite frankly, I just couldn’t summon up enough enthusiasm to consult the train time table, get myself organised and trek over and back.

Much easier and more enjoyable to make my own lunch and then spend most of the day reading, playing computer games or simply gazing out the window.

Gazing out the window has a lot going for it. Seated in my overlook here at the Trash Palace I can keep an eye on the Brothers Dinn in the villa unit below, survey the distant and not so distant trees and keep a weather eye on the sky.  All without too much physical effort.

Before the end of January, I expect to hear from Emma, Lady Emma of Hart Manor, who refreshed from her four week break from work will be keen to come over and survey the possibility of continuing the decluttering process here at the Trash Palace.

When that day arrives I can kiss goodbye to any thought of relaxed and easy days; they will be a thing of the past.

Tile on old building.  Carlton Vic.
(building facade  now completely renovated)
Circa January 2007

Knuckling down

Here’s something else which doesn’t happen at the Trash Palace in January.

Knuckling down to anything at all, never mind the chore list, is not a major consideration in January.  I like to ease into the decluttering and other maintenance tasks during the first month of the year. Come December there will be very long chore lists and the pressure will be on.

Thus the year starts at a slow pace; it’s like sitting in a comfy chair and taking in the view of the coming year's landscape through a window.  An overview; considering my options, most certainly not a time for making hasty or rash decisions.

There will be plenty of time later on for making decisions, rash or otherwise. 

‘Why do today what you can put off till tomorrow?’ is my motto for January.

Sunset Warrumbungles NSW      File photo 2005

Furthermore

Furthermore, the decision has been made here at the Alpha-bet-soup Headquarters that for the month of January, in keeping with the first photo for the first day of the year, most if not all, photos will come from the photo file.

There is a long tailback of photos waiting to be downloaded from the phone.  It has reached the stage now that there is no room left for new photos so I will search through the files to see what I can find that might be vaguely appropriate for the post topic. It’s more likely the photo will have no relation to the topic what-so-ever.  

Them’s the breaks, Dear Reader.

My first idea of keeping with the sea theme from 1 January soon fell by the way side when I discovered most of my photos were about as far away from the sea as you could get.  This might change in the future when I get back to the print photo collection, the merciless culling thereof and the scanning and saving of them to the portable hard drive.

Anyway, for the moment there will be flowers, national parks, cattle, elephants, (yes, elephants) and whatever else takes my fancy on the day.

Corymbia, once known as Flowering Gum.              Photo file: January 2015

  

Cast offs

Whenever someone moves out of the apartments a predictable pattern of events follows.

In the packing-up process people often discover they have acquired far more than they wish to move to their new home, as a result the green garbage bins are filled to overflowing with unwanted goods.

 When no more can be crammed into the green bins then, recyclable goods or not, the blue recycle bins will be pressed into service and an astonishing array of discarded possessions can be found crammed into these bins. Anything which won’t fit into the bins is then simply discarded in any empty space in the garbage corral.

If you have left it till the last minute to dispose of the week’s garbage on these occasions, often the only option you will have is to go out onto the street and investigate what space is available in the neighbouring bins.

The residents have vacated the flat below mine and a small white chest of drawers sits forlornly in the middle of the lounge room.

Guess where it will end up?

Graffiti wars                                   File photo: February 2007 

August

Apart from being the month when horses in the southern hemisphere have a birthday arrangement, meaning regardless of the actual date on which they were born they all turn a year older on the first day of the month, August is the month which  trails along after July and takes up the calendar space before September.

It’s a winter month and has very little to recommend it unless you are a keen skier and like to make the most of any snow that has fallen on your favourite skiing mountain.  The AFL football season is drawing to a close and football fans are either buoyed up for finals hopes on their team’s recent form or they are attempting to resign themselves to yet another year of Not Making the Top Eight.

 On my August horizon is the prospect of the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), which means poring over the paper program and deciding which films will make it onto my See This list.  I have already made my decisions and a handful of choices are waiting in the wings; those which fit into a short time frame at the very beginning of the Festival. I made these decisions a couple of weeks ago when my August plans revolved around a hospital stay early in the month. 

Nothing, it seems, is set in stone.  Last week I picked up some cold germs and although I have recovered from the worst of the cold I have been forced to face up to the idea the surgery might have to be postponed.  An August health hazard, the prime season for the ‘flu and common colds.

Sigh and groan.

 I wait to hear what happens next.

I am not happy. 

Autumn

 This can’t be autumn! It’s way too hot – 29C. 

Summer is hanging on.  It is not going away any time soon. I noticed one or two nights ago the evening held a hint of the cooler nights that might be expected as autumn gets into stride but lately the days refuse to relinquish any of their heat.

We’ve had weeks of see-saw weather throughout the summer; one really hot day with a temperature over thirty Celsius, followed by a few days of much lower temperatures.  All this of course reduces the danger of fires, either bush or grass, which is always a good thing in summer.

From time to time there have been sudden heavy downpours of rain which keeps the grass green and growing.  Growing being the operative word.  Waiting at the tram stop, opposite the small park on the corner, it seems like the grass is on steroids. The gardeners come along,  cut the grass and in the blink of an eye it seems to have grown four inches.

No sign yet of any autumn colour in any of the trees and no cool weather forecast for the next week at least.

I will have to be patient.

Forum theatre back-lit by midday sun

Zetta- and zepto-

The prefixes in the title represent the opposite ends of the numerical scale; very, very large and very, very small.

Zetta- and its abbreviation (Z-) are the numerical equivalent of 1 sextillion. Sextillion is a lot of whatever is being measured -  in anyone’s language.

Written as a number it would look like this: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

At the other end of the scale is zepto- and its abbreviation (z-), a teensy-weensy amount.  

One sextillionth; I am thinking that this prefix would not be used too often.  I have to remember I am neither a mathematician nor a scientist and for all I know there maybe someone out there, who every day, works with sextillionths.

The nearest I have come to dealing with these amounts was reading an article in the business section of the print media where mention was made of zettabytes. 

The word gigabyte is relatively commonplace in the computing world; petabyte is not unknown and now we have moved on to enormous chunks of bytes and the word zettabyte.

Eucalypt detail             File photo 2005

Piss-ups in breweries

If you are sitting there looking at the screen and thinking vulgarity rules on this blog now, you are right.

At least for today.

All this vulgarity has come about because over the last week or so I seem to have been unable to get anything right or organised and one thing after another has gone off in a direction totally opposite to where I expect it to go.

I just can’t seem to work out how much time it takes to get from one place to another and am often too late.  Too late for the movie, because I have the time wrong and it started half an hour ago.

I missed out on buying bread from my favourite bakery because I had forgotten it is Monday and they close at 3 pm. It is 3.30 pm when I remember I need bread.  Too late!

Another bad move when I go to see Sam, the man who repairs expensive shoes.  He is not in his workroom and I don’t have his mobile number to call ask when he will be back.  It’s not all wasted time – at least I know where to find him; the building, in the CBD, is undergoing an extensive renovation while most of the tenants are still on the premises. A building face-lift, while life goes on for the tenants among the noise of drills and navigating around piles of building material and men in fluoro vests who mill around among the temporary access entrances and ramps. The trick is to find the main entrance off the street among all the panels of hoarding along the building boundary and the mess of building material piled along the pavement.

To cap it all, today I ran out of time to call over to the hospital in Fitzroy to visit a friend who recently had a hip replacement.

It was quite a relief to go home and to find home was where I left it that morning. At least I managed to get that much right today; I remembered where to find the Trash Palace and it had not, like so much of my time recently, vanished into thin air.

The way things have gone of late, I was beginning to consider I had joined the ranks of those people, who because they are so disorganised and dim-witted, would be considered incapable of organising a piss-up in a brewery.

Looking down from the Buffalo Chalet lookout in the early morning and not a brewery to be seen anywhere.
Mt Buffalo - circa 1994

January

 The month of Janus – looking back to the end of the previous year while simultaneously looking in the opposite direction to the coming year.

A time when hope springs eternal.

A new start; a clean slate with plenty of time for everything to go in exactly the same direction all the other years have gone, even though we might tell ourselves this will not happen.  Not this year.

In the real January world, the one that is happening as the month passes, there is the give-away sign of those people who have vowed in the new year to get fit or bust.  As the day winds down they appear, jogging along the footpath, stoic expressions on their faces, determined to stick with the program, at least for the time being.

January is holiday time for many people and as a result it is also chaos on some roads for many people.  This is a time when the authorities decide road works, both major and minor, will happen.  Woe betides the uninformed, who when driving to their destination, find they have to make an inconvenient detour.  These disruptions do not make for a happy bunch of motorists.

This summer the weather has been unpredictable and those who worship the Sun God have been disappointed, while those who are happier with lower temperatures (read me here) are very happy.  It is only recently that the parks and gardens have started to show the damage caused by hotter days, with the grass gradually turning from green to brown.

Tennis fans look forward to the Australian Open and search out the hats, cushions and other paraphernalia, in preparation for the big day out at the tennis.  Kids make the most of the last weeks before school starts back in early February and parents are known to start counting down the days till the kids go back to school.

January, the month that holds the prospect of a whole year in its hand and allows the luxury of a short time of procrastination and dreaming before the reality of the balance of the year rears its head.

And it's never too soon, apparently, to start selling hot cross buns!

Australian values

A fifteen year old, who was recently asked about Australian values, said we didn’t have any.  Whether we didn’t have any values or whether those values were not particularly Australian but might also apply to other countries in the world, was not made clear.

At the time of Federation in Australia, when the Constitution was drawn up, contemporary values such as the right to vote for a democratically elected parliament, freedom of religion, freedom to join a trade union and the freedom to move unhindered around the country were included. Other less defined values might be respect for the individual, equal rights for men and women and equality under the law for everyone.

My idea of an Australian value is that of the ‘fair go’. 

‘Hey, fair go mate.’ The phrase once embedded in the Australian vernacular; not an expression which might have been heard among the erudite and well educated set but one used by people lower down on the socio-economic ladder.  Quite simply it meant that something was plainly unfair, something should to be done to rectify this unfairness and voicing the thought was the first step in putting things to rights.

Whatever happened to the idea of the Fair Go?  It has vanished, sunk without trace, gone the way of the dodo wearing its button-up boots. Pushed right into the background in the contemporary scene, where anything but a Fair Go applies to many, many people.  I will not start on the unfairness list here but it is apparent that many people want to apply the Fair Go only to themselves and to hell with anyone else.

For many people in this country it’s all about me and what’s in it for me these days.