Fitness pains.

 

Most of us might be drawn to TV programs heralding the need for fitness. We are so often being told we excel in being the most obese country in the world. Some advice was given a few weeks ago, when shopping, to only shop amongst the outer aisles  and avoid the inner sanctum of supermarkets. Those inner aisles contain the worst of food aiding our spreading waistlines. That’s were the packets of chips, lollies, endless varieties of  jars of sauces hang out together with miles of soft drinks and utensils in which to cook or boil the fattening sugar loaded foods. Generally, the outer supermarket aisles have the nutritious vegetables and dairy sections to linger about in. This is also the area where more interesting people are to be found. You can tell the nutrition focussed shopper there, lists in hand ticking off the yoghurt (Greek). A serious readings of advice on the different butter-milks, the latest seeds from Bolivia and Peru. Many of us have jute cloth bags, and wear spectacles with a serious demeanour pointed towards those with Coke in their shopping trolleys..

During the last TV show it was about doing exercises. The opinion of experts was to try and do 10.000 steps a day. I can’t imagine us reaching such a level of ennui that we would walk and count each step. One need no fear of that ever happening to us. A friend informed us you can buy a strapped on gadget  that does the counting for you. It does a lot more. The gadget counts calories used, blood pressure, weight, steps up ( ascent but not descent) and lots more. They are called ‘Fitbits’. This is a generic name for different brands of physical tracking devices ranging in cost from $20.- to $600.- or even more. Many sports people use them. On a Saturday morning one can often observe bike riders checking their Fitbits while enjoying a skimmed milk latte. Did you know that those fanatic bike riders don’t wear underwear underneath their lycra skin-stretched bike gear? I don’t mind but please don’t stand too close to my Cappuccino with croissant.

We decided, after watching another fitness program, to rush out to buy our own Fitbits. We, ever so naively thought one could wear them just like a watch. However, after strapping them on and pushing a button nothing happened. Mind you, I did note that on the packaging the words ‘android’ and Blue tooth’ were mentioned. How is it that we keep getting fooled about this modern technology. The counting of those exercise steps is far from being simple.  One needs the gadget to be joined to the web through Blue tooth. I tried and tried. We ended phoning up our friends with Fitbits but nothing worked. I was asked for my Apple I.D and that involved entering my Apple password. You must be kidding me! Blue tooth? Android? What country is that?

Needles to say we rushed back to Bing Lee and fortunately we got our $378.- dollars back. Hoorah! I started delving into the different gadgets of measuring steps and lo and behold, our iPhone has that capacity.  What a discovery. Every late model of  Apple iPhone has a pink coloured app with a heart on it which is a health app. that measures the basic movements of your body. So, till 1pm today I have done 3800. steps and climbed stairs 4 times.

I am feeling fitter already.

‘Winter in America,’ Children’s Library and Vegie co-op (Auto-biography)

Balmain Watch-house.

The way things are going in this auto- biography it will run into a literary cinemascope  version of  Days of our Lives with the Hammond organ belting out a circular and never ending tune.  The cheek of thinking that my life is any better or more important or interesting than that of any living being or Jo Blow!  I shall just continue because I enjoy this very much.  And if there is a blow out of too many words, well…just skip a few pages… or start at the end and work towards the middle. Even if it relieves insomnia for just a single night for just a single person, I’ll be a happy man.

Apart from the baby-sitting club, another community enterprise was the vegie co-op which also started to sprout up in the various communities of inner Sydney suburbs. I am not sure anymore if this came about during our stay at Gertrude’s cottage between 1969-1973 or after our stay in Holland and subsequent return in 1976. In any case a group of people decided to fork out $10.- each week towards a kitty to buy fruit and vegetables at the Flemington wholesale fruit and vegie markets at Homebush.  It was a huge market covering a very large area where all the fruit and vegie shops would get their produce at wholesale prices. It also had several cafeteria where the buyers could get sustenance and a coffee. Many fruit and vegie shops were run by Italians and Greeks, so food and coffees were as necessary as the apples, kale and celery which they filled their trucks up with, especially when the buying started at 5am.  You can imagine how early the growers had to get up and prepare their stalls? Farming is tough! It was a hectic few hours and the men, and many women too, would be ravenous by seven am. The market as all markets do, also had great atmosphere and laughter was everywhere.

Of some interest was my market shopping partner Jimmy Stewart. He was  Irish. He loved a good yarn and food. He looked somewhat like a juvenile Oscar Wilde. He had dark hair hanging over his face and a large stomach. After our shopping of many boxes of fruit and vegies, we would visit the cafeteria, enjoy bacon and eggs, coffee and a cigarette. He loved women and they generously reciprocated, yet he was never good marriage material. His income sporadic and swallowed up by international phone calls to entrepreneurial music and record companies. He generally managed to get me to buy cigarettes and pay for the bacon and eggs. But, he was terrific company, always whistling and singing. A cheerful soul. A great friend.

He was a writer of music, popular music and would let nothing stand in the way of doing that. Sadly, it did not bring in a regular income, yet women were attracted to him often in order to find out that a future including a cosy and secure family-life would be hazardous at best and reckless at worst.  That’s how so often and so sadly, love gets lost. The combination of income with a mutual everlasting and reasonable attraction is so desired and yet so rarely achieved. Money so often the banana skin on the doorstep of many relationships. Indeed, even with plenty of money things can get perilous.

While we drove to the markets and back he used to hum a song that really hit the world at that time. It was ‘Winter in America’.  It had a line that included the ‘Frangipani’. “The harbour’s misty in the morning, love, oh how I miss December / The frangipani opens up to kiss the salty air” – Ashdown’s lament to “leave love enough alone” has become one of the great Australian standards.

It was Jimmy Stewart’s creation and he would often sing it while driving to Flemington markets..

Here it is;

At the same time of the weekly boxes of fruit and vegies, another group also brought to fruition a Children’s library. Another community effort. The retired chief Commonwealth librarian named Larry Lake was the main person behind this idea. The National Trust had given the use of the Balmain Lock-up to a group that called themselves “The Balmain Association’. The ‘Lock-up’ or Watch house’ was busy during the heydays of Balmain still working as a Stevedoring and Waterfront suburb. There were lots of maritime associated industries and that is what attracted many to the area when that ceded to exist. During earlier times and at night the local constable would have been busy locking up inebriated sailors or others that liked to frequent so many pubs it was difficult to find normal houses in between. I believe Balmain had over 60 pubs at one stage. The air used to be thick with coarse oaths and rank vomit renting along the blue-stone cobbled noisy streets. It frightened the horses at times.

A group including myself spent many evenings getting this library working. There were fundraisings and book covering, cataloguing and getting shelving to fit into one of the Lock-up cells. It had a heavy steel door and sliding locking mechanism. Those poor drunks! The children that used to visit the cell library afterwards, just loved it.

Those were the days. It did include occasional bra removals, but also baby-sitting, vegie co-ops, music and books for children.

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.

A Game of Chess, this Life.

The first photo is another etching I did while gaining a certificate in printmaking. This included also a term in life-drawing at Tech. I remember a male model who I and other students observed, while feverishly drawing the charcoal over the butcher paper, he had something silvery glistening in the general lower region of his matrimonial device. It turned out after a discussion with all the students during a break, we all agreed he must have had the urge to decorate same with not just one but two rings. Two rings! All to our own. But who would see this jewellery? I suppose he would not be walking around George Street with his jeans on.

The next photo is me and brother Frank being tubbed by my mother. It would have been around 1942 when Rotterdam had been bombed but we still had a roof over our head. Dad would provide light during the evening by riding his bike in kitchen while on a stand. The dynamo (Generator) on the rear wheel would give electricity to the bicycle light which was trained on my mother’s kerosene pump up single cooker. I am the one with my hair sticking up looking a bit bewildered already.

My mum is smartly dressed and looks fully absorbed in bathing her two boys with love and joy. Later on that same galvanised steel tub was where all five of us boys would tub in after we moved to The Hague. One at the time. Frank first and then me and so on. The last one probably came out worst. The water cold and a bit less than pristine with a good chance of him still remaining in a dubious state of cleanliness.

This etching above is on the Ford hook Silverbeet. I don’t remember anymore the urgent creative need for getting into vegetables etchings. Perhaps latent memories of the war or hunger! I was also practising reverse writing which you have to do when printing as one gets the reverse of what you scribed on the copper plate. Can be tricky. Have you ever read the direction on those punnets of vegetables or flowering annuals? They are sometimes very authoritarian with the dedication of someone having sat in a cave for many years and returned to the big city only to find out no one missed him.

Here proof of the trickiness of doing things in reverse. The writing is alright but the chess board shows a black square on the right where a white one should have featured. I once won a chess championship on board between Europe and Sydney. It was on our honeymoon after our marriage in Finland and we were lucky to be put on a first class ticket when the original boat we were booked caught fire. Looking back, one wonders why one got involved in a chess competition during a honeymoon as if there weren’t more and better things to do. Well, that’s true. Perhaps the title of the chess game gives a hint. English classes to Greek migrants was also something that was engaged in. The trip was terrific, we danced and drank Italian Suave.

This last etching is one I just gleaned from FB and had forgotten about it. I think my good friend Lonia must have that one. Perhaps? It seems to have a distinct Greek theme. I’ll let you readers figure it all out.
Thank you for your patience so far.