Unwelcome News.

Why is it that we receive news that ought not to be read?

“Teenage girl wakes from a coma having given birth.

Newly wed man throws wife from 21st floor on the cold coast.

Footballer charged with rape smiles to victim in Court.

Anita Board died in Perth junior dragster crash two days after becoming old enough to compete.”

Headlines like that ought to avert our eyes. They are such invasions of private lives and grief.  Those death and traumas are too sad and too private to be so recklessly  consumed by everyone. Is our capacity for the sensational so whetted that we are drawn to the misery and plights of cases that don’t concern us at all? Or do we assuage ourselves into a false sense of caring?

We were told that our political parties are now being hacked by very sophisticated experts. The simulated hackers are shown in the dark punching into a keyboard, infiltrating and corrupting data and face-book accounts in Australia.

Not a sliver of real news is actually forthcoming. A large stomached PM Morrison is shown peering suitable outraged into the camera, whipping us into fearing the worst, yet no factual damage or stolen items are reported despite the earnest looking Newsreader. Even so, this story maintains our fear, and to be used as a tool to win elections.

The real news is of course the dreadful plight of the elderly in our nursing homes. The Royal Commission already gives frightening numbers. Over 6000 reported cased of abuse in elderly homes reported in just one year. Malnutrition is suffered by a reported 50% of the elderly. Understaffing, underfunding and badly training are given as reasons.

https://www.agedcareguide.com.au/talking-aged-care/elder-abuse

Another Royal Commission has been agreed for the Disabled people. Again, case after case of reported abuse and mismanagement. Harrowing stories are being told of impossible situations that some parents suffer through the lack of care for their disabled son and daughter. Thousands of parents are suffering situations that could so easily be solved by simple care and compassion. A company with a Kangaroo Island beach shack get $ 420.000.000,-!  We have allowed for over 1000 people, and their children, who did no wrong, to be incarcerated for over 5 years in order to stop boats.

How is it possible to have pride and celebrate living in ‘the best country’ knowing how our aged and disability care can be so lacking and has so for decades?

How come our news turns to the irrelevant and hyperbole instead of the above mentioned serious societal misdemeanours that we, as proud Australian allow to continue?

Why are we not rioting or do some yellow shirting?

The commission for a mural and teaching adults.(Auto- biography).

With roughly more than seven decades between the beginning and now, one has to allow for some discrepancies on this heap of memories. The order and dates might not be exact but the events are true. One might also have to allow that the events are somewhat embellished to make them more readable  or perhaps even enjoyable. A French polished table doesn’t make it less or more of a table if presented in raw oak.  The specimen of my life is not any different from the multitudes of other lives. It is also not any more unique in its minutia than those other lives of this world.  I write what I feel was important. But the nature of writing an autobiography  implies a certain amount of egoism. I do it to continue with my life as I have in the past. Keep myself off the street. I enjoy the confessional  part of it, but also realize it is a race against time with the inevitability of those final last words that befalls all of us. The pole vaulting days are over but writing about it makes solid the past. A kind of coagulation of a mishmash of memories rusted onto the years gone by. The words as yet not said do remain ringing.

The school that our daughter went to was about a ten minutes bicycle ride along a sweet little country lane into the small town. She used to come home for lunch and go off again for afternoon lessons. At no stage did we even contemplate that there were dangers of traffic or bad people prowling about. Children getting to school on their own was the norm. At least in The Netherlands. It was idyllic. Even in the country, no distance seemed beyond a ride on a bicycle. No helmets were worn either. All was safe and there were bicycle path separating riders from cars. We had sheep, chickens and a pregnant Shetland pony. What could one ask for more?

One winter morning there was a furious tapping on our bedroom window. Our bedroom was at the front of the farm overlooking the meadow in which the sheep and pony grazed. It was our neighbour. He was a serious farmer unlike us. “You have a foal, Gerard.”   “Get up and hang the afterbirth” he said. Of course it wasn’t in those words. The dialect in the area we lived in was as unlike Dutch as Scottish is from English, or Welsh from Irish. Is there some unwritten law that men respond to tapping on bedroom windows and not the female? In any case, it had snowed outside and our bed was warm. Even so, I did admire and liked our neighbour’s care for our pony. He had already told us it looked she might un-pack at any moment. I got out of bed and went outside just wearing slippers and a morning coat. Indeed there was this lovely little foal barely able to stand up and take its first suckle.

Sorry for the B/W picture only. It was a triptych painted in acrylic..

I don’t know why an afterbirth had to be hung up from a tree away from ground hugging predators such a  canny fox or, indeed a wolf or bear. It was a tradition steeped in folklore and we apparently had chosen our farm in a village that were the harbingers and last owners of some very ancient habits which must not be disregarded.  We, after all were living here as strangers and really almost imposters more than traditional owners and had to tread carefully with respect to keeping their traditions. I stumbled about found the afterbirth and flung it over the large elm next to the farm house. Both mother and baby Shetland were doing fine. Our neighbours were happy too.