Thursday 6^th September

Re uni days – I have written how Pete felt about uni – BEST days ever 

And how I felt – good days but anxious times 

Katy left a comment saying it was all good, not stressful, much fun sitting on the grass and plotting how to get to the beach 

Claire – well Claire spread her uni career over ten eventful, interrupted years – will see if she can make a comment

And last night Nicky wrote about her feelings on the topic:

I just loved university, although it was very hard making the sudden break away from home at the age of 17.  I well remember the wonderful lawn where we would enjoy the sunshine and share a plate of chips between five people.  Unlike my sister, I also remember working very hard!  These days uni students are much wealthier I think than we ever were, working part-time jobs for 20 plus hours per week as opposed to our Uni Bar shifts one or two nights per week.  I guess iPhones, iPads, nice cars etc are more of a priority now???  Or maybe it's those hideously large HECS debts they're working for, I hope not!  University was a time of independence, a time when one only had to be responsible for oneself (bliss) and a place where many of us met our future husbands and wives, myself included.

I have heard from friends who have been very saddened when, after regaling their uni-aged offspring with stories about the joys of uni life, discovered that things are no longer as they remembered.  Some courses are still very social and fun but many courses are now run almost entirely online.  Someone was telling me that her daughter's degree here in Hobart has no lectures at all, just a few tutorials a week and then online readings and assignments.  Another colleague has a daughter who is doing her teaching degree on line.  Teaching?  Really?  Surely someone training to be a teacher would benefit from some human interaction?  Then another, whose son started a business degree in Hobart only to discover that he was one of only a small handful of students for whom English was a first language.  Sad and lonely after a couple of months, he dropped out and found a job.  I am very much in favour of a multi-cultural society, bring it on.  Accepting hundreds of high fee paying students who then don't go on to stay and work here or assimilate concerns me somewhat.

I think all of this is very interesting.  If anyone else wants to add their own opinions/experiences, I will post them here – email me on marguerite.harmsen@gmail.com

Wednesday 5^th September

Rubbish 2XS…

This may not seem like much of an issue but in fact rubbish, on a boat, is a very big deal indeed. 

When you are at sea you can toss all of your food scraps overboard, with gay abandon.  I loved doing this.  In the galley area there is a nifty little hatch, expressly designed for this purpose.  I would take every scrap of food and post it through the little window, imagining the joy and delight in the sea below.  Oh yum!  Salami!  Mango!  Stale breadcrust!  Over-ripe bananas! 

But other items can’t be tossed; no dear little fishies are down there waiting for a beercan, or plastic packaging, or anything other than…food scraps.  Whenever we got to a marina, a town, a port, the first thing we would do is take out our garbage bags and dispose of them, SO happy to be rid of yet another pile of crapola.  This was OK in most parts of New Caledonia, Port Vila, Honiara, even Misima (PNG), but in the islands…well there is nowhere to dispose of garbage.  We struggled not to gather too much stuff, but it really was inevitable, one way or the other. 

On some very remote islands, the local people would paddle out and offer to take our rubbish away to burn it.  This was very kind and helpful, but I think there was an ulterior motive… What was rubbish to us might have been treasure to them. Maybe they could find a use for used batteries?  Dead biros?  Empty baked bean cans?  All of our horrid First World wrapping and packaging?

Back in Tasmania, I am always so grateful for rubbish bins and for the lovely neat and tidy trucks which come and haul our stuff away every week.  Twenty one years of living without rubbish collection, in the wilds of Margate, has made me very appreciative of this sort of municipal service and I pay my Hobart City Council rates gladly.

I have been following, with a faintly bemused eye, the current controversy over toxic waste in Tasmania.  I am very much in sympathy with the residents of Copping, who do NOT want a high-tech toxic waste dump in their green and pleasant environment. 

But…nobody wants a toxic waste dump… This is definitely a NIMBY (Not In My Back yard) issue.  Back in the dark days all of our toxic waste was, I think, taken offshore in a big green boat and dumped out at sea.  Gone!  No loner to be seen!  Not in anyone’s back yard…

But now, where can we dump it?  Not in the wilderness.  Of course not!  Not in Copping!  They grow veggies there, and cute little lambies.  Children frolic, oldcodgers like to sit on their verandas without having to see trucks of toxic waste on the roads.

It seems the answer is…the toxic waste needs to be disposed of somewhere else…

So the people for whom I feel the most sympathy are those who have to make the very hard decision of whose backyard is going to receive the toxic waste…

Tuesday 4^th September

I am slowly building up a library on my ipad.  It is very tempting to read them now now NOW but…I am not bad at delayed gratification, and when I will really need ebooks is…when I am at sea.  So every week or so I add a book or two.  Some of them I am very much looking forward to reading, others…not so much.  I told you I stopped halfway through the second Fifty Shades book…well the third one is still there waiting, unopened, and I really can’t see that it is ever going to go much further. 

NO I am not trying to publicise Fifty Shades of Grey – the author REALLY doesn’t need any more publicity, I can assure you…

But I just read an interview with Mr Fifty Shades which amused me and threw a different light on the whole business.

In order to publicise his own novel* Mr 50 Shades of Grey, wrote a piece for The Guardian, explaining that, though married to its writer  he’s not really the inspiration for Christian Grey, “I’m the least romantic fecker that ever lived – ask my wife, Erica, aka E.L James. Our first Christmas together, I bought her a tin opener and my earliest experience of kinky sex was her trying to shove it up my arse.”

We went out and bought her a desk, she sat down and started typing, and produced two novels, working every spare minute she had. If she was happy, I was delighted – I finally got to watch The Sopranos and The Wire back to back with no one moaning about the violence or the impenetrable slang.

Fifty Shades Of Grey is a fantasy – have they forgotten what that means? Do they chase JK Rowling down the street daring her to use her Avra Kedavra spell?  Do they ask Hilary Mantel how many courtiers she's beheaded?

*Crusher, by Niall Leonard (and goodness only knows what it will be like…)

Monday 3^rd September

Rental sagas are never-ending…

Pete has a nice apartment in South Hobart.  We stayed here for a month before we left on 2XS and enjoyed it all very much.  It is on the bottom floor of an 80s-ish concrete block of eight.  Sturdy, unpretentious, warm and cosy.  He has had nice young tenants in there but I think maybe the girls have dodgy boyfriends… The front door no longer closes let alone locks.  Something has rammed into it, the wrong way, with great force and the hinge, solidly welded into the concrete block wall and the door frame, is bent out of shape.  Pete is at a loss – it is very hard to fix because the place is so very solidly constructed.  He asked Tahnee what had happened – had the door maybe slammed, very hard, with something very heavy behind it?  No of course not; one minute it was fine, the next minute – ummm…all bent out of whack!

A former colleague of mine also had rental properties – one bedroom apartments, not luxurious, but functional.  Val was forever bemoaning the things which had been broken/ruined/stolen.  She was a regular at Decorama, trotting off in her lunch break to get more curtain material – her tenants seemed to feel the need to take the bedroom curtains, every single time.  They weren’t particularly nice, and they were custom-made (by poor Val) for a very specific window size – why take them??  Too weird… They would also regularly take…the rubbish bin, and the toilet brush.  (?????)

Sunday 2^nd September

Last year when we left Hobart on 2XS for our Year Of Fun we made our way grandly up the river, round the corner, onto the coast…and then to Lauderdale for dinner at Stella Maris, Lynne’s beautiful beach house.  It would have taken us less than thirty minutes to drive there from the marina…But it was a very nice way to start our trip, with one small baby step to familiar and welcoming surroundings before braving the South Pacific.

Yesterday we made our way again to Stella Maris, in a maxi taxi full of Headlams, to celebrate Lynne turning “old”.  First day of spring and beautiful indeed, with clear blue sky, bright sunshine, cool clear air. 

Lots of delicious food, wine, punch (including Lynne’s famous John Stopp Starter mixture, full of lemons, vitamins and…alcohol.)  An eclectic group of friends and relations, old and new.  Lynne has a pool; not a swimming pool, an elegant strip of water to reflect the sky.  It was, of course, an absolute magnet for the swarm of under tens… Some of them fell in and got very wet and high-pitched and had to be dried off and changed into warm dry clothes so they could do it all over again.  Others just paddled daintily up to their knees.  And I watched in wonder, shivering slightly in my warm winter boots.

Lovely to celebrate this auspicious occasion, and very kind of the weather gods to co-operate so nicely.

 

Saturday 1st September

Last Sunday was Open Day at Tas Uni.

I have been to Open Day at Tas Uni before, and I did enjoy it, in a mild sort of way.  Pete, on the other hand, enjoyed it IMMENSELY. 

Uni days were his happiest days ever.  This says a lot.  Pete’s life has generally been happy, mainly because he is a such a positive, cheery chap and he attracts love and good fortune to himself. 
I liked uni and had a perfectly good time in my four years there.  But…they were not my happiest days ever.  I spent half of my time being extremely anxious about exams, assignments, work in general, and the other half in the Pursuit Of Love.  This also caused me lots of anxiety; what a little bundle of fun I was!

Pete was never filled with this sort of anxiety.  He is, and was, a blithe spirit.

So he was very keen to trot off to Open Day, to re-live, for a few moments, his salad days.  It was all quite interesting.  I did like looking at the marine science thingies, and enjoyed a brief dalliance with the people at the Medical School stall.

While Pete was peering into a microscope and talking earnestly about climate change and fisheries with a handsome silver haired professor I leaned against a wall and went lala in my head, quite happily, until I was accosted by an oldcodger with a clipboard.  (Said oldcodger, Brett, was 55; he told me.)  He was full of enthusiasm for…all-of-life learning. Apparently the Menzies Centre, curse them, have discovered that there are two things which ensure a happier healthier old age – why did he pick on me to talk about this, I wonder??  One of the things is cardiovascular fitness.  All good; I am quite fit and love a bit of exercise and will happily pant up and down stairs or hills, whatever it takes.  But the other is…all-of-life education.  Brett took out a pen and was all ready to sign me up for – gulp – another degree!  What did I major in?  Oh good; well maybe now I would like to do Japanese!  Or Geology!  By then my hair was just about standing on end.  Of course I can think of worse things than going back to uni…but not many!  I would love to go to lectures, and maybe even discussion groups and tutorials, and chat about this and that new area of learning.  But exams?  Assignments?  NOOOO!!!

Pete was very surprised to find me pale and fearful after my “chat” with Brett.  “But wouldn’t you like to study again?” he asked, earnestly.  (Pete, bless him, thinks I am very clever…) The answer to that question is…NOOOO!!!!  When I am feeling anxious now – and I graduated in 1971 – I have nightmares about…uni!  About not having done my assignments, not being ready for exams, having to stand up in front of big lecture halls full of people and exposing total lack of knowledge of my subject area.

I told Kathy about my encounter with Brett, at the pub on Wednesday.  Kathy and I were at uni together, and she too did well, and had a great time.  But when I told her we could go back and enrol in new courses, her eyes widened and she said… NOOOOO!!!!

Friday 31^st August #2

An auspicious day – happy birthday Lynne Headlam!

Lynne says she is “turning old” today.

No such thing!  She is still working, achieving, having fun, cooking, entertaining, looking after everyone – we should all “turn old” in such splendid style!