Going Danish in Queensland.

When I tried to make an attempt to increase my social life by joining an indoor carpet bowling club, I never expected friendship to grow so quickly. From a mere first timer, the progress of bowling, rapidly went to competition bowling. It still is social and not at all serious. We drive around now to other venues whereby we meet new groups just as keen on the game. Most are elderly and so am I. We might well all have reached the age where social intercourse is better.

Before the idea grew of getting about between more people, I considered taking up ballroom dancing. You know how it is. You see those elderly couples keenly trying to keep their marbles about them, (and so am I.) The music’s urging gliding along the parquetry floor taking slowly tango’s rapid littles steps, turning their heads this way or that way, taking care their interlocking legs and noses don’t collide inappropriately. It was the fear of collisions that I feared most.

In a way, the game of bowling does or can appear to resemble dancing as well. The experts seem to almost force the bowl to go to its intended journey by slow body movements alone.  A keen observer might well notice a form of ballet in action. Of course, with  ageing the ballet becomes less agile. Even so, by squinting eyes, some of us could easily have been performing Swanlake if not the dance of the Valkyries.

The friendship was further enhanced today by a lunch invitation held at the Scottish Arms Hotel. We arrived spot on at 12. I ordered my favourite salt and pepper calamari. Helvi had the flat-head fish. The price included a schooner of beer or a glass of wine. We both had a schooner of beer. The group consisted of about twenty five all seated around a long table. I think the women outnumbered the males.  Half the males were bald, but most of the women generously bouffant.

I am still battling to remember names. I suspect that I have reached a stage whereby names seem to get stuck into a colander without going through. A Kevin becomes an Eric and Jill became Joan. I am going to suggest people should wear name tags. It is funny but at clubs one needs proof of identity but not in pubs. Both serve drinks and food,  people play games, especially poker-machines. Yet, the clubs insist on proof of identity. It is something to do with liquor- license laws. I suspect there is a lot of money involved in all that.

It all came to a head when the Danish Crown-Prince Frederik tried to enter a club in Brisbane and was stopped because he could not produce proof of identity even though the  accompanying security police vouched for his identity.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/queensland-government/queensland-id-scanning-laws-turn-away-danish-crown-prince-frederik/news-story/a400fe9870b014896b6e37b6bcd5bee8

You can just imagine how this piece of news went viral around the world. It is true though. There are some things that seem impossible to change and that includes outdated and archaic license laws.

The prince was let through, but…there were ramification. It appeared the club had made an erroneous exception for the Prince. The police ended up apologizing for not insisting that Prince showed proof of identity. He just did not have it on him.

Australia at times can appear very quaint. The High Court at some distant date will have to decide if Australia is being governed by rogue foreigners. Row after row of parliamentarians are queuing up having discovered they have another nationality, which according to the present constitution is strictly outlawed.

What with bowling and all this, how could life not be fascinating? I can’t wait to get up early and welcome the day.

The tandem Mobility Scooter and the Cordless Vacuum cleaner

Mum in Holland with a Hoover electric vacuum cleaner. (not cordless)

Sorry  talking about the weather. But, after last week’s balmy summer days it has turned winter again. I had packed away the flannel summer pyjamas only to suffer a cold sleep last night. ( three toilet visits) It was 3C this morning at 6 o’clock. I should have closed the windows.

I spoke yesterday with a man riding his mobility scooter near the Bradman Cricket oval. It looked brand new. I asked him, and he confirmed it was only three months old. He obviously took pride in it. He also told that the range of the battery (lithium) allowed him three trips up and down to the shopping- centre arcade. ‘Nine kilometres in total,’ he added proudly. ‘It gives me mobility and independence which I would not have otherwise.’ ‘My wife has one too.’

This made me think if there are any of those scooters in tandem for two people to use. He did not think there were. I am sure there would be a market for them. You could have one person sitting behind the other or, even cosier, next to each other. That would of course mean the tandem mobility scooter not able to go through normal doorways. I am sure that there are couples who both need mobility, and independence, when walking or driving becomes impossible. Hence my idea of tandem Mobility Scooters. The same could be said about those Zimmer frames and rollators. Why can’t they make them for dual use? It would be a rather touching sight to see elderly happy couples going about their ways sharing them in an intimate fashion.

I must also share with you the joy of having bought a cordless vacuum cleaner. With our rough coated Jack Russell, there are hairs everywhere. He sheds his own weight in hair almost daily. It is embarrassing. If visitors are expected, I am forced to vacuum. I am generally not shy of domesticity and enjoy very much shopping and cooking. Vacuuming is not on my list of pastimes that enhances or gives satisfaction. The noise of it and the tethered cord of the machine irritates. We have a Danish made one and it does a good job, but it still gets hooked at corners and bangs around the book shelves. I show the JRT ‘Milo’ the bulging dust bag but he turns away. He needs a shrink, really. What arrogance. Helvi doesn’t vacuum. She reckons the vacuum cleaner is too complicated. All that ‘on and off’ button pushing must be so challenging.

My brother said: ‘why don’t you get a cordless one?’ It hit me like a bolt from the sky. ‘Are there any that really work,’ I asked enthusiastically. ‘Of course, we have had one for years,’ he said. We got very excited and next day went to Godfrey’s Emporium for vacuum retailers. They are a Mecca for vacuum cleaners and always give good deals. I have often looked in their windows and noticed a huge change in vacuum cleaners. The more expensive ones seem to mimic a kind of rocket with all sorts of fuel chambers on the side. It would not surprise me if they double as an anti domestic violence weapon or mobility escape device.

The salesman showed us a much cheaper demonstration model, slightly used but with two year warranty. It looked nice, was bag-free and came with attachments for cleaning corners and around window ledges. It has a belt driven brush. The Danish corded vacuum cleaner has a brush at its foot but it doesn’t rotate. When the salesman noticed a bit of wavering he stated; ‘it comes with lithium battery.’ This was the card that the salesman played at the very end. He knows his customers.

The word ‘lithium’ has transformed the battery world. Everyone talks about their gadgets having ‘lithium.’ Our Vacuum cordless is the Hoover and its name is ‘Freedom.’ ‘How’s your lithium going today?’ Often overheard at street corners.

Four Weddings and a Funeral with Tony Abbott

Tony Abbott

When our PM reinstated the Dame/Knighthood institution a couple of years ago he sealed his fate. The first of those award was given to our Governor General, Quentin Bryce who gracefully accepted it but also confessed to being a staunch republican. It looked all a bit funny then. Now, a year later and few weeks ago it was Prince Philip who received it. I don’t know if he is a republican but most would hardly see him as an Australian who did a lot for Australia. Not so, according to Tony Abbott. He is all nationalities, Danish,Greek, Australian, even English and has many, many others. He’s done a lot for Australia, including asking if aboriginals still throw spears at each other. Mr Abbott made this strange decision on his own without anyone ,not even his cabinet, knowing about it. The nation was stunned.

The voters did not see the good Prince as an Aussie and now, Abbott’s party, is going to sack him with the largest turn around in political history. About two out of three now wants Labor returned. The Knighthood cannot now be undone or taken away, but many are convinced Tony Abbott’s days are numbered.

In any case; interesting times ahead. Enjoy this video.

Australia’s Timeless Art and Blue Mosque of Istanbul

And where are our monuments of tolerance of faith, acceptance of all? I suppose the few Mosques scattered around our cities would have to bear some witness to this. But the fanatical opposition to be seen to care about boat people’s arrivals, a miniscule problem amidst the murder of thousands in where they come from, somehow negates and demolishes our image of tolerance and acceptance.

The Christmas Islands, Manus and now the towing back of boats, demolishes any attempt of our bridging between the home brew of local Presbeterion Christianity and our understanding of mainly tolerant Islam.

Our temples still are the Workers Clubs with crossed hammer and plumbers wrench in Revesby, the RSL’s with their gaming machines and foaming Coopers brew, the cricket and footie stadiums still remain our pastiches of blue Mosques. Not Istanbul but in Parramatta and St Kilda. The Alhambra might well be seen in Canberra’s lake Griffin with a bike track for politicians in shorts and wearing pointy helmets. Who knows?

Our lasting temple wedded down as proof of eternity and timeless beauty is seen in the sails of our Opera House, but it was Danish design, somehow a smudge on our own creative genuineness.
No, the real temples of spiritual continuity giving us an anchor for Australia to cling to are these.

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=ancient+aboriginal+cave+painting&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=KMLLUuz1BcvhlAXUr4DYBA&ved=0CCkQsAQ&biw=1038&bih=503

They are as timeless as Chartres, St Peters, or Istanbul’s blue mosque. We still have to credit and acknowledge the real Australian indigenous more solidly. It is underway, a work in progress.

Borgen :11 out of 10

Borgen; 11 out of 10.

You can’t go past a good series of Danish TV. Not long ago we had ‘The Bridge’ and ‘The Killing’, which I believe was a Swedish-Danish Co-production. It was riveting TV watching and we were counting the days when it would be on again. The pepper-crackers would be out and the Stilton cheese with the Shiraz brought to room temperature together with my ear-phones. Those earphones were superfluous. The series were translated in English sub-titles but I wanted to hear the Danish language. Dutch and Danish are brother languages, (or sisters for the pc readers of this blog).

What makes these series so extraordinary is the ordinariness of it all. The prime minister lives in a modest house with the dishes piling up at an overflowing kitchen bench top, husband walking around in his singlet and their children wanting to eat Coco-pops for breakfast. She goes to work on a pushbike without wearing a helmet, and seems to have no security concerns. Husband of the PM and mother of their two children seem to have the best of a most normal of functional marriage. The odd thing is, in most of the Northern European governments, the Borgen treatment of PMs (and their royal families), it is not that far removed from reality.

The TV show apparently was difficult to obtain in the US with claims by competing commercial TV stations of piracy. I believe in California people can now see the series legally. It seems that the differences of political systems and the holders of power between the US and Denmark were seen as almost un-transferable in a TV series and, that at least in the US ‘normality of politics’ is hardly ever residing in a world of being ‘normal’. No president would go to the White-House on a bicycle and would probably have to go through numerous security cycles to just buy his wife a bunch of flowers.

The Danish TV drama shows how the PM can remain herself despite having risen to the highest office. She remains cool and normal and the series is not blown up in grandiosity like so many American dramas such as West-Wing, Homeland, and House of Cards. There are no lines of limousines or black-clad security lurking on roof tops with machine guns at the ready or hovering gun-ships overhead. No one is seen talking into their sleeves or wear Polaroid sunglasses.

The Danish way on thorny issues and legislations are resolved or passed with the parties sitting around the table sipping coffee and making sensible compromises within minutes. The Danes have a serious addiction to caffeine. What I would not give for our Australian politicians to behave like that!

We had just about given up on TV watching when Borgen rose up like Phoenix from ashes, none too late. The urgings of funeral insurances advertisements and the manic laughter of so many comedy trailers got us so depressed our intake of Stilton with Shiraz almost doubled. True, the Ancestry.com.au kept us going but soon waned when most of people restlessly searching for their ancestors ended up teary and overwrought when it was found out, their great, great, great, great grandfather had succumbed to whoring and a dose of the clap with blindness to dear Aunty Betty at birth in 1789 in Yorkshire to have been a result of all that.

We soon came to switching off the telly and just sat amongst the crackers and cheese, talked or did the after dinner washing up instead.  Not anymore now though. Another five days and Borgen will be on again.

There is hope for all of us now.

Go, buy some good cheese and watch “Borgen.”

Illusions in Blue. (Golden Oldie)

We had just settled to our first Zeffirellis coffee and a shared Danish, when we noticed a somewhat stroppy couple arguing about something or other. You know those couples that have had decades of ‘quality time’ time together and gone through thick and thin, hell for leather and with far too  few infidelities to reminisce and look back  on. In short, the sort of couple that was somewhat ragged for wear but still on a reasonable footing and with some good years ahead still.

“You would be so stingy”, I haven’t got a stitch to wear, just rags  around my clapped out bones,” she stated with some vehemence and loud enough for others to hear. Was he being shamed into something, we wondered? He was old enough to have learnt that ” I haven’t got a stitch to wear” really translates and certainly  heralds very clearly, “I am going shopping” and “no one can stop me.”  No man worth his salt would suggest going to Bunning’s to buy chip board or more brackets for some shelving. There is a lot in ‘I haven’t got a stitch to wear,’ far more that Bunnings could ever possibly offer.

We finished our coffee and went around town for a stroll and who would we come across but the quarrelling couple in front of a shop called ‘Blue Illusions.’ Her chin was firmly set, jutting forward, and he had a look of total compliance. The scene was one of those moments of couples facing the situation of give and take. He gave up on the quarrel and smiled as she took steps inside this Blue Illusion.

(art work by g.oosterman)

China Town

‘Most impressive’ is what I thought of last Monday’s ABC’s 4 Corners program on how China is transforming itself from a rural backwater into one of the world’s most formidable economies. It is estimated that it will be the world’s number one soon.  How do they do it?

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2012/03/22/3461200.htm

Is it education or has China always been a country of forward looking people? I mean, those hidden terracotta warriors and their horses were not there just by accident. It gave us a pretty good indication of an amazingly creative culture even at 200BC. Fancy, having the modesty to bury them. In Australia all we have managed so far is to have kept Phar Lap’s heart inside a bottle of alcohol. If it wasn’t for the Danish Vikings, our Opera House would never have been built either.

It’s no mean feat to build one city of 200.000 within seven years, let alone dozens of them. I have trouble getting my car’s pink slip done within the eight week time limit, or much worse, forgetting to do my zipper up after I have used the local men’s on the stroll to Aldi’s with a shopping list firmly clutched in my hands. “Don’t forget the toilet paper”, still ringing in my ears.

Slothfulness is not in the Chinese psyche. Meetings were held whereby the farmers were told by the village elder to change their thinking. Instead of hand ploughing the land and growing pigs they must develop a mindset of ‘business’ for the future and educate the children.

The children were seen root learning very diligently. Grandparents were shown to pick the youngsters up from school. Dad had foregone the hand-ploughing altogether and was working in Shanghai earning in one week what the wife would earn in one year ploughing and fattening pigs.

It was amazing to see, that despite the poverty, many still brought a mouthwatering arrangement of foods on the table, especially heralding in the Chinese New Year. When I see footage of the overfed but undernourished poor in Australia, slurping from Coke bottles and eating packets of chips, I get feelings of cultural doom and despair.

I could also not believe the leanness of the villagers. Was it a result of hunger and hard work or was it also their diet which seemed very much based on eating many greens. Everyone seemed well dressed. I mean, very clean and there was no rubbish lying about. I always wondered on how so many hundreds of millions lived, how did they survive?  How come they seem to be forever smiling and laughing?

The hacking away at the clay with a hand held hoe and the lure of earning big money didn’t prevent one husband from wanting to return to his farm. The wife refused, became stroppy and told her husband to keep earning money in the big city. The kids have to go to school, she added. There was more than a hint of marital whiplash about in that couple.

The one thing that seemed to shine through was their connection to each other and family and an indomitable will to make the best and succeed. Money making was the way to the future but so was their love of kinship and family.

Now back to those Terracotta soldiers. The facts are amazing. Current estimates are that in the three pits containing the Terracotta Army there were over eight thousand soldiers, one hundred and thirty chariots with five hundred and twenty horses and one hundred and fifty cavalry horses, the majority still buried in the pits. Then there are musicians, comedians and other non-military figures. All are life-size.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_Army

We are always dazzled by the art of the ancient Egyptians and the influence of the Greek civilization on our western world… but the Pyramids and Parthenon seem to be somewhat insignificant compared with the history of the Chinese. Perhaps both are almost unfathomable in how it was possible to achieve such enormous heights during that time.

I wonder what will be dug up from our times, a large intact veneered Mac Mansion with Caesar-stone bench tops and tangled heaps of zinc alume, Chocó boxes, Apple tablets, and many leaf blowers with pebble-crete lawn edgers…