Bowling and toilet breaks.

The Sunday event of playing bowls with another club went smoothly. Most clubs don’t open before 10 am. This is probably linked to those strict license laws.  We can drink ourselves into a stupor but not before a certain time. We were told to arrive at 9.30am in Goulburn and naturally found the door closed. We walked around and found another door slightly ajar which allowed us to sneak in. It might well have been the door that the cleaners and staff used to prepare for the day.

No-one was at the desk and this will probably be our last and only time we entered a club without having to show proof of identity. Prince Frederick of Denmark; please note! After entering the bowling room upstairs, we noticed many of the Goulburn’s bowling members being present with most of our own club’s members. I was given a light green t-shirt with our club’s name  ‘The Berrima Social Bowling Club.’ emblazoned on it. It had a dark blue collar. The Goulburn club all wore a dark-blue outfit which included pants. All had name tags which was a great relief. I just hope the ladies did not think I was perving when staring at their chests trying to get to their names!

After a while we were all split into different teams. I was supposed to be a ‘lead’ in my team. I was unprepared for that role. I asked what this meant and was informed it meant my side would start the first bowl by tossing a coin.

‘Ok, I said,’ and dug out a coin, flipped it into the air and gravity did the rest. It fell onto the ground. ‘You have to call it,’ an opposing team-member said.  It turned out you have to say ‘heads or tails,.’ before flipping it. How does one know those things? I am a fast learner though, and  successfully flipped it the second time. I said ‘heads.’ It happened to land with the queen’s head showing. I bowled first. A giant leap forwards.

It turned out the two different teams were all playing together with each other and not against each other. Isn’t that a giant step forwards? This is social sport at its best. For me, a dream come true. I propose that when  Germany plays England next in soccer, that each team have a fifty- fifty mix of each others players. This will do away with all forms of violence and unnecessary competition. We play for the joy of the sport.

As I had put our own club’s t-shirt over my long sleeved shirt I was told that a T-shirt is not normally worn on top of a normal shirt. Panic struck. I wasn’t going to strip down to my singlet. The sight would have been so undignifying, some might have fainted. I have long passed the age of once perhaps being seen as the Prince of Passion, polar necked golden chained, God of the pounding surf. ( I never was.) A man over seventy should never be seen in his singlet, not even in the dark.

There were two games before lunch and one after. The lunch was ordered before hand and at 12.30 we all filed into a special dining room. Most of us went for the ‘Roast Pork with Vegetables. I had earlier inquired if this would include ‘Crackling.’ The answer was in the positive. Boundless enthusiasm followed after that bit of news. I am sure it improved my bowling.

After lunch we all filed back and took our positions behind the greens again. Of course with most of us full of the Roast Pork and apple sauce now queuing up in our intestines for digestion, it should not come a surprise that some sneaked in a hurried trip to the toilet. This happened to one of our own players. ‘I have to go to the loo’, John said. Fair enough, everyone understood and when it became his turn to bowl we all patiently waited his return. We looked to the floor and engaged in some chit-chat. However, it took a bit more time and after about ten minutes of waiting we were just about to suggest a rescue operation when, much to our relief, John re-appeared and took his turn bowling. His bowling was superb.

We had a great day.

 

A Country Town ( Goulburn)

Most local people would know Goulburn as the town that holds a high security prison. The notorious mass killer Ivan Milat is serving his sentence there together with other high profile miscreants.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backpacker_murders

Please try and read the above link. It is almost as good as a Wallander Mankell thriller.

In its heyday Goulburn was the hub of Australia’s wool industry. Australia from the early eighteen nineties till the nineteen seventies was ‘riding on the sheep’s back.’ One of its main export income was wool. With cheaper cotton and synthetics entering the market, wool became much less competitive and growing wool now is a minor part of agriculture. A reminder of this wool Empire of Goulburn is a very large concrete sheep near the Sydney-Melbourne highway turnoff to Goulburn. Inside this large sheep one can buy Chinese made wool trinkets, whistles, scarfs, and Australian made socks as well as aboriginal artefacts.

Goulburn as a result of the collapse of wool became a town looking for its former but lost glory. We bought a farm in 1996 not far from this town, about 20 kms away. At that time one could have bought a 4 bedroom freestanding house for about $350,000.- and today the same house is still selling for $350,000.- It’s a beautiful but a stagnant rural town. I am sure it would provide an amazing opportunity for Sydney siders to cash up on their $2 million house and whoop it up in Goulburn. It houses an excellent library and an even better Art Gallery. In winter it can be a bit cold and bracing, but with central heating and a roof full of solar panelling it would be a most pleasant town to live in. It also has a very nice ‘Workers Club and RSL.’ ( Returned Soldiers Club)

A few days ago we went to re-visit our former country town. We usually like to go back to past lives. Reminiscing about places and lives of the past is the prerogative of growing old, especially while it is still possible. One never knows when the time will arrive the mobility scooter or ‘Eventide Care-Home’ beckons!

After arrival, and being hungry we popped into the Workers Club. I ordered curried sausages with peas and mashed potatoes. Helvi ordered roast chicken with vegetables. Both were terrible. I never thought that mash and sausages could be so failing. Helvi’s chicken was some kind of muscled thigh that belonged to a very scrawny old chook looking for a long gone rooster. My curried sausages were chopped up bits of something drowning in what I assumed was a curried flavoured sludge sobbing to be rescued. The peas were absent or fled somewhere else. The mash was lumpy.

In Australia we are the world champions in gambling. All clubs provide subsidised cheap meals paid for by the poker machine addicts. You can see them on the way to the toilets. Elderly or not so elderly people, transfixed by the ghoulish lights of the poker machines. Sometimes plastic shopping bags next to the players on the floor. A sad sight, if ever there was. After a couple of beers drowning the half-eaten lunches, we left for a solid walk around Goulburn.

On the walk back to the car we came across a man sprawled out on the pavement. We had walked past him previously and noticed his dishevelled appearance, but he was seated on one of those updated modern square public seating arrangements surrounded by pretty greenery between the pavement and the road. He must have slumped off his seat. People walked past this man. We stopped and thought of finding out what might be the matter. He looked to be in his mid thirties and appeared motionless. I asked if he was alright but no response. I then decided to phone triple zero for emergency. By that time a few passers-by had stopped too.

As I was giving information to the emergency number, the man moved his hand and showed therefore to be alive. He picked himself up and mumbled a few words. The emergency phone lady decided to cancel the ambulance. The man went back to his previous seat and grabbed his tobacco that had spilled on the pavement. He mumbled something that he was alright and no help was needed. We felt sorry. How does it get to that state? He would have been a healthy young man once. Did he take some tablets or did he have a health problem?

We hope to have a better visit next time. Perhaps we will give clubs a miss seeing that gambling gives us cheap meals. A bit like being hypocritical of an industry that causes so much harm.

Snail-eating in Spain or Phar Lap’s heart viewing in Australia?

Yes, that Rick Stein’s on TV showing his food show on mass snail eating in Spain really got me hungry, so I put on a large pork roast and barbequed it for two hours with lots of pumpkin and spuds. Loads of oregano. It was almost as nice as those snails in Spain. I got a bottle of Penfold’s, St Henri Shiraz for father’s day, a 2006 number which we will keep for our diamond wedding anniversary. Does anyone remember the date we got married?

Only the unadulterated happiness of the Spanish people could get 12 000 together in a mass snail eating event. Something like 12 tons of snails were consumed with lots of garlic, laughter and copious amounts of wine in between. I could not imagine anything like that happening here in Australia. True, since last week they have discovered new bits of Phar Lap’s heart kept for decades at another museum. I believe there are now queues of people lining up to see this special jar with his pickled heart now complete. I doubt though we could muster twelve thousand people together eating Big Ben pies or those delicious Lamingtons.

For those who are ignorant about our proud heritage, Phar Lap was a horse that could outrun all other horses. He was a true champion and regarded as one of our Icons not unlike the Big Banana in Northern New South Wales or the Big Merino cement sheep in Goulburn.

Was it our previous PM John Howard, who insisted newcomers to this country had to know some of our glorious history including the weight of Phar Lap’s heart and able to recite a poem in reverence to his galloping stride? I have a gnawing doubt; Was it to do with cricket scores or something else instead?

Milo

Our own little Icon is Milo. His only demand on us is accepting his total disregard for any order or expecting obedience. He insists on total obstinacy as his right and refuses to do as asked. In fact, he delights in the opposite. We now try and trick him by asking the opposite but I am sure he will soon discover the answer and do a double disobedience in reverse. 😉

So, we are getting ready to travel to Venice and Milo once more will have to accept the care of the Dog Kennel. He gets his alpaca home knitted cushion while we are away. I think he knows we do care. He gets his chicken neck and that’s the main thing.

The ‘Birthday box of useful Presents’.

many years ago

It is here again. I had forgotten but face-book reminded me of a looming birthday. Is there no escape? How do they know all those details. Does the IT world now also check up on my underwear swinging in morn’s breeze? Will I get reminders to shower or cut my nails? I had a twitter message from a far away relative in Finland. Can you believe this? The whole world seems to anticipate my own and utterly single future event. There is still time for me to cark it before this 7th of August has even arrived. Such optimism is wonderful. I stand in awe and am so grateful.

Not only that, but the Goulburn Workers Club posted me, by normal mail, a ‘happy birthday’ including four gifts. I can spend up to $25.- on a meal and get the same value of a second meal gratis. I could sneak out to Goulburn and order two huge meals all by myself or…invite the lovely H to participate and share this feast with…a free middy of beer or…a free glass of house wine, each. It doesn’t stop there. The third gift is a token of $ 5.- to play Keno. I never played Keno but it is never too late. It sounds terrific. The fourth and final gift is a chance to win $ 500.- and simply place the ticket in the drum of ‘happy birthday members’. It just never stops.

Problem of birthdays for those of advancing years is what to want to receive. I would like a nicely wrapped box with a ribbon (blue) of blissful uninterrupted sleep without having to go up to four times a night to the toilet. That would be nice. Another one would be to be able to drink half a bottle of fine red wine without having to suffer up to a fortnight of racking indigestion with an unforgiving brooding sense of an overriding guilt that can only be relieved by copious amounts of a smooth all absolving large bucket of butter milk.

Another fine gift would be a large box of instant recall of names and useless memories and events of all those years gone by. Who wrote this book? What was the name of that politician or this actress? What was the time we sat in the park and a bird snatched our sandwich was that before or after we visited Genoa? Do you remember the name of the captain on the Roma that you danced with?

Law and Order

                                                                                           

LAW AND ORDER.

Has anyone ever been called up for jury duty and ended up being a juror?  During the last thirty years I have been called many, many times but never chosen.  How do they know that I am so suspicious of the whole jury system?  Are those defence or prosecution people gifted in clairvoyance?  The courts that I was mainly called to in order to be chosen as a bright and promising juror were: Balmain, Goulburn NSW and City of Sydney Courts.

I suspect that most Court Houses conform to my experiences in being old, cold, and dusty and riddled by rats and guilt.

Both Balmain and Goulburn Court Houses have those round roofed domes and solid columns and have some sort of pretence to architecture of glorious colonial days.

This is the Balmain Experience.

We step inside through a formal entrance and this is the area where the last of the cigarette butts are often forsaken in sandy bins.

The formal part of the jury selection kicks off by an Orderly or other Court attendant who has a list of names. The names are being called out, this is done by the rocking backwards and forwards on heels to add some form of importance and dignity, I suppose.

The whole lot of us then walks into the court room whereby we sit down on the most uncomfortable seating that seems to have been specifically designed for immediate repentance.

We sit on long narrow wooden benches with seats twenty or so centimetres wide, but the wooden backrests actually lean forward, the angle being around 80 degrees to the seat.  This makes all those that are seated feeling that they have done something terribly wrong, or that they should spend the time there on knees instead of sitting, or are in church at a funeral of a bishop. Mixed messages for potential jurors here?

This is nothing compared with the acoustics. The only sound absorbing material in those dank court rooms could be those silly wigs, kept in Arnott’s biscuit tins, or those blue duffel bags that lawyers are so fond of slinging over their shoulders, perhaps even the shrivelled scrotums of judges, if they turned up. Not a word can be understood by anyone, but perhaps that is part of this curious juror choosing spectacle. The point might well be to impose solemnity on the whole court system… How can anyone not be found guilty under those terrible conditions? My own guilt immediately went into automatic.

A special video is shown to the jurors to be chosen which is mainly brown in colour and content.

We were then told that ‘deliberations’ had to be performed and this would take until after lunch. Now, I expected to at least be given a sandwich and coffee, but no, nothing, not as much as a Nescafe, not even a warm room to retire to. No, just hanging around the entrance with the bins of butts and other outcasts.

After lunch we are asked to enter the Court Room again and this time we are seated on the side in slightly more comfortable arrangements. Now the selection starts.  An assortment of the most devious looking characters is looking us over now, and this is also the moment where I invariably get not chosen. I am a legal reject, time and time again, this is perplexing. Why am I always kicked out? What do they look for in a juror?

In any case, they are right. I don’t like a set up as anachronistic as the way all this is done. It is a hangover from colonial times. Why are those Court Buildings (apart from some City Courts) so dingy and Charles Dickensian? Why, are the acoustics so atrocious and where are modern conveniences with buildings that are suitable for to- day’s use of justice? Is justice being served best when it seems almost deliberate to make one feel so uncomfortable and intimidated by a process so cumbersome, time wasting and lacking in logic. It must also be enormously costly. Why not do away with jurors all together if conditions for jurors are so bad? Is there not a bias formed in jurors suffering those discomforts?

Of course, the whole issue of whether justice is served best under a jury system is also debatable. Has anyone done any statistics on numbers of guilty or not guilty amongst gloomy courts and more people friendly courts with comforts such as canteen availability with refreshments, good sound absorbing materials and amplification systems that are clear so everyone gets to hear what is being said?

Here at the NSW Goulburn Court House (the Mecca for crime and punishment) the court has a friendly reminder and map pointing where the last prisoner was hanged in the garden just in front. Most of the time spent between and during the jury selection process was outside on the veranda in temperatures of about 6c above zero.

The overwhelming feeling one is left with is; that a juror is only slightly better than the accused. Why is that so, and should the jury system dispensed with altogether?

Why not abolish it, if it has also proven to be so often flawed?