The serenity of painting and medical issues.

The latest paintings.

We have a government who likes to remind us to get the occasional medical checkup through the local doctor. The doctor is free but not so the specialists one gets referred to. Of course, if one considers that almost all our body parts are the domain of specialists one has to be careful not to get sucked into spending a sickening amount of money. However, scans, ultrasounds and MRIs are usually bulk-billed or free. I forgot why but decided to get the three main parts of my body looked at: kidney, bladder and lungs.

It was almost a day of dressing, undressing and fronting up to a (fully dressed) scanner, ultrasound, or MMRI expert. They were young people and very good at making one feel at peace. The venue was alright but somewhat ramshackle and in need of more money. While nervously taking pants off for Kidney, and bladder scans I was told to lie down, breath in and out etc., which was managed reasonably well. When going next for the chest Xray I foolishly asked if I had to take pant off as well. She thought I was being funny while in fact I was just serious but nervous and unused to showing my 83-year-old body. I usually avoid my bathroom mirror. Anyway, I received a text message from my doctor to say they received the outcome of the tests and as a non-urgent matter could make an appointment to see him. It was an automated generated message, so I suppose all is well at the moment.

That is so reassuring, Isn’t it?

The innings of a gamble or art?

The above, the latest of my paintings. Feel free to make of it what you like.

My grandsons are like all young man but of course also special whereby I recognize so many shared family genetic markers, not least their body lengths, being either close or over two meters.

I have occasionally given some advice, although somewhat tempered by the believe that their parents are probably better equipped. Gambling is one of my dislikes and just recently learned that per capita Australia has the highest number of poker machines. My grandsons nod solemnly in agreement when sometimes I let them know about my prejudice on pokies. Their eyes shifted just a bit to arouse my curiosity tinged with suspicion.

But, just get ready for the next few words and get a bit closer to the screen. One of my grandsons won $ 50.000.- on those poker machines two days ago. Can you believe it? And what about the morals of this? He told me he will invest in a long-term bank deposit, and I pleaded with him never but never go back to gamble again. I am with China on that one and wished all gambling to be banned.

What do think about it?

Local Shire art exhibition.

Here some of my paintings exhibited in the Atrium of our local Council in Moss Vale, NSW. Australia.

A good sign of approval.

Ban Private Schools

Here a good article by Elizabeth Farrelly

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/life/education/2024/01/27/finland-offers-case-banning-australian-private-schools#mtr

The unbearable lightness of art.

Recent paintings

Mr. Bentley has a new ligament.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Bentley developed a limp after chasing a black cat at the end of our driveway. He had his eye on this cat for a while and on one occasion this cat was around the front of our place sniffing around Bentley’s bowl. Bentley and his food bowl are one and united for life. Cats are so sneaky. After the chase the cat has not been seen again but Bentley had this limb.

Next day a trip to the to the vet who is an elderly man well known around town as the best. He immediately diagnosed a pulled ligament in his left hind leg, He will need a new artificial one he told me straight, and I can do it in about 5 days’ time. Post operation, you can see the stitches of the operation on the photo below.

Poor Mr Bentley is now limping around, but his appetite has not diminished. The vet surgeon reckons it will be between 6-8 weeks for him to fully recover to his previous cat chasing abilities.

In the meantime, I have been painting with great abandon. Unstoppable, and I hope it will continue. They seem to suggest something. Have a look below.

Landscapes of the mind.

Talking in pictures instead of words.

“THAT” first time.

Extract from my book, Almost There (National Library of Australia CIP Dewey Number 304.8940492)

My own boat’s journey on love at the time in the sixties seemed to flounder forever on the rocky shores of lacking the right personality. The problem was my ‘mien’. The sombre impression at first sight. Girls had to overcome this. Not an easy task. I could not change what was the essence of my own being. It was at the same time also my best feature. This mien of seriousness stood me in good faith later on. The dilemma is that most young people like good cheer with easy going friendly smiling demeanors. Not many girls seemed to be drawn at my ice breaking attempts introducing small talk about Paganini, or ponderings about what might be going on behind Australia’s fondness of Venetian blinds, or indeed my clear unique insight in the neglect of our cemeteries. I suppose suburbs don’t encourage seriousness when the essence of life can be so bleak and lacking in joie de vivre already. The last thing anyone wants on a night out is a dark Schubert like journey of Klage-lieder with hopeless love buried in the deepest of the seas. This Jeremiah wasn’t a Don Juan.

A helping hand was soon knocking at the front-door of my life. A fortuitous move on hindsight was the move away from home to rent a room with board in inner city Paddington. The landlady was from Malta, and she certainly had a good mien. A bundle of laughs, and a generosity expressed by her heaving and shuddering breasts. On accepting the terms, she immediately cooked me some lovely lamb cutlets with lots of garlic and salted anchovies with rosemary. I remember it so well. “I give you plenty food, Gerard, you are too skinny,” The full board was to include bed and all meals with her family, including the husband who kept a loaded shotgun in the upstairs bedroom’s wardrobe!

Within two weeks of settling in, I was watching TV with her husband sitting opposite from his wife who was seated directly next to me. A few days earlier she had invited me to look at some photos of their wedding in Malta. We were both seated on the conjugal marriage bed. I thought it a very friendly gesture and put it down to Maltese culture and openness. None of that Anglo Saxon reserve. I was happy but a bit nervous. Her bosom was welling up, but with such a large and generous endowment one would have to wear a knight’s armour or broad necktie to seek cover. ” My husband sick now”, she sighed, of which its significance escaped me.

While watching TV and Bonanza with Dad Ben, and the three Brothers; Adam, Eric, (Hoss) and little Joe Cartwright’s horses galloping around the same set of rocks several time, I felt a movement in my left pocket. It was the hand of the Maltese landlady searching me…Me? It took a while to sink in but was sure her hand wasn’t there by accident or looking for my handkerchief. It was definitely an amorous attempt, sexual even. A tour de force. I was petrified with her husband sitting in the opposite corner! Did he not know? Where was his gun? However, her hand with gentle but insistent fingers ambushed and overcame my resolve to run away. Au contraire. It was so lovely. I was so excited. I even collegially and conspiratorially leant a bit backwards to give room to her expert married hand. I had the temerity to lightly stroke her back, keeping a guilty eye out for her husband. What could I do for her? Wasn’t this supposed to go twin carburetor for both of us? The horses and Bonanza all but a black and white blur, running berserk for all I cared. A fata morgana that was now really happening to me. The oasis of a real woman.

Can you understand the dread, fear and yet the rewards coming finally to me so longed for and dreamed about? The misery of home life. The rejections of dates and dorky evenings at the cinema with Ben Hur, a Moses with tablets, or some Quo Vadis on a big screen. Here it was, her lovely hand, let the husband shoot me, who cares! Bonanza finished; she got up after her husband had left. ” Gerard, get some Frenchies’ tomorrow, quickly.” She smiled and kissed me a good night. What a great episode of Bonanza. Next day at 9.01 am I was at the chemist. You might know that at that time condoms could only be given by consent and sold by the chemist himself. He or she would always be standing as today on a podium. I asked for three packets of condoms. All caution to the wind now, and I was on a high. He looked me over and grumpily sold me the condoms. Next morning, I was in bed on the linoleum floor, all shiny and clean. She walked in with husband having gone to work. She smiled and lifted her dress standing next to my head. Both of us in a single bed, and she was so big. But where there is a will…

And that was that.

“Fat is good,” so was Spam.

“Fat is Good,” so is Spam

“Fat is Good”, so was Spam.

I like spam. Back in the late nineteen fifties I was living in a sparsely furnished room at a Paddington Boarding House. The front door had a sign “Migrants Welcome”. The boarding house was run by a Maltese woman. Her husband was a butcher. They were a good and devout family and a loaded shotgun was kept in the wardrobe.

On the wall and above my bed was a picture of a Jesus cruelly nailed to a wooden cross. What was disconcertingly spooky, depending on what angle this picture was viewed at, that its eyes would open and shut alternatively when stepping past.

When the Jesus had its eyes open they were piously cast upwards. Perhaps the subliminal message and hope being, that the viewer would also become pious and work towards that upwards heavenly goal as well. It turned me off 3D pictures and holograms for life.

At night, and before hopping into my bed, I would turn the picture facing the wall. During the day and before going to work I would always politely turn Jesus back again allowing it to ponder and gaze over my bed. It would, at least during daytime, allow Him to cast his eyes, perhaps in a despairingly manner, heavenly upwards again for anyone passing my bed during the day. I did not want to upset a devout family with a shotgun in the wardrobe.

Sometimes, most often after work and tired, I used to sit on the edge of my single bed, open a tin of spam with that handy little tool that was attached to the top and ever so slowly (in order not to break it) turn and twist the lid off.

One was greeted by a little white coloured blubbery bit of fat coagelatined to the top hiding its deliciously pink coloured innards. The bouquet of the spam greeting the nostrils was always immensely pervasive. Scooping it up with a teaspoon while turning the pages of V.Woolf’s Orlando, was one of those little pleasures of bachelorhood that  gets forgotten once married, and sitting and eating on the edge of a bed becomes, very sensibly IMHO, banned forever. I remember it though as if yesterday.

Now the original and true meaning of ‘spam’ is lost  and for baby boomers that joy forever denied, even though, while sauntering past the acreages of Woolies isles I sometimes still spot a  tin of Spam, proudly and defiantly competing with more modern delicacies such as the cryonically preserved  Crunchy Chico Bar or boxes loaded with healthy  Fruity Loops.

So much now is lost and gone into the bowels of history forever, the same as so much else during that era. We have all but forgotten the pungent smell of the spattering mutton legs on Friday afternoons together with mum’s baked pumpkin and spuds, and happy kids hurtling down-hill on Billy carts, all at Redfern’s or Rockdale’s back lanes.