Going Solar And Male Prowess.

The third one up is my place.

Hello Gerard Oosterman,Your Electricity Distributor, Endeavour has approved your installation.We can now send your solar install request to your installer.An installer will be in touch soon to work out a time and date that suits you.

Speak soon,

Origin Solar

The above I just copied and pasted from a letter I received 5 seconds ago. There you go!

For many years, Helvi and I used to ponder about installing solar panels. It first cropped up on our farm well over 20 years ago when solar panels first started to make their appearance. We had lots of roofs but somehow the costs were not as they are now and we were advised to wait for them to come down. Of course, now with Government rebates and the cost of panels a fraction of what they were it doesn’t make sense not to do it.  The quality of the panels have also improved. Even so, one has to be careful, we were told there are a lot of shonky operators out there trying to sell you a donkey for a horse.

I remember getting very annoyed with endless phone calls trying to lure you into getting solar panels. I ended up with a perfect solution by telling them we had no roof. You could hear their astonishment being told we lived in a house with no roofs! Another ploy I used was reading them a children’s story in Dutch. They soon hung up and it amused Helvi and I for a while. Such memories I tend to stick to. Laughter and a smile is good medicine and lately I haven’t been happier than right now. I made friends and I meet her, and others almost daily. In seems odd that during this Covid-19 pandemic, people seem to be keen in meeting each other and perhaps also make the time available to talk and give smiles.

Distances are still required and most seem to adhere to that. I haven’t as much as shaken hands with her, or others, let alone try and get intimate. Couples must be busting to get to each other, but… distance please…, eat a carrot instead. At my age, my masculinity is waning ( if you relate masculinity with sexual prowess)  and I have yet to consider asking the doctor for any help in the form of Viagra or other stimulants.

Years ago, that wasn’t an issue with me, but now with  getting older, some still seem to want to stick to what once was. I now avoid coffee, tea and other stimulants after 8pm as my sleep does need careful planning, and I do appreciate that more than a possible feeble rump about, under the doona.

In any case, lets stick to the solar panels for generating electricity. I was told that it takes about three to four years to regain the initial costs of the installation. That is a pretty good return and it would be foolish not to do it. I also bit the sour apple and bought the place next to mine as well. I am not sure but will probably rent it. A bit of a capitalist, and that, at the fag-end of my life!  Where did I go wrong, daddy? Of course with two places now, I also double my joy in gardening efforts in both places, and that balances the capitalist and the botanist (kasvitieteilijä in Finnish) nicely.

I am so excited.

A horse of clay

A Horse of clay

It was maintenance day yesterday at the Campbelltown Radiation clinic. We had a day off. The equipment needed to be checked, oiled, greased or whatever. Most of the equipment has ‘Philips’ on the name tags. It makes me so proud. The radiation has to be focussed with pin point accuracy. I see patients with head shields going in, or neck screens.

Today was normal and all equipment in good order. After arriving I checked the bookshelves. Bingo! My book had been taken again. I had a replacement ready. I quickly flicked it on the shelf. At one stage the man with prostate cancer got up and perused the books. He did not take mine, even though I had put it in the most prominent position.  He was hovering his hand over my book. I nearly told him to take it, but desisted.  Can’t wait to see if that has been taken tomorrow. Its title is ‘Oosterman Treats.’ I am so excited.

On the drive home at about 3PM we visited the sushi take away at the big shopping centre at Mittagong. We both always go for the ‘Binto special’. They are most generous with the little soya and wasabi sachets. I love squirting the wasabi on the lid of the box that the rice, salmon and sea-weed wrapped food comes in. We watch the people go by. There is a weight problem in Mittagong and they seem to congregate at shopping malls. If only they could resist KFC and the 2 litre Coke and go for the Sushi and plain water.

Sometimes we get the urge to go and look at second hand stuff at the Salvos in Bowral. It is a giant Salvos. A good thing is they don’t insist on converting me. It would be a waste of time.  I like religions who leave people in peace. I had to tell the two ‘sisters’ who live at our complex that I am not going to the Mormon cottage meetings but that I do like the choc-chip cookies that they keep making. One of the girls is from US Texas, the other from NZ. They are so nice and even gave us a little impromptu guitar and singing concert on the pavement in front of their place.

At the Salvos, Helvi wanted to try and buy a narrow set of shelves to put our potatoes and other vegies in underneath the stairs. It has a third toilet. The builder must have had a thing about toilets. I can cope with two, but three? Perhaps he suffered bowel problems. We both noticed a clay horse outside the Salvo shop. It spoke to us. It was only $ 10.-. I took the horse under my arms and went inside to pay for it. What a find. It is beautiful even without its tail and ears.

Helvi went on to look for the shelving and shoes. She likes nothing better than to find a $ 500.- pair of Italian shoes for just $20.-. I went straight for a comfortable chair to sink in with the horse on my lap. I immediately fell asleep. I was tapped on my shoulder. A middle aged woman looked me in the face. ‘Would you like a glass of water?’ I am always pleased when somebody talks to me. There is not enough contact between people. I told her I wasn’t thirsty and explained my wife was looking at shoes. She smiled. I think she understood. Women sometimes have common grounds and shoes might be one of them.

Afterwards I wondered why she thought I might like a drink of water. Was she testing me? Did she think I had passed away with that horse in my lap? It does happen. The horse was a fantastic find. Isn’t it beautiful? Helvi last night made a tail from rope which she plucked out. I will try and get some clay to make ears and bake it into the oven after which they will be glued onto its head.  It is now standing proudly near our front door outside. Milo was a bit suspicious.

I think this horse is beautiful.

 

 

Teaching and the obstinate Shetland pony ( Auto-biography).

 

We all know that Shetland ponies are escape artists. When you see them looking down, they are actually thinking. “How the hell can I get out of this joint?”. Our Shetland was a Houdini. I would get a phone call; “Hey Gerard your horse is in town.” I would jump on my bike with the lead in hand. I would cycle back, Shetland on rope, give her a stern talking to and put her back in with the sheep and chickens. I would again fix the wire fence but also knew she would soon figure a way out again. When the foal was born she stopped escaping.

There are so many memories fondly embedded in that period that I am at risk of never finishing what I set out to do. The aim is to meander from the beginning of my family’s migration in 1956 till my present state of blissful dotage. Still, words at times seem to have a will of their own, like a Shetland, and lead to unexpected and totally arbitrary directions. My apologies.

The job of teaching came about though a friend named Jan Muller who was doing the salt glazed pottery and lived in the museum village of Orvelte, and who was teaching at a collage for adults. After a short interview I started teaching at the same college. That was the best time of our stay in Holland. The first day of teaching was somewhat nerve-wrecking. Who was I to teach anything? I wasn’t taught anything. Failed even the Phyllis Bates ‘academy of dance’ of Fox trot and the Rumba. And that was with the dance steps painted on the floor!

Of course I had a good grounding from Desiderius Orban, the Hungarian master teacher at The Rocks in Sydney. He lived till 101 years and at the time we were in Holland I was still in contact with him. Fear is what prevents many from employing what we are all born with. The ability to express and give form to some creativity, no matter how humble or grandiose. The first lesson, if I remember correctly, was to try and get all the adults to put charcoal or pencil to paper. Now, if you had a group of toddlers, they would instantly without exception start to doodle furiously and with great joy! Not so with many adults. It is sad. They lost this spontaneity and joy. Many would as a first option say; ‘I can’t draw.’ They say that before any attempt was made to put a single dot on the paper. How do you know?  You don’t know if you don’t try!  ‘Go on, put the charcoal on the paper just draw a line or just a single dot’!

My first day was to try and make the students approach the paper without fear. Somehow the enthusiasm of the toddler had to be regained. That is what my aim of teacher was. I could not teach just skill or things like shading or making portrait eyes follow you around the room, photo-like images of apples or strawberries so real that the paper or canvas was almost bitten into by the ambitious but starving student while wearing a beret and dirty pants.

 

Zwarte Piet

Zwarte Piet.

I suppose everybody at some stage in their lives would have experienced a Zwarte Piet. I certainly did. The Zwarte Piet in Holland is what the bogey-man or the Halloween figure is elsewhere. It is a mythical all powerful figure that has an aura of badness as well as some benevolence about ‘it’. I say it, because it has lately been turned in having the possibility of being a female as well. See, how far reaching the female has got? Nothing is now impossible for the fair sex to achieve.

All of those have some kind of pagan history dating back hundreds of years and might even relate to the festivals of the dead or harvests. In earlier times they must have had good parties celebrating the dearly departed as well as having a good harvest. As the pages and centuries marched on relentlessly we must have become a lot more gloomy and pessimistic. There would not be too many celebrating a nice good death by stomping around a bon fire and giving good send-offs. More likely ‘ uncle Harry was a skinflint, good riddance’, as he slowly in his well bolted down casket ( just in case of a bad smell) slides into the warm and welcoming crematorium’s oven.

The idea of the Zwarte Piet in Holland is to make small children behave just a few weeks before the 5^th of December when his boss SinterKlaas arrives from Spain on his horse and gallops over rooftops from house to house to drop jute bags of presents down the chimney for those that have passed the test of good behavior. I always passed the test, hence was always supplied with lots of grey hand knitted socks and sometimes a ball that would bounce.

The whole idea of those kind of figures has probably been invented as a pedagogical tool for large families to have some kind of hold over small children. A kind of psychological cane: if you don’t do as you are told, ‘no socks or ball.’

The evenings of the 5^th of Dec were for me the most exciting events of my life and not much has exceeded those nail biting evenings ever since. Let me explain!

Zwarte Piet was the helper of Sinterklaas; a bishop from Spain, who, legend has it, would sometimes eat naughty children as well as give presents to good children. Do you get where I am going now? Of course, I wasn’t a fool even though I had some sympathy for those so very hungry, they would eat anything even naughty children! The war was still warm with ruins still smoldering.

Boy, did I do what my mother asked me for. Wash up the spoons while standing on a box, tidy my room and not forget to wipe my bum. The evening of the 5^th was most spine tingling. Of course, December is already gloomy and Europe at its darkest. Storms were usually howling and we prayed Sinterklaas would be able to manoevre his horse over windswept rooftops. Soon, the dreaded knock on our door announced Zwarte Piet had arrived. A black gloved hand would slowly appear around the front door. He would bang louder and louder and we kids would hide under mum’s skirt. A somewhat daunting experience, but we were scared witless! Even though my behavior had been faultless the preceding weeks, you just never knew! Would I end up being eaten?

Zwarte Piet would then throw handfuls of ‘pepernoten’ (a kind of hard dog-kibble like clove and cinnamon laced type of biscuits around the room. This was the moment I had been good for all those long weeks. On hand and knees, I crawled, totally possessed, around the room fighting off my competing brothers tooth and nail for the most handfuls.

When all this subsided and we were weary from being good and battled out we would finally take a peek around the door. Lo and behold a large jute type of coal bag with the presents was left behind. Oddly enough, my dad would then suddenly appear. It was a couple of years later when this dream was shattered when told that Zwarte Piet was really my dad.

So it always goes, dreams are beholden by the child till stolen by adults.