Friday 7^th December

And today’s accolades go to – my mother, Gina Zajusch!  It is her birthday and should be very much celebrated. 

My mother is the least technological person you could think of.  All things mechanical and electronic are a deep dark mystery to her.  But she is very clever and very motivated and she negotiates her (ancient) computer with aplomb, sending daily emails, forwarding jokes, connecting to the internet.  For example, this week she clicked onto the link for failed craft projects, and enjoyed looking at them immensely.  I am so impressed with her courage in facing the world – this internet thing is just one example of her indomitable spirit and zest for life.

No I am not going to divulge how old she is; in fact I’m not quite sure… Suffice to say that I am 63 and she was not a tiny teenager when I was born…But I don’t think many people in her particular age group are quite as au fait with the modern world…

She is very much admired and loved by her ever-expanding family.

People wear strange things printed on their t-shirts.  This is a source of constant mystery and amusement to me and my offspring.

Recently, in Collins Street, I came across a very earnest looking plump young woman, striding along with a look of grim determination.  Nerdy, in fact, wearing serious glasses, a tweedy cap, short mousey plaits.  But…across her VERY enormous and bouncing bosoms were the words DON’T FEED THE ZOMBIES.

What did this mean??  What was she thinking??

India #38

We were particularly taken with the tailors, all over India.  Some of us had read A Fine Balance, the wonderful Rohinton Mistry novel about a couple of tailors who try (and fail..) to make their fortune in the big city, so we were fascinated to see how a tailor would set up his treadle machine in a tiny nook, maybe a diagonal space between corners of two buildings, to sit and sew.  They sewed so beautifully, and efficiently.  Crisp white shirts with beautifully turned cuffs – how did they keep them clean?  Nothing in India is clean, and certainly not the streets of the big cities!  There are lots of sewing machine shops too.  They mainly sell treadles, and also hand-cranked machines.  I don’t think it would be possible to find a brand-new treadle in Australia, would it?  I don’t think anyone would be able to use one any more anyway…

Crawford Market is a huge precinct, in the heart of the city.  You can buy just about anything there.  I proved this by buying a pillow; not easy because everyone thought what I REALLY wanted was a whole lot of brightly coloured artificial flowers, or a bedspread, or a set of lurid table mats.  Or maybe a few live chickens?  The exercise involved being given directions this way that way forwards and backwards through the crowded narrow streets until EVENTUALLY we came to a nice little oasis, a tiny street lined with little shops selling - bliss - pillows and pillowcases.  It is all actually quite dangerous because handcarts whiz through the laneways, heavy and unmanoeverable, and cars seem to be able to squash and squeeze and hoot and toot between the stalls as well.  Imagine a much larger Melbourne Victoria market with ten times more people, and speedy scooters and taxis and handcarts buzzing up and down the aisles…

Pete was on a mission too, to buy a thin leather money belt to replace one he bought in Indonesia many years ago.  This was quite good fun.  There were lots of leathergoods shops and stalls.  None of them sold what he wanted but all the young men there gesticulated excitedly and said what he needed could be found at something like Ali Mohammet’s Emporium – THAT way, turn right, left, spin about a dozen times then cross a very goat-poo infested laneway and Bob’s your uncle.  We wound our way through the market area and came to a much darker part, full of chickens and goats (and poo, as I have said, but I won’t dwell on that.)  We were very obviously in the Muslim area.  I finally saw a sign for the name we had been given and pointed it out to the others.  But was it a shop at all??  No, it was some sort of meeting place for young Muslim men.  We were regarded with very deep suspicion and we turned and threaded our way back out.  What was all that about?  We will never know, will we?  And no there was no such thing as a replacement moneybelt for Pete to be found.