Thursday 1^st November

Another Nightmare Job, this time entirely of the worker’s own choosing…

On Thursday at the Show we were idly gazing at some somnolent cows, with our little ones around us, when a rather unattractive woman of indeterminate age came up to us.  I didn’t pay much attention – looking at cows is very fascinating – but I saw her hand something to one of my tall, slim daughters, who stiffened, took the card, and turned away.  What was all that about?  This Hag From Hell had handed out a business card which said, “Do you want to loose weight?  I can help!”  I wanted to write to her and say, “Do you want to learn how to spell?  I can help!” but I am too polite.  WHAT was she thinking?  Is she ever well-received??  Why, thank you, yes, I have been feeling a bit of a fattyboomba lately; show me the way to look just like you!  I don’t think so! 

India #7

The drummerboys around the café greeted us with much joy – surely we ALL needed to buy a set of large bongoes, to squeeze into our packs?  No?  Why NOT??  They were charming boys, and we were quite happy to chat and maybe even hand over some rupees but NO we did not buy drums!

People in the Colaba area of Mumbai sell all sorts of things on the streets.  The most noticeable items were the giant balloons.  Horrible great big pear-shaped ones, without even helium inside to make them floaty and interesting.  They changed colour over the days; we arrived on ORANGE balloon day and everywhere we went, there would be a man with a giant balloon, looking quite perplexed – but WHY didn’t we want a packet of ten??  We often talked to the would-be sellers; they were nice blokes, after all, just trying to make a rupee or two.  We tried to find out who would buy such hideous things.  Surely no tourists would want them, and they are far too big for children – I should think a child would be quite intimidated by such a cumbersome and lurid shape.  But there were the cheery and hopeful sellers, every day, having seemingly collaborated – let’s try YELLOW today, that should be a winner!  Yes I KNOW they didn’t like the orange ones, said they would pay us to burst them or take them away, but maybe that was because they were orange!  When we came back to the Mondegar – another story – after nearly five weeks, we were sitting at a window table.  Something caught my eye; a huge orange balloon with a beaming face floating above it – one of the balloon sellers had recognised me (why me???  I had shown even less interest than my friends!) and was lovingly waiting for me to come out and not buy a balloon.  He was perfectly happy when I waved and shook my head vigorously; what was all that about?  (In fact that is one of the wonderful, if exhausting, things about travelling in different countries; one spends such a lot of time saying, “What the….???” and “Why??”, without ever finding the answers.  The balloon thing, for example, is not the sort of thing one can research on Google, or even in Lonely Planet Guide.)

Wednesday 31^st october

Poor Nicky tried to put a comment on an earlier blogpost – the one about our ID photos in India.  She carefully wrote it all out, one-fingered, on her iPhone, and then…it equally carefully vanished, leaving her just a bit cross.  (Angry vomit feeling is what she actually wrote to me, in a textmessage.  Oh dear computer/phone stress…we all know what this is like!)  I did manage to persuade her to summarise her witty bit of prose and here it is:

When Gavin was at uni his second year ID card was amazing.  I can’t even begin to describe the facial contortion the camera captured.  We spent many belly laughing moments trying to make him actually pull the face in real life.  We never succeeded.

India #6

While Mary and I were examining the closely-packed street stalls around the Mondegar, where I bought 5 completely useless cards featuring elephants and peacocks and the like, and which got thoroughly crushed in my pack during the subsequent weeks (what was I thinking???), Pete and Vish were seriously and purposefully cruising the street, looking at hotels.  Opposite the Mondegar was a new hotel, the Apollo.  Hmmm…wonder how much that would be, compared to the Strand?  Well gollygosh, about one third the price, and SO much nicer!  We trotted back to the Strand, un-booked ourselves (just a teensy lie; staying with Dr Amed Sharma, the well-known Mumbai dentist – the manager knew Amed, it seems everybody in Mumbai does know him, and accepted this with no hurt feelings) and within minutes we were marching back up the streets of Colaba to the Apollo. 

Vish and I somehow got separated from Pete and Mary.  We thought we knew where we were going, and probably we did, but a very persistent young bloke attached himself to us and said No NO NO, the Apollo is THIS way!  Well it was very hot and moist and sticky, and my pack, while beautifully designed with both wheels and straps, was not comfortable for high-speed hot-weather streetwalking.  I flagged a bit and we found ourselves in completely unknown territory.  We were sure we were going the wrong way.  “But the Apollo Guesthouse is VERY nice and it is JUST around this corner!” our young bloke said, hopefully.  We had told him fifteen times we wanted Apollo Hotel NOT Guesthouse, but he had hoped we wouldn’t notice; he obviously didn’t know that actually there were another lot of us up ahead, and that NO we would not want to be plonked down in a backpackers hostel without Pete and Mary!  Vish and I had already decided we would give our uninvited guide some money, and we both had appropriate notes tucked into our hands ready and waiting, but we actually began to get quite cross with him because he just wouldn’t listen.  In the end Vish, who is extremely kind and patient in normal circumstances, told him to GO AWAY.  (Actually I think we might also have PAID him to go away, he was such an irritating presence, but I wouldn’t want to swear to this, or, more to the point, to admit to it…)

After all of that, we found our way quite easily to the Apollo, where we found Mary and Pete quite bemused – “Where DID you go??  And why??”  It was a very nice hotel, only 4 years old and already starting to grow mouldy frescoes, but MUCH nicer than the Strand, with MUCH more cheery staff.  And right across the road from the Mondegar; we were starting to feel at home in Mumbai!

Tuesday 30^th October

Re-reading my Indian saga has been very interesting and nostalgic for me.  I hadn’t actually forgotten anything much, but it brought it all back – the smells, the noise, the incredible variety and difference. 

We have such comfortable lives, in Tasmania.  Yes people sometimes do end up sleeping on the street, and very weary and uncomfortable they are, I know.  But…most people have a warm and comfy bed, and those who sleep on the streets do have the possibility of a better life, with a bit of luck and a fair wind. 

The other day I looked idly around our office, which is just a bit too big for just four workers.  There are quite a few empty offices, and in fact empty floors, in this particular ten-storey building.  Why can’t we house some homeless people here?  Or maybe I could bring my toiletries and camp out in the spare office, the one where we keep the kettle, and the grog supply for the Christmas party?  Such are the random thoughts which pass through my brain at times when I really should be filing things, or typing things, or improving my knowledge of industrial matters…

And in fact, back in the dim mists of time, I worked for a most dynamic and clever person called Lisa, who was a total iconoclast.  She was the CEO of our organisation and therefore earned more $$$ than everyone else.  But it slowly dawned on us that…she was camping out in our office building, a large and rambling old house in North Hobart.  We found the odd toothbrush, the odd pillow, the odd bowl of encrusted weetbix… At first we thought we had been invaded by squatters and our social-workerly hearts leapt at the opportunity to Do Good.  But no, it was Lisa, with her large teenage children, saving money by living in our not very warm and cosy workplace.

India #5

Pete told us there was a very nice café in Colaba (the Paris end of Mumbai…), not far from the Strand Hotel: the Mondegar.  He led us enthusiastically towards it – just around this corner, on that corner, here it is, oh no it’s gone!!  He looked quite crushed; it had turned into a sort of warehouse for shabby old shirts.  So we kept along the street, and there, on a very similar corner, was the Mondegar, exactly the same as he had left it four years ago, with its elderly identical twin owners taking turns sitting supervising near the door.  He was very happy; so were we, it became our place of refuge in Mumbai.  Lots of non-Indian people do go there, and it is always humming and buzzing, but it is also still very Indian, a great meeting place for everyone.  It is decorated inside with enormous cartoon murals, not soothing to the eye, but full of energy.  Outside the door, which faces diagonally onto the corner, the very busy heart of Mumbai is swirling past.  We drank fruit juices and took stock, very happily, enjoying the drama of Mumbai.  There was always music playing at the Mondegar; lots of Bollywood hit songs but also, strangely, REM – Everybody Hurts, and Madonna – Holiday. 

On our way along the esplanade to find Pete’s café we called in to the Taj Hotel.  This was built at the beginning of the last century and is absolutely BEAUTIFUL.  Not a sign of Mumbai Mould!  It is an extremely expensive place to stay.  For example, transfers from the airport to the Taj cost 2,500 rupees; our taxi fare was about 400…. But there was nothing to stop us going in and gazing at the beauty and the luxury!  Mary and I went to the toilets and this was a very fabulous experience.  Each of us had our own personal attendant, a beautiful silent young thing in a sari, whisking in and out of a hidden alcove to wipe down the sink before and after our use, and to give us darling little white hand towels.  It’s a shame really that we didn’t do this later in our travels and our toilet experiences; we possibly would have wept with joy.  As it was we just smiled gratefully and shelled out a few rupees into their delicate little hands, without really appreciating the contrast to come….

Monday 29^th October

Tasmania is so beautiful at the moment – lush and green, with so much foliage and blossom on the trees that it is like being in a steroid-fuelled nature documentary!  I don’t think we realised quite how much the long-term drought had affected our surroundings.  The contrast between the parched desert-like Midlands of recent times and the glorious rolling green pastures is breathtaking.  Go for a drive!

India #4

Our first experience of Indian hotels was at the Strand on the esplanade near the Gateway to India - a huge, grandiose archway built as a monument to the British Raj in 1947.  Something like 14 years after it was completed the entire British armed forces left, never to return…  I think Pete had stayed at the Strand 4 years ago, and it was fine.  Things deteriorate very quickly in Mumbai, because of the heat and the damp.  It was no longer very nice at all, with great frescoes of mould on all of the walls.  They led us to “deluxe” and “super-deluxe” rooms which were nothing of the sort – gloomy mouldy and yucky are the words which spring to mind.  And expensive, around $100 per night.  Never mind; there were beds on which travel-weary people could get horizontal, always an attractive prospect.  But not yet!!  Vish rang Amed, his nephew, as soon as we arrived at the Strand, and Amed, a lovely man full of bonhomie and evening energy, said, “Wait!  Do not go to bed!  I will be there in half an hour, can’t wait to see you!”  His wife Anjuli had very sensibly gone to bed quite a while earlier.  “She is an earlybird but I am a night owl!” he shouted, rushing in the door with huge smiles to have a drink with us.  By then it was about 11.30pm Mumbai time, 3.30am Australian time… Mary and I were very much hollow-eyed ghouls but we were happy to meet Amed nonetheless.  We could, after all, sleep any old time….

The next morning we had breakfast in the hotel dining room, which was more in the nature of a storage room for oddments, but never mind; eggs were on the menu (or fggs, as it actually said.)  I had boilded ones, but I could have had pouched, or even pounched.  Later on in Goa we found scrumbled eggs, which sounded very tempting. 

It is in fact tempting as well to laugh a lot about signage and spelling, but it is not really fair.  It is SO wonderful that nearly everywhere in India signs are in English as well as in the local languages.  I might smile tolerantly at a sign saying TIOLET, but how lovely that I knew where to find one, and that it wasn’t written in some script indecipherable to me!  (And we all know full well that Australian menus are full of weird and wonderful spellings and misspellings.  Pauline and I found some delicious-looking soup on a board in a restaurant in Georgetown a few years ago: potato and leak soup.  Yum!) 

Mary’s breakfast came with toast and jam of a most lurid shade.  “Ummm…what is this jam made of?” she asked, politely.  The waiter beamed proudly.  “Fruit, sugar, and colour!”  And my boilded eggs came boilded hard as bullets, still in their shells, floating in boiling (boilding??) water.  I actually enjoyed them once I had managed to remove the shells, butter some toast, and slice them into edible proportions.  I ordered boiled eggs a few more times over my five weeks, and they always came floating in hot water, sometimes with, and sometimes without their shells.  And I was always very grateful for them because they were so bland, filling and comforting on my sometimes less-than-settled digestive system.

Saturday 27^th October

Royal Hobart Show- last Thursday …

The weather ranged between ghastly and dismal…Last year both Katy and Eva got heatstroke and had to be revived with big iced slushy drinks.  This year we were all damp and chilly. 

Never mind; we are true Tasmanians and we had FUN nevertheless.  I was very amused, however, to find that two of our darling children would have been more than happy to stay in the art exhibition pavilion, happily painting on large easels provided by kindly volunteers, notwithstanding the fact that they had spent quite a few hours that very morning painting, at home…

India #3

 

It was probably about 8.30pm when we arrived in Mumbai, but in Australia it was well after midnight, and we resembled hollow-eyed ghouls after 14 hours on the plane (to quote Bill Bryson) as we made our way through all of the formalities.  Pete had warned us that this might take many hours but in fact we were in and out and looking for a taxi before any time at all had elapsed.  So there we were, in a pre-paid taxi, whizzing through the streets of Mumbai, with Vish sitting in the front.  He was SO excited, SO exhilarated, we all laughed in delight to see him so happy.  WOW!  He cried.  This is MAGIC!  (Magic in fact was ever his mot du jour.  Traffic was magic, sights and smells, the Taj Mahal, camels elephants donkeys monkeys – all magic.  When we were on the plane coming home, QANTAS gave us little comfort packs, with collapsible toothbrushes.  Gollygosh!  Vish’s eyes lit up!  “MAGIC!” he shouted.  “Well yes, said Pete, patiently.  “One minute it’s a cylinder, the next it is a little toothbrush, magic indeed.”  I’m afraid to say this started our row of four supposedly mature and responsible travellers to have fits of hysterical giggling; I actually thought the staff might come and offer to throw us off the plane…or at least to separate us and make us sit in naughty corners.)

 

I don’t suppose I should even try to describe the traffic in India.  It is SO chaotic, and you have probably either experienced it or seen it on TV.  For a start, there is LOTS of traffic.  There are ONE BILLION people in India and most of them are on the move.  In taxis, on bikes, motor-rickshaws, motor-scooters.  There are also great big heavily laden wooden handcarts being pushed along the main roads at high speed by thin wiry men in amongst the traffic.  Lanes mean nothing, zebra crossings are only a decoration on the road, and traffic lights, seen only in the bigger cities, are an indication and not compulsory.  And everything is COMING RIGHT AT YOU.  Literally.  I only accepted my friends’ kind offers to have the front seat in taxis twice, and I think they were glad to have me back in the backseat where I wouldn’t scream so much.  Our first trip, from the airport into Colaba at the other end of Mumbai, was extraordinary.  It was like being in an out-of-control dodgem car, or in a whizzbang computer game. 

 

Vish, as I have said, was alight with joy.  He is a radiant, happy sort of man, so it was dreadful to see the blood drain from his face when we pulled up briefly, but not briefly enough, at a set of traffic lights.  The most pathetic and awful beggar you could imagine came and pressed his face right up to Vish’s window.  He had only stumps for arms, and his teeth all grew straight outwards; the rest of his face was distorted and riddled with pain.  “Daddy Daddy help me!” he cried, waving his stumps at Vish.  What could we do??  Nothing at all!  We had no Indian money, had not yet called in at an ATM to extract rupees.  We all just sat, frozen, in our seats until the taxi lurched off again.  Mary describes our time in India as extreme highs and lows; this was one of the latter…

Friday 26^th October

This week we had cause for celebration at the Republic. 

Celebration firstly of the long life of my friend Kathy’s mother, Norma MacAuley, who died, aged 93, on Monday.  And then celebration of the birth of Hamish Toby, Kathy’s first grandson, Norma’s second great-grandson, born on Wednesday.  As Chris said, in a textmessage affixed to one of our Words With Friends games, Isn’t life wonderful?  A death and a birth! 

Indeed…

India #2

In 2006 we travelled with our Hobart friends Vish and Mary Sharma*.  We all had extra photos taken for our Indian visas.  It seemed like a good idea to carry photos of each other on the back of our passports and notebooks.  My World Star Ashish Jumbo Exercise Book has glued on the back page photos of:

A murderess

Osama Bin Laden

A man you would not want to mess with

And they all have a photo of me looking like a sad person about to be executed.  So funny, these photos.  Mary is a very soft-looking, pretty woman; how did she end up looking like a murderess in her visa photo?  And lovely, smiley Vish – how come he is glaring out at the camera looking as if he wants to blow up the Western world?  Pete has an air of grim determination, which is not all that uncharacteristic, actually, and which is probably remembered forever in the nightmares of the German tourist he threatened to throw off the back of an elephant later in our travels… If I had lost all three of my friends and had had to wander the streets of Jaipur or wherever saying, plaintively, have you seen my companions, I imagine people would have recoiled and said, Are you SURE you want to find them?

* Yes I know these are not their real names…but maybe these lovely friends of ours don’t want their real names published in cyberspace…

Wednesday 24^th October

From a cartoon someone sent me this week – very apt…

The computer says I need to upgrade my brain to be compatible with its new software

So very true!!

I have recently found, while mucking around on my home computer, a wholly unexpected new set of files on my gmail page.  All manner of notes and stories – bits about India, Vietnam, Ten Days on The Island.  How did they get there, I hear you cry?  I have no idea… I must have very cleverly saved them into these cyberspace files and then, just as cleverly, erased all knowledge of this from my memory.  These files must have resurfaced for a reason…so many travel stories waiting to be blogged!!  I will spend a bit of time sorting them out and including them from time to time.

The following is a description of our flight from Sydney to Mumbai in 2006.

Pete is very nice to be on a plane with because he is so cheery about it.  “Oh look!” He cries!  “All these movies to watch!  All these CDs to listen to!  Food! More food!  Beer!  Bloody Marys!  More food!  Wheehee!”  I am not quite so cheery, and I tend to wriggle around annoyingly and get up and down and then up and down again.  And again.  But I did happily watch movies with him.  The first one we watched was Thank You for Smoking, which is brilliant and which I can thoroughly recommend; a very clever, funny satire.  After this we watched – Pete’s choice not mine – Brokeback Mountain.  I knew he wouldn’t like it and I was right… Bloody gloomy, that’s what it is, although the scenery was beautiful.  The QANTAS censors had been at it quite extensively, so there were long periods of greyed-out screen with alarming noises; not sure if we would have preferred to see what they were doing or not…  On one of our last days in Mumbai, on Elephanta Island, I spoke to a nice Australian couple, from Sydney.  They had just flown in, and had also watched this movie.  I mentioned out the long greyed-out scenes and she said, “Oh is that what happened!  I thought the sun was shining on my screen and I kept trying to shade it so I could see what was happening!”  Her husband was very amused.  He had very sensibly not tried to watch it at all.

Tuesday 23^rd October

Happy birthday to my sister Jacqui!

Born in 1956, 56 today, and as beautiful as ever!

Not only beautiful but also still bravely teaching, spending many lunchtimes in Detention with BadBoys who can only be pacified with fascinating internet research on giant, hairy spiders.

She is also a recent hero/survivor of World Challenge in Vietnam.  They trekked in the highlands, slept in Hmong huts, travelled many hours on narrow metal bunks in uncomfortable sleepertrains, surrounded all the while by cheery, restless teenage students.

She truly deserves a memorable birthday celebration!

On Sunday we went to visit 2XS, all lonely and abandoned in Prince of Wales Bay marina.  It had been a very changeable day, with brief bursts of sunshine, wind, a bit of a downpour.  A BIG bit of a downpour!  When we stepped up onto the deck we found 2XS gaily decorated with hailstones!

It was cold but relatively dry when we got there, and we breathed the fresh, cool air appreciatively as we counted hailstones.  Our friend Kerry Dillon has just got back from a month in China.  Not sure if he had a good time or not… He told Pete, in a long phone conversation, that the pollution was extraordinary.  Heavy, poisonous, menacing.  No blue sky above the cities, ever.

So…we looked around dear little Prince of Wales Bay, which is zoned Light Industrial.  The marina is right next to the giant Incat sheds, where they make the catamarans, and not a hundred metres from the Zinc Works, one of Tasmania’s biggest industrial sites.  And the air is fresh and clear, the birds are singing, seals are frolicking right up against the walls of the factory.

Monday 22^nd October

A funny story re our increasingly bureaucratic state of affairs in Australia…

We have recently spent a very nice time with our old friends Liz and Robbie, who lived in Tasmania thirty years ago and are still sadly missed.  All those dinners, parties, celebrations!

At dinner on Saturday Liz told us about her mother who, at age 90, still visits nursing homes to play the piano for “the old people.”  New legislation in Victoria has made it mandatory for all regular visitors to nursing homes to have a police check, to make sure that they are not thieves, or sexual predators.  So dear Mrs Flynn, aged 90, had to fill in a form and allow an investigation into her (unblemished, uncriminal…) past before she was allowed back in to play the piano for “the old people.” 

Sunday 21^st October

Happy birthday dear Dad!

88 today and still out and about, playing bridge, going to concerts, plays, movies, dinner.  I think he and Fleur have a more active social life than Pete and I do.   A great role model for all of his 3 children 8 grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren!!

When my parents arrived in Australia with me in 1950 we were the world’s smallest family – look at us now, spreading across the continent…and all of us, as he is proud to point out, still on happy terms with one another.

Yesterday I had a lovely long chat on speakerphone with Leanne, our lovely catamaran-sailing friend from Devonport.

She and Peter had just got back from Vanuatu.  They had been commissioned to sail a boat back from Espirito Santo to Bundaberg.  I don’t think either of them had been outside Australia before.  They certainly hadn’t sailed in South Pacific.  I asked which islands they went to and Leanne said ummm…not sure…didn’t write down the names… I do know what she means; the islands are all so lovely, and all very similar, from the sea – blue water, coral reefs, thick lush forest, lovely smiling people in small canoes.

They spent a week in Port Vila, in a motel.  Pete spent all day every day bum-up in the engine, fixing things in his clever Mcguyver-ish way, and Leanne – well, of course, she lay near the swimming pool reading and sipping cool drinks.  Both of them found these pastimes very pleasurable.

Peter will be sailing Plan Four in the Three Peaks Race again next Easter, so he is very busy getting the boat organized for the event.  Leanne is back in Devonport, thinking longingly of the warm sun, the pretty pool, the cool drinks…

Saturday 20th October

Honesty is overrated…well maybe not overrated but sometimes the correct answer to a question is not the honest one.

Examples

Q.     Do you want to see the 1800 holiday photos I have here on my computer?

A      Yes please!! is the correct but NOT the honest answer.

Q      Would you like me to tell you about the AMAZING dream I had last night?

A      Yes please!! is, once again, the correct but NOT the honest answer.

Unless it is Pete, asking about the dreams…

He does indeed have the most amazing dreams.  Most of the time he wakes very very tired because he has been wrangling sheep all night.  (These dreams always makes me laugh a lot, mainly because Pete’s tone is so plaintive when he tells me about his nocturnal activities.)  Last night, however, it wasn’t just your normal get the sheep from one paddock to another dream.  Last night he was working with a farm hand who, when Pete’s back was turned, disobeyed instructions and carried out his task riding a camel wearing a blue coat. 

In another dream, he was somewhere posh, eating lunch all dressed up in a suit and tie, and trying very hard to be polite about his salad roll which had, firmly ensconced, a large BBQd rat with a long chewy tail.

I suppose what I like about Pete’s dreams is that he recounts them clearly and concisely, and that they are always more logical, if more bizarre, than my confusion psychedelic night-time scenarios.

The first and foremost rules of good communication: clarity, brevity and appropriateness! 

Friday 19^th October

We were very fortunate, in our travels through Vanuatu and the Solomons, to happen upon many festivals and parties.  Not to mention the huge Quatorze Juillet celebrations in Noumea, with horses, bikes, tanks, helicopters, fireworks, speeches, the works!  I wrote about all of the feasts and celebrations at the time on this blog so I won’t repeat myself but I have realised that one thing they had in common was – everybody went!  The whole village would turn up to celebrate the yam harvest, or Mothers Day, or Independence Day.  (There were lots of Independence Days around the islands.  I am not sure that the people on the more remote islands had any idea what they were independent from but…never mind!  Opportunity for fun!  Everyone joined in!)

Back here in Australia it is harder to galvanise people into joining in and having fun communally.  I feel so sorry for people who put in a huge effort to organise a club event, with a band, sausages, beer, the works, only to have a trickle of people through the doors. 

Last year when we were in Townsville my niece Sharon was very excited because she was in charge of organising a Christmas party for her colleagues.  She found a great place on Magnetic Island where they do some sort of pantomime, or murder mystery activity – can’t quite remember but it did sound like great fun.  She booked for the twenty five people who said YES LET’S, WHAT FUN, when she first suggested it.  They were going to catch the ferry together, go to the performance, have dinner, party on, stay the night.  Magnetic Island is lovely, and a very good place for a party.  What was not to like???  But…when it came time to finalise the booking and get deposits, how many people still wanted to come and have FUN FUN FUN???  Eight.  Miserable!

Ann-Marie says people are very prone to non-attendance in Darwin, where she lived for many years.  I told her the sad story of my old friend Penny, an uber-hospitable woman who is sadly missed in Hobart.  Oh the lunches, the dinners, the feasts!  She moved to Darwin when she was in her fifties and made quite a big new circle of friends, as you do, in these far flung towns.  Christmas was coming up and everyone was complaining and repining – so far from home, friends, family, what were they all to do?  Penny immediately got an Action Plan going and invited about twenty people for a Christmas Day meal.  A fabulous feast!  She ordered a whole Atlantic salmon from Tasmania and prepared her usual beautiful groaning table.  The day came…and went…with poor Penny, her salmon, her mountains of delicious food uneaten because not one single person turned up.  (Ann-Marie said, sadly, that she was not at all surprised to hear this.)

Thursday 18^th October

In our year of sailing hither and yon we came across quite a few Australian families, either living the expat life, or on holiday on various tropical islands.  The children all had a nice enough time, snorkelling, fishing, swimming, eating tropical fruit.  What’s not to like?

But…do young children really love travelling?  Not so sure… My poor deprived children - I am sure I have already written about this – never got a holiday in Bali, Surfers Paradise, Fiji, as did most of their high school friends.  They assure me their friends at the time were in fact envious of the Coles Bay holidays.  They enjoyed being able to meet up with the same kids from different schools every year, and they probably enjoyed the three hour drive in our overloaded van more than their friends enjoyed their long-haul overseas flights.

When Nicky and Gavin went to South America with Hamish and Angus, the boys were 6 and 4.  They were there for three years and had all sorts of fabulous adventures – Tierra del Fuego, the Atacama Desert, big cities, the Andes.  It was regularly brought home to Nicky and Gav that what they really yearned for was…Tasmania.  When they were having a particularly wonderful two week holiday on a Caribbean island, where it was hot, sunny, beautiful, thrill-packed, Hamish and Angus said, faces alight with anticipated joy, “Mum, when we go back, we will be able to go to Grindelwald, won’t we?” 

Now Grindelwald, by any measure, would not shine by comparison to a Caribbean island resort.  It is a small pseudo-Swiss village on the banks of the Tamar, very neat, tidy and maybe just a bit dull.  There is a small golf course, a pond with ducks, geese, swans, and a very nice indoor pool.  The Wakefield family have been there recently and…the boys, now 10 and 12, still loved it. 

There’s no place like home…

Wednesday 17^th October

“Enid” wrote about houseguests on her blog* a few days ago.  She wanted to know about other people’s experiences.  I am sure there are many MANY stories out there, of houseguests far and wide, pleasant and unpleasant. 

I have been on both sides of the equation and I know it can be tricky being the houseguest.  How intrusive do you need to be, in your host’s life??  I tend to tiptoe around a bit, making myself scarce.  This rarely goes down well; I have had my bewildered host bellowing through bedroom door saying, “Where ARE you? Come out!  Have a gin!  Have a swim!  What are you doing???”  Oh right they actually want my company….haven’t they had enough, yet??

Boatguests are a different matter altogether, mainly because a boat is such a confined space.  As well as this, a boat is its own little universe, as I see it.  Some people don’t get this.  They happily splishysplash the water around, and just don’t get the concept of water tanks…salt water all around…no rain… They also don’t understand why it isn’t really possible to simmer a beautiful sauce very gently on the stove ALL DAY to make it very delicious at dinner time.  Gas tanks, strangely, do NOT hold an infinite supply of gas…

I won’t go on and on about this.  But Enid’s query re difficult (or otherwise) houseguests reminded me of a charming couple who came to Hobart a few years ago, to stay with friends of mine, Carol and John.  John had met these people while camping in the Outback.  They exchanged addresses, breezily, as one does.  Over a beer or two around the campfire, John said, “If ever you’re in Tasmania, do drop in.”  So they did, a few months later… They parked their caravan in the driveway and very happily ensconced themselves in the spare room downstairs. 

It wasn’t the best of visits.  They didn’t like Carol’s little dog, and kept putting her outside.  Their own pet, a parakeet in a cage, scattered seed and poo all over the landing.  (Carol particularly doesn’t like birds being kept in small cages, to add insult to injury.).  They were fussy about food, and not generous with their shopping.  And guess how long they stayed.  Six WEEKS!!!  When they left, they waved happily from the car, saying, “See you!” 

They did not leave a forwarding address and have never been heard of since…

*http://enidbite-em.blogspot.com.au/

Tuesday 16^th October

One or two small girls close to my heart are very keen to do ballet.  They dance round the house in full Pavlova mode and teach their Barbies to do grand jetées.  I love the idea of them trotting off in pink tutus, hair scraped back neatly, eyes alight with the joy of The Dance.  I am very much aware that all too soon they will be wanting to wear nothing but black…let the pink frilly moments last as long as possible!

One of the nicest of the ballet schools, from my investigations, is in North Hobart.  I know a few small girls who go there already.  They have a BIG concert every year – great excitement.  Last year they had some sort of toyshop theme.  Perfect – an opportunity for Madeline and Audrey and Beatrice et al to appear on stage in pink tutus surely??  But no…this particular group of pink girly girls were assigned their role in the toyshop extravaganza – they were to dance, in front of a big crowd, all dressed up as…Mr Potato Heads!  Bitter disappointment!  Some of the girls were fine with it, and were happy to be cutely attired in brown hessian sacks and sent out to delight the crowd.  Others refused to go out on stage at all. 

When I told my niece Jo, who did dance classes in Launceston for many years, she was horrified, and said, It was bad enough being The Toy Soldier instead of The Fairy or The Bride Doll!  [coveted roles, of course]  But Mr Potato Head – mortifying!

Monday 15^th October

I have been thinking about nursing homes recently – no I don’t need to move into one just yet… But if I did, there are a few very luxurious ones around, thank you very much!

For a while, before she moved into a very pleasant nearby nursing home, Pete’s mum had a live-in carer, Marion, who had once been the matron of a nursing home in NSW.  She was very efficient and kind, but was always known to Pete’s mum, who REALLY didn’t want a stranger in her house, as the women who live upstairs.

Marion told us a few stories about her days as a matron.  My favourite one involved two brothers, in their early 80s.  These oldcodgers came in to talk to her one day about respite care.  They tottered in, a bit shaky, and described to her what they were after – a few weeks, around Christmas.  Marion wasn’t sure that the nursing home would be able to take them both in, and when she said this, they burst out laughing and said, “No, no, the respite care is for Mum! We want to go on holiday to Queensland and we can’t take her with us!”

Apparently they had always lived with their mum, had never left home.  She still did all the cooking, cleaning, washing for her boys, but they didn’t think she was up to a trip away from home.  Also I think she possibly needed a rest…

Another saintly woman I knew, Rita, was married to a very bossy, miserable man for about seventy years.  He didn’t like to spend money, and she had threadbare teatowels, aluminium pots and pans, ancient underwear, although her offspring tried to improve her lot in life.  He would testily throw out all of the newfangled stuff which came into the house, and kept his poor wife under very firm control.  He died when she was in her early nineties and the family decided that Rita should really go into a nursing home.  They worried that she would find it hard to adapt to a new environment after so many years in her own (cold and shabby…) house.  No such thing!  She absolutely thrived in her new sunny, warm room, with soft sheets, fluffy towels, yummy meals appearing at regular intervals, new friends lying back in recliner chairs in a warm room with big flatscreen TVs to watch!  Bliss!

Saturday 13th October

 

Angela Mollard re 50 Shades…

Now, Fifty Shades? Well, anyone could have written it, couldn’t they? Boy meets girl, seduces her, wants her as his plaything, but the pesky wench falls in love (I’m winging it here because I’m only 200 pages in).

 

Still, as my too-clever-by-half daughter says whenever anyone remarks that a piece of art is so infantile they could have done it: “Yes, but you didn’t, did you?”

This did amuse me… Angela is quite right; it’s all very well for us to huff and to sniff and to say it is puerile writing but…this trilogy has made megabucks… And yes I am sure you and I could write MUCH better erotica. But…we haven’t!

 

I have just read another, much more serious, article by Angela M. She had been to Delhi to visit her brother, who does good works with street people, and she wrote very well about how very lucky we are in Australia and how we need to appreciate our good fortune:

 

If India left me despairing, then flying home made me ashamed. Here we are in a prosperous, safe, largely egalitarian nation, bitching and bleating and corroding the cornerstone on which our civility is built: namely, kindness. When did our politics become so poisonous, our mood so maudlin, our conversations so caustic?

I am sure everyone reading this is nodding in agreement; what is there to disagree with here?? So I was dumbfounded to read comments from some of her readers attacking Angela most, well, caustically. Nobody actually called her a fucking white missionary **** but…nearly!

And this was also a common theme:

Sorry - solve poverty, homelessness, and illness woes in Australia first, then I’ll give a crap about India.

I suppose this sort of “debate” is one of the reasons I enjoy reading blogs so much – they more often than not make me gasp and stretch my eyes…(In case you are wondering why I often write this peculiar little phrase, and in case you don’t know Hilaire Belloc, here’s a snippet to brighten your day….

 

From his Cautionary Tales:

MATILDA told such Dreadful Lies,

It made one Gasp and Stretch one's Eyes;

Her Aunt, who, from her Earliest Youth,

Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth,

Attempted to Believe Matilda:

The effort very nearly killed her)

Friday 12^th October

Today I am in Grumpy Mode.

I listen to the radio a lot, when I am walking to and from work, when I am cooking, when I am having insomniac moments.  So I get lots of ABC news and commentary.  I also read the newspapers a bit, and look at a few newsy blogs.  (Mainly News Lite but never mind…I don’t like TOO much indigestible information.)

When we were away on 2XS Pete and I hardly heard or saw any news at all.  This was so very pleasant; I was a bit surprised.  I thought I would pine for my regular updates but no, it was really very soothing NOT to know the latest drama, horror, gossip.

At the moment I feel a bit too well-informed.  When I was walking down from West Hobart this morning, it came to me that politics, and indeed the ABC news, really follows the 80/20 rule.*  So much energy, time, effort goes into the noisiest, most demanding, and often least important aspects.  (It’s the same in classrooms – 20% of the students get 80% of the attention.)

No point, really, in getting into Grumpy Mode, is there?  It was ever thus…

But…I am heartily sick of Peter Slipper, Alan Jones, the gay marriage debate, the sexist/misogynist debate.

I want to shout at the politicians, and at the media:

Peter Slipper, Alan Jones et al – individuals behaving badly, very rude and inappropriate, shut up, go away.  NEXT!

Gay marriage – why not?  NEXT!

Name-calling in parliament – be more polite.  NEXT!

Sexism/misogyny are not the same thing.  No, neither is acceptable.  Try harder.  Moving on.  NEXT!

Because there are, of course, VERY important issues to be dealt with.

Just for a start:

The environment

The economy

Health

Education

A workable, humane policy for asylum seekers

Sigh sigh…

On a positive note – it is FRIDAY!

*    80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers

      80% of your complaints come from 20% of your customers

80% of your profits come from 20% of the time you spend

80% of your sales come from 20% of your products

80% of your sales are made by 20% of your sales staff

(from Wikipedia)