Love, Loss, lockdowns and a possible Buddy

Milo

What a week this is turning out to be. On Monday morning everything was fine, and Milo our Jack Russell of  17  years had come down from upstairs at his usual relaxed self, yawning and looking up for his treat before going outside to do his pee. I know he was busting to go, but he doesn’t let on till after his treat. That’s how far he got me in his quest for total obedience from his master. No treat no pee.

Of course he had slowed down. His barking at motorbikes and black crows ceased a couple of years ago. But, on the whole he kept his sparkle and nothing escaped him. We took our walks but I would lead now instead of Milo.

By the afternoon, things had become a bit odd. He seemed to have lost his way and would stand outside next to the doggy door instead of going through it. He walked slowly in circles and when stopping stared in front of him. He did not want his chicken necks. A bad sign, but he did drink water. I took Milo to the vet who examined him but found his organs such as heart and lungs to be in good shape.

Th evening was bad. He kept going outside and hide under bush and shrubs, was very slow in his walk. I took his bed from upstairs and we both slept downstairs. Milo in his bed and me on the couch. I patted him during the night and he still responded by looking up.

Next day a return to the vet as Milo was decidedly worse. He was still alert enough to let me know he did not want to be with the vet. He never liked going there even though the vet was brilliant and a caring animal man. Milo had a blood test and the results were bad. Both his kidneys were malfunctioning and at his age it looked bad. I knew I did not want him to suffer , neither did the vet, and we decided to help him on his way. I carried him back to the car and buried him beneath the Manchurian pear tree at my front garden.

I was and still am devastated and did not think it would be so painful. At my coffee group I was given so much support. A condolence card was signed by all who knew Milo and was given a large bunch of yellow tulips. I have so many good friends and I am so fortunate.

The good news is that I am perhaps allowed to look  after another terrier, Buddy. He looks lovely on the photo and I am meeting him tomorrow at Lake Alexandra near my place.

Lake Alexandra.

I will let you know about Buddy and feel so fortunate.

No end of Covid.

Has there ever been anything like the present Covid news that has so saturated our lives? There is now nowhere to turn. The QR code has made double sure any escape impossible. At every turn one is asked to take the iPhone out and take a picture of the QR code which is a scrambled square that doesn’t seem to make any sense. Apparently it can be used to trace our movements but I am sure the world of quick money is using it to spout their products.

I have managed to get my double vaccination and even received a digital certificate proving my vaccination status. It is the Astra Zeneca of which there has been some concern that it produced thrombosis in a small number of recipients of that particular vaccine. Most of those, mainly younger women that suffered the blood clotting recuperated but an extremely small number have died. This information was badly handled by our Government and some became scared and uncertain and are now going without vaccinations waiting for the alternative vaccination the Pfizer which is in short supply.

Almost daily we are given ‘updates’  about  changes to the lockdown rules and which areas of our country/cities have to be avoided. There are exemptions but the police is now employed to enforce by punishment that we obey lockdown rules. From next Monday for example the building industry is added to lockdown. Any hammering or drilling is strictly forbidden. We are given this weekend to secure any building or renovation site.  No one in the greater Sydney area is allowed to leave  and police on highways can check your number plate and know instantly that you have transgressed the lockdown rule. Those that don’t fall in line with the restrictions and lockdown can expect the dreaded midnight knock on the door and get a hefty fine to boot.

There are supposed to be exemptions on compassionate ground to visit each other such as couples in intimate relationships that are not living together. That would include me, but the consequences have to be taken in consideration. Do you really want to risk giving Covid infection? And what happens when you get back home again. Does one then have to self isolate?

These are hard and terribly boring times. I give myself some relief with wine and walking, patting Milo, knitting and some solitary cooking.

What can one do?

Here is something very exuberantly cheerful from 1725 by Jean Phillipe Rameau

LES INDES GALANTES – YouTube

A great game of the mind.

It all came rushing back after watching a recommended series on TV called The Queen’s Gambit. A very well made TV movie (now on Netflix) on how a pre-pubescent orphaned girl grew up and became a world champion chess player. She became obsessed with the game but too poor to actually own a chess game, she instead used to play chess games inside her head, imagining all the possible moves from both sides of the chess board which she pictures endlessly on the ceiling of her bedroom ceiling. She was adopted from a bullying orphanage by a childless couple living in stretched out lifeless sun-bleached suburb somewhere in the US. The marital whiplashed husband and wife as uninspiring as one could imagine. He sunk in newspaper hardly ever acknowledges the wife while she is starting to sip the beckoning freedom of alcohol.   

The photo above is of my two grandsons many years ago playing chess. You can tell by their faces of their intense concentration. I am still so proud of having taught them the game of chess. It is amazing how quick they grasped the basics of all the moves and is proof that very young children can learn quite complicated abstract ideas and act upon them with great speed and accuracy. Those that know this game might well agree that it is a game as much of the mind as it is played on a board of 64 squares. And for those who don’t know the game, here is a very good video;

How to Play Chess: Rules for Beginners: Learn Game Basics, Board Setup, Moves, Castling, En Passant – YouTube

I played chess for many years and the highpoint of my chess playing was when I won a chess competition on the boat that took me and my newly married Helvi to Australia for the first time. I say for the first time, because during our long marriage we went on many boats. It still takes about six weeks to sail to Europe so the boats held all sorts of games to keep the passengers occupied, Chess was one of those games. Tombola was another one and for the gamblers there were sweepstakes in which one placed a bet on the distance the boat had sailed the previous twenty four hours.

I wasn’t surprised to find out that chess is considered very important in many countries and indeed in Russia it is a compulsory subject at all high schools. Part of the reason is that it just about teaches everything the young mind needs to sharpen on when going through life. It encourages above all how to look ahead, foreseeing, imagining not just the possible but the impossible, courage, humility, forbearance and so much more. I know that rugby and rolling around the grass games are important too but for me there is just nothing as healthy as a good game of outdoor chess. In Bali, Indonesia, it is normal to see young people practicing chess often surrounded by others carefully looking at each move. 

‘The Queens Gambit’ movie takes its title from a most common opening move in chess. It is a highly recommended series. Rotten tomatoes gave it 96% approval rating. Go and try see it on your TV. (Netflix) It will blow your mind

Are our lives driven by toilet paper?

It is on again, the rush to hoard toilet paper. Of all the things that we hold dear in Australia, the country of sun and sandy beaches, nothing seems as precious than to own the soft rolls and total freedom to wipe the remnants of our bowels and bladders.  Last night the TV news showed us supermarket shelves stripped bare of toilet paper. Within minutes of the Governments announcements of a Lockdown and the puckered-up hordes of the anally constricted descended upon shops stocking up on toilet paper. Not a shadow of guilt or shame passed over their faces. I know because I took some time off to look at the spectacle. As I was walking around the Supermarkets Woolworth’s carpark I was amazed at he exuberance and shared bonhomie. Laughter and banter were almost like a post war victory celebration.  A shared kind of intimacy rarely observed between Anglo Saxons. No words were used but; we know what you all end up doing with those endless hoards of white sheets, AND WE APPROVE was the message.!

I read that in Italy it is the  olive oil with shoe polish that gets hoarded. In the Scandinavian countries, libraries and books are being hoarded, in The Netherlands, herrings!  But Australia and possibly the US it are the gleaming white toilet rolls that beckons us.

Friedrich Nietzsche was one of those philosophers that held high the notion that wretchedness and despair ought be held high and that every sort of difficulty be welcomed by those that sought fulfillment. What is it that those toilet roll hunters are so keenly finding when gazing upon those shelves at the supermarket? Are they Nietzsche followers?

Friedrich wasn’t always so enlightened by the gloom and doom but he was encouraged when opening the Schopenhauer book that really gave him the impetus to follow the path of wretchedness.  He wrote and I quote “Back at the house I threw myself into the corner of a sofa with my new treasure, and began to let that dynamic, dismal genius work on me. Each line cried out with renunciation, negation, resignation.”   Unquote.

There are people much better qualified to find reasons why in Australia it are the toilet rolls during crisis that people buy while in Italy the olive oil is bought up. Is it the cooking with oil instead of butter and the swimming in the warm Mediterranean? “These little things- nutriment, place, mount Vesuvius, Capri, recreation, all of greater importance than the dryness, the seriousness of life lived in suburban shadows amongst the wilting gladioli with curtains closed, tempers hosed and maligned ambitions, the week-end at Coffs and The big banana?  

I don’t know but am open to your sage advice and opinions.

 

Solitary lives in tune with Covid

 

With time on our hands due to Lockdowns and distance keeping that seem to becoming the norm it might be prudent to go back to read up on Alain de Botton. He is a very handy and easy philosopher to have on standby during pandemics. He is best  known as the bestselling author of “How Proust can change your life”. While he is also accused and known as having dumbed down philosophy by the fanatically obsessed and competitive critics  in the busy and very lucrative world of psychiatry,  he is nonetheless of great comfort to millions of his followers.

What I found very helpful is his astute advice on how to give relationships a better chance of survival. While Botton and his words are no panacea for experiencing failure in love and how to better the chances of finding it, he does come up with good observations.

The Best Relationship Advice from Alain de Botton | Google Zeitgeist – YouTube 

One of the most salient words he wrote were that we are inherently not suitable to find love/companionship until we are also imminently first able to live by ourselves and be content.  To seek love to alleviate loneliness is not a good start and he advices to sort out first what is is that makes us feel lonely amidst a world of billions of people.

Here are some of what he says about ‘Why do we marry the wrong person’. 

Quote” Anyone we might marry could, of course, be a little bit wrong for us. We don’t expect bliss every day. We know that perfection is not on the cards. Nevertheless, there are couples who display such deep-seated incompatibility, such heightened rage and disappointment, that we have to conclude that something else is at play beyond the normal scratchiness: they appear to have married the wrong person.

How do such errors happen, in our enlightened, knowledge-rich times? We can say straight off that they occur with appalling ease and regularity. Academic achievement and career success seem to provide no vaccines. Otherwise intelligent people daily and blithely make the move.

Given that it is about the single costliest mistake any of us can make (it places rather large burdens on the state, employers and the next generation too), there would seem to be few issues more important than that of marrying intelligently.

It’s all the more poignant that the reasons why people make the wrong choices are rather easy to lay out and unsurprising in their structure. We ruin our lives for reasons that can be summed up in an essay. They tend to fall into some of the following basic categories.

off alarm bells in any prospective partner. The question is just where the problems will lie: perhaps we have a latent tendency to get furious when someone disagrees with us, or we can only relax when we are working, or we’re a bit tricky around intimacy after sex, or we’ve never been so good at explaining what’s going on when we’re worried. It’s these sort of issues that – over decades – create catastrophes and that we therefore need to know about way ahead of time, in order to look out for people who are optimally designed to withstand them. A standard question on any early dinner date should be quite simply: ‘And how are you mad?’

 Being single is so awful

One is never in a good frame of mind to choose a partner rationally when remaining single is unbearable. We have to be utterly at peace with the prospect of many years of solitude in order to have any chance of forming a good relationship. Or we’ll love no longer being single rather more than we love the partner who spared us being so.

Unfortunately, after a certain age, society makes singlehood dangerously unpleasant. Communal life starts to wither, couples are too threatened by the independence of the single to invite them around very often, one starts to feel a freak when going to the cinema alone. Sex is hard to come by as well. For all the new gadgets and supposed freedoms of modernity, it can be very hard to get laid – and expecting to do so regularly with new people is bound to end in disappointment after 30. Unquote

 

 

Reverse Parking and Dancing

Typical Nissen hut in most migrant camps.

Disembarking from the boat.

The above photos were taken within a week or so of our arrival In Australia 1956 January. It was during a heat wave. I took them with my Agfa Clack that I bought from money earned delivering fruit to Embassies in The Hague.

The photo on the left shows our living quarters in an unlined Nissan Hut. Unbearably hot and not at all like the films we were shown about Australia. The other photo is after disembarking from our boat. My mother clutching her handbag and dad looking around.

It was within a few years after that I decided to buy a car and combine it with taking dancing lessons at the same time. I was around 17 years and liked the look of cars and girls. It was already well known that owning a car would be looked upon favorably by girls and would make up for going out with a boy with a strange guttural accent.   It did not take me long after a few driving lessons to get my license and soon after a large car; a clapped out Ford V 8 with leather seats, an ashtray, cigarette lighter and a blue smoke spewing engine. My dancing lessons were alright too but not so with getting a date. The dancing school was in Sydney above a milk bar called Stavros. I bought a booklet of twenty tickets on ‘special’, giving me twenty dancing lessons on a wooden floor with the required dancing steps painted in green.

The female teachers were soft and moved with some grace. One had to dance ‘chest to chest’ with a book held firmly in between in order to gently with suppled grace yet firmly, swirl and dance around without dropping the book. I only dropped the book once. It was a large book with the title ‘Of Human Bondage’ by Somerset Maugham. It was a very popular book at the time but a solid tome of over hundreds of pages. Of course the softness of the teacher was well protected by this heavy book and so it should have. It was a Phyllis Bates Dance academy and had a good name to behold and protect.

At the same time I had a good friend named Otto whose family was on the same boat as ours. He too took driving and dancing lessons at the same time. He was not so good with both of them and failed his drivers test on numerous occasions. He did not want to give up and decided to travel back to Holland to take both driving and dancing lessons. That’s just how Otto was. I can’t explain, but he was a good but somewhat unorthodox man. He passed away two years ago, well in his eighties but never been in conjugal bondage/married. He did get his driver’s license though!

During those years at one stage my mother rented out our previous living quarters, a humble converted fibro sheeted garage to a single divorced Dutch woman in her forties.  Otto watched her reverse parking her car. That was it! Otto became smitten. He would accept all sorts of blemishes, both mental or physical but if a woman could reverse park she would be his queen forever. Unfortunately for Otto, the woman had a boyfriend, a Dutch bricklayer with concrete and cement encrusted boots which he would kick off as soon as he arrived at the woman’s place from work and; according to Otto, most likely leap into her bed. Otto was that sort of generous man.

Here you have it; reverse parking was the overriding quality Otto looked for in a woman. As for my dating efforts? I’ll tell you next time.

Forced vaccinations?

There seems to be a rather unfriendly attitude towards China of late. Where does this come from? In Australia, which has done very well in its fight against the Covid-19, the suggestion has been raised to make the Covid vaccinations obligatory. And out of nowhere (or out of the blue) cries came about; ‘Oh are we going to be like Communist China now?’ To my mind to make Vaccinations obligatory by law makes a lot of sense. Don’t we have to have a license to drive a car? Air lines are hinting that travel will only be allowed on planes by people having proof of vaccinations. No jab no plane! It seems a fair exchange. I remember after being born and becoming a toddler my mum knew that no vaccination no kindergarten or pre-school. 

I think China did an amazing job of not only pulling hundreds of millions out of poverty at an amazing short time, but now also having beaten the Covid 19 pandemic.  I don’t understand this antagonism towards China. We would do well to look at the map and see how much closer we geographically are towards China than the US. We also trade very nicely with China. Let’s be realistic and be good neighbors, make friends! As for the accusation of human rights by China. Let’s look at the treatment of the Australian indigenous and our locked up refugees on Manus and Nauru!

The kettle calling the pot black!

At the Rocks, Sydney.

Quotes by Ai Weiwei

Read more: Ai Weiwei’s presents his ‘Manifesto without Borders’

“You can see in the film that young people, nurses and doctors and other health professionals came to Wuhan within days on buses. China is probably the only nation that could achieve that with such speed and spirit. You can see how the state built the infrastructure, including the emergency field hospitals, and equipped those on the frontlines with the necessary rescue equipment. Those details surprised me and are a profound revelation of human behavior under authoritarian control.” 

“China, as an authoritarian state, has been the most efficient in taking on a situation as challenging as a pandemic. In doing so, China’s suppression of human rights, individual rights, privacy, and personal will has been heavy. Basically, China has consumed everyone’s liberty into its own power. That is the basic character of this nation’s fast development and how it has closed the gap between itself and the West. It has worked very well over the last 30 years.”

The Stress test.

A stress test is a way of finding out how a heart function under duress and while alive. I had the good fortune to take this test because I was found to still be breathing and moving limbs in a fairly coordinated way. It is usually the job of the cardiologist to perform inspections or investigations of life people’s hearts. For a few years now I have been taking a medley of medications that were suggested by my cardiologist to increase the ‘efficiency’ of my heart. On a previous visit it was found that my heart wasn’t pumping at enough strength to bolster staying alive for as long as possible and bearable. I say bearable because each time I put on TV there are endless tales of Covid woes together with the latest sharks biting people…At times it makes one wonder about the efficacy of life. I hear the word ‘efficacy’ being bandied about so I thought of using it now as well. That word has become popular because of the different Vaccines ‘roll-out’

Gerard on the treadmill.

‘Rolling out’ also has become popular but it doesn’t sound as nice as ‘efficacy’. ‘Esoteric’ is also a nice word to use now. The word ‘logistics’ has faded, and one needs to be fully alerted to witness seeing or hearing this word. Big semi-trailers with dual cabins still sometimes have ‘logistic’ written on large canvas coverings. Does it hint at deliveries on time?

But going back to my stress test at the cardiologist. My main aim was to find out the efficacy of all my tablets. My prescriptions include blood thinners and hypertension tablets as well as diuretics, thyroxine and Entresto which is the new very expensive pill on the block of medicines. I might imagine it, but when the chemist sees me coming with my list of prescriptions, he tends to smile, straighten up on his raised podium, and starts rocking on his heels. Of course, I get most of the medications subsidized and pay little. None the less, the chemists or apothecaries get a nice little earner.

I normally have low blood pressure, so why the hypertension tablets? I also query the blood thinner and the diuretic usually reserved for swollen limbs or overweight people which I am definitely not.  My nights are now spent more en passant my bed and lounging sullenly near the toilet. Why? However, the good news is that my test showed me improved from last time and much fitter than most my age. I am lucky. As for the questions relating to my tablets. This was all a bit  too esoteric and I was thrown by the cardiologist using the efficacies and combinations of blood pressure versus thyroid levels and organs. My companion and lovely Annette persisted with questioning but he gave her short thrift.  Told her; leave that for Gerard to decide.!!!

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The outdoor Café and Covid.

 

If Covid-19 showed up anything it was the plight of people being denied the pleasure of outdoor coffee sipping. Distance keeping and avoiding each other became the norm and even now, dire warnings are still out to keep distance and avoid too much closeness with each other. At one stage last year, High Governmental Officers were toying with the idea banning conjugal cohabitations except between certain hours and within a space not larger than 6 sq meters while wearing special distance measuring guides. Numbers of guests at marriages were restricted to two only, excluding the couple to be married. ( no kissing or exchange of bands)

 

Australia is now threatening its own citizens with jail if they dare to even  think of the  idea of coming back home  from overseas, especially if having stayed in India.  The fear of contact lingers on!  As a compromise the lawmakers have now eased the rule on cafés and outdoor venues. And, boy oh boy, have we welcomed that! All that pent up demand. A torrent of coffee aficionados converging on the outdoor venues, people shouting with joy, dancing on the street.

It wasn’t always like that. After our arrival in 1956, coffee was frowned upon as a brown, filthy and decadent ‘foreign’ habit best left behind with other filth and Euro habits such as the dreaded incursion of strange languages never heard before, and certain foods, garlic and salami to name a couple. Banana sandwiches and cucumber pickle with ham was about as far our culinary courage dared go, with a nice cuppa tea afterwards.

I remember one of the first outdoor cafés to open up in Balmain where we were living from the sixties till the mid nineties.  It wasn’t without controversy. ‘Haven’t people got something better to do do than sit around drinking coffee’? What about pedestrians stumbling over the chairs on the footpath, was another objection’ ? Well, throughout the last few decades coffee drinking at outdoor cafes have been taken on as nowhere else in the world. We need the social aspect of meeting people and talk as much as we need food. Social isolation might have been necessary to avoid Covid-19 but it came at a price. The government is providing hundreds of millions of dollars into mental health care. We are not meant to keep distances and separations from each other. We need closeness, social intercourse and hugs more than ever before. 

Cafes offer us that opportunity to catch up. 

Man with a Coke and 5 KM a day

 

Onion soup (almost)

To try and make the day as fruitful as possible I usually go and shop daily. If not to Aldi’s Supermarket then to a Food-mall. Today’s visit to Aldi delivered the usual reward which often goes together with being alert.  I had filled my bag with some smoked sliced Tuna, two bananas, two boxes of paper tissues and a packet of green snappy beans. Today, I also went to the food hall and treated myself on a take away garlic, soya beef with rice.

But sticking to the Aldi shop and the satisfying experience. As I queued up near the shopping conveyer belt, I noticed a strange event involving a rather forbidden looking male. Most ‘forbidden’ looking people are often males. He was wearing a helmet, a scarf around his neck, sunglasses and a face mask. He was obvious very worried about getting contaminated by other shoppers. One could not see much of his face. He was tall and of normal build and carrying a backpack. If anything he looked almost athletic. So far so good, all is normal and still within the range of acceptance! However his total purchase was a medium bottle of Coke for which he was queuing. To my overt critical mind it looked a bit odd.

Why does a man so cloaked and in obvious deliberate incognito garb go through the trouble just to buy a Coke? He looked fit. Do fit people drink Coke? Anyway, as he reached the end of the queue the cashier asked him to open his backpack. The masked man obliged and there was nothing to worry about. No stolen goods nor a hand grenade. He paid by card! As I finished paying for my goods, I went outside and noticed the incognito male jump on a bicycle. Normal! Still, a bottle of Coke? Fitness. It doesn’t add up.

After that experience I walked to the food court to get a lunch which I often buy from a Chinese take away. His food includes a very generous supply of half raw pan fried vegetables. I chose beef with fried rice with the vegetables. So, really a good deal. I eat half and refrigerate the rest for next day or sometimes have it for dinner. Sadly, as the years go by, I notice the stealthy rise of bigger and large people and alarmingly, including now young overweight people, even children in those food halls. Fat shaming doesn’t do much but neither does ignoring. Many countries more progressive than Australia at least try and tackle the problem by education and taxing sugar, ban TV advertisements promoting unhealthy foods. Those food malls give a good idea of where we are heading when nothing gets done. More and more end up in wheelchairs. Diabetes and amputations. Not a cheerful prospect. Coke has a lot to answer for!

Mussels

Any possible adverse results from my habit of take away Chinese food I alleviate by aiming to walk at least 5 Kms daily. If by about 9 PM I haven’t made the 5 Km I just walk around my generously sized lounge, dining and kitchen areas which gives me 48  meters each round. I keep walking till I have reached a bit over 5 kms recognizing that a step might be somewhat less than a meter.

My Jack Russell, ‘Milo’ looks worried.