Are our lives driven by toilet paper?

It is on again, the rush to hoard toilet paper. Of all the things that we hold dear in Australia, the country of sun and sandy beaches, nothing seems as precious than to own the soft rolls and total freedom to wipe the remnants of our bowels and bladders.  Last night the TV news showed us supermarket shelves stripped bare of toilet paper. Within minutes of the Governments announcements of a Lockdown and the puckered-up hordes of the anally constricted descended upon shops stocking up on toilet paper. Not a shadow of guilt or shame passed over their faces. I know because I took some time off to look at the spectacle. As I was walking around the Supermarkets Woolworth’s carpark I was amazed at he exuberance and shared bonhomie. Laughter and banter were almost like a post war victory celebration.  A shared kind of intimacy rarely observed between Anglo Saxons. No words were used but; we know what you all end up doing with those endless hoards of white sheets, AND WE APPROVE was the message.!

I read that in Italy it is the  olive oil with shoe polish that gets hoarded. In the Scandinavian countries, libraries and books are being hoarded, in The Netherlands, herrings!  But Australia and possibly the US it are the gleaming white toilet rolls that beckons us.

Friedrich Nietzsche was one of those philosophers that held high the notion that wretchedness and despair ought be held high and that every sort of difficulty be welcomed by those that sought fulfillment. What is it that those toilet roll hunters are so keenly finding when gazing upon those shelves at the supermarket? Are they Nietzsche followers?

Friedrich wasn’t always so enlightened by the gloom and doom but he was encouraged when opening the Schopenhauer book that really gave him the impetus to follow the path of wretchedness.  He wrote and I quote “Back at the house I threw myself into the corner of a sofa with my new treasure, and began to let that dynamic, dismal genius work on me. Each line cried out with renunciation, negation, resignation.”   Unquote.

There are people much better qualified to find reasons why in Australia it are the toilet rolls during crisis that people buy while in Italy the olive oil is bought up. Is it the cooking with oil instead of butter and the swimming in the warm Mediterranean? “These little things- nutriment, place, mount Vesuvius, Capri, recreation, all of greater importance than the dryness, the seriousness of life lived in suburban shadows amongst the wilting gladioli with curtains closed, tempers hosed and maligned ambitions, the week-end at Coffs and The big banana?  

I don’t know but am open to your sage advice and opinions.

 

How to become more Australian.

You can tell that the elections for a Government are getting close. Politicians are ramping up a bit of nationalism by proposing that emigrants acquaint themselves with a ‘true Australian culture’. At the same time are hints about that  Australia is slipping away from its unique Australian culture. Even in far-away England an Australian politician, Alan Tudge is suggesting we are at risk of ‘veering’ away from our special uniqueness. It is useful, especially before elections, to try and get extra votes by suggesting foreigners are the cause for us slipping away from our special Australian uniqueness.

Here is part of what he said;

“Australia will consider adding a “values test” for those considering permanent residency in order to protect its “extraordinarily successful” multicultural society, Malcolm Turnbull said.

The prime minister confirmed what his citizenship and multicultural minister Alan Tudge told the Australia/UK Leadership Forum overnight, where he floated the idea of a “values” test to fend off “segregation”.

Tudge told his London audience “our ship is slightly veering towards a European separatist multicultural model and we want to pull it back to be firmly on the Australian integrated path”.

Whenever someone espouses Australian uniqueness one can rest assured that not a single definition or sample of this special Australian culture will come forth. How can it? Are the people in Italy or Norway without freedom of expression? Are the Dutch forbidden to have a choice in how or where they live. Do the French not have laws protecting them from exploitation by banks or crooks? Are Germans denied sauerkraut?  One thing that stands out separating Australia from the rest of the world, is that in our unique culture, we in Australia only, still don’t have a Bill of Rights.

If we are supposed to be well versed in Australian values and even go so far as insisting that those considering residency here to do some kind of Australian culture ‘test’, how come that our head of state is a British subject? With all that Australian uniqueness we still haven’t got our own Head of State. Why?

It were the American forces who saved Australia from Japanese occupation 1945, not that of Britain. We are guaranteed protection by our Anzus treaty foremost, and would be silly to think English troops coming to our rescue in case of wars.

This ploy to try and ramp up a freaky form of Nationalism using anti-foreign rhetoric is so typical of our state of degradation on the political front. We might get our politicians to do a test instead.

We should all despair and show it at the next election.

Too many hyphens and inverted commas. An edit!

 

1956.

The photo is not mine.

An unforgettable memory etched in my mind was the generosity of the Australian government run Camp in the availability of unlimited supplies of food. It was all free and copious in quantity. The first few days we ate in the very large food hall. You picked up the food by queuing at the kitchen counter with a large plate. You ate what was ladled out. It was mainly very large enormous mutton chops, still glistening in fat with peas and a mountain of mashed potatoes. Sometimes it was sausages and pumpkin. You then carried the full plate back to large tables that had knives and forks already spread out. You sat on benches. We would all tuck in with a vengeance.

You can imagine, most migrants were from post or still on-going war ravaged countries. Hungarians, Czechoslovakians and Bulgarians, many with university degrees. There were refugees who had escaped from German extermination camps that had already spent years roaming from camp to camp in Europe. They were true refugees. Many also from Holland and Germany, Italy and Greece, today classified as ‘economic’ refugees. All of whom were hungry and now in the Promised Land. This Scheyville food hall fed a hungry Europe as never seen before. Some straddled the benches with plates clutched between thighs instead of sitting at the table, so as to be closer to the plate or perhaps of fear the food would get stolen. One large Bulgarian man would chew on his mutton chops pulverising the chop- bone with bare teeth. I looked on in amazement. He did it to impress his country fellowmen much to their amusement and laughter. After the solid food was eaten, one could again tank up or take seconds in the form of a jelly. The jelly was aeroplane jelly. A favourite ad on the radio was ‘I love aeroplane jelly’.

I used to grab slices of bread for afters, scooped up large quantities of IXL jam available on every table in giant gallon jars. It had huge chunks of real fruit in it. It was lovely, fancy being able to take as much as you liked? Surely Australia so far was everything that it had promised and more!

The lead (run) up to marriage. (Auto-biography).

 

Boiling the ‘billy’ at Ankeriasjarvi at -20c

 

The words have been lean  lately. The school holidays are the bane of and blame for, lack of words flowing. I am too much of a me, and more of a me person,  to try to put down words under difficult circumstances. Multitasking falls to those who are unselfish and can spread goodness and sweetness around no matter what.. They even do it better. I forego flowing words in order to make pancakes or fry speck for the kids. It could just be an excuse to take a break. Regroup! I am not a multi-tasker. Ask my wife!

Do words not deserve a holiday? I mean you can tell words are suffering when you hear people say ‘awesome’ and even ‘absolutely’. Just now I heard on the news, something needing ‘a paradigm shift in attitude’. The popularity of ‘stuff like that’ is on the wane. Thanks to our PM, T. Abbott though, there has been a resurgence of ‘absolutely’ and making things ‘crystal clear’!  Saying ‘obviously’ twice in each new sentence is now being patented by Tony Abbott our Rhodes scholarly Prime Minister of funny sayings, absolutely!

The school holidays usually involves both good and bad. The good is self-evident. To have domestic life with sound of children. Pillows on the floor. Tripping over shoes that somehow find themselves in front of your step no matter what direction you take to the kitchen or bathroom. Despite of shoes, it was  fine to have them around again for a few days. They are a font of delightful expressions which any writer would use and exploit. They are both still verbally agile and imaginative like most children are. I pray they keep this and not allow it to be knocked out by maturing into stiff and compliant adults. You know the kind who feel that the ability to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ is enough to get you through. May be! But a good ‘fuck you’ and ‘piss off’ to bullying adults might stand them in just as good a stead. What is in a word? A lot!

As the painting contracting got more and more colourful, with  teams working all over Sydney, the post Italy period was put to good use.  I bought an apartment in King’s Cross. I did not actually live in it. I let it out and used the rent to pay the mortgage. It proved to be the most prudent move of my life. I also continued on with painting pictures. I had taken a painting course locally in Parramatta. This was the suburb some years before where I used to meet fortnightly as secretary of the  ‘Parramatta scooter club.’  Readers that held on to my blog would know this club disintegrated when Vespas and Lambrettas did not see eye to eye. There was even someone with a Norton 500 cc single cylinder motor bike allowed to join up.

The painting course was run by Ronald Peters, a man who abhorred what was going on at the NSW art gallery. Modern paintings were being hung and crowds would peer at them incomprehensibly. They did not make any sense to him either. He warned us to avoid modern paintings like the plague. He taught me to start with sky; ‘a dark blue at the top of the canvas and lighten the colour as you go down’ he said. ‘It will create distance.’ Gum trees always featured. ‘Put some dappled highlights on the bark’. We were urged to follow  his own painting at the front of the class. Step by step! It was the period when D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s lover was still banned and Portnoys complaint whispered about on corners by men wearing rain-coats, some years later. Today, publishers are wringing their hands. Readers are secretly and under the blankets, reading words on kindle, freeloading, copying and swapping!

Book shops now are closing down. Readers are becoming sparse and Borders have shut shop. Celebrity and sport books are still being sold and some bookshops are offering three books for the price of two. I see the smiling open mouthed Jamie Oliver still staring out at Super Markets, but for how much longer? After all those years do people still need to know how to cook a T-bone? Milan Kundera, who heard of him? A cricketer was killed by a ball some weeks back and his wife was offered a state funeral!  No such offer for Patrick White though some years ago.

I gave the landscape class a miss even though I was surprised how nice my pictures looked. The dappled effect on eucalypt bark very much liked. Some of those little paintings I took with me in a suitcase on my way to  Helvi’s Finland. For a few months I did an art course with John Olson and Robert Klippel. Both were at the revolutionary edge of breaking away from the traditional art scene in Australia. Their work created heated scenes at art galleries with people trying to take them to court. Clashes of traditional art lovers with the young and anti Vietnam war protesters. A portrait by Dobell was taken to court on the grounds it was a caricature. The artist won.

 

the rented cottage at Ankeriasjarvi.

Our letter writing to and from Finland increased and not just in numbers. Exchanges of photos and sweet whisperings became intensely loving. The tyranny of distance could only be overcome by a boat journey. Helvi still needed to do a few more exams but I proposed anyway, and…she accepted. How glorious! I remember it well. Exultation followed by booking a boat to Genoa in 1965.

The period post Italy but pre- Finland. (Auto-biography)

Dolomites

The walk from Bressanone rail-station uphill to Bernard’s chalet must have been steep and long. Did I ask for a map or directions? I cannot remember. Consider that in those years suitcases on wheels were yet to be discovered nor were back-packs as progressive as they are now! Today I see young women with such towering back-packs getting from airports to taxi almost to the point of other bystanders ready to give an ovation.  Mind you, even back-packs are now on wheels as well.

I must have had a rough idea and perhaps asked a local for the address. This area was pre-dominantly German-speaking and I was fluent in that language. Bressanone, even though now Italian, used to be part of Austria and still today pre-dominantly Austrian in culture and population. The area is South Tirol.

I do remember reaching the chalet and my friend coming out greeting me. It was definitely sunny. The view was breath-taking with Bressanone nestling down in the valley and at the back of the chalet the towering Dolomites climbing forever upwards, glistening with their limestone faces. The chalet was a small and solid white washed adobe house with ornately carved gables,  window and door architraves, of which that area is famous for, and really an extension of the same architecture of  the medieval town in East Tirol of Lienz were I had spent time skiing during the winter and were I had met the girl with the beautiful eyes from Finland. It was at Lienz where I also had a ski fall and broke my glasses, as well as meeting my future wife. ( while dabbing my bleeding proboscis).

It was all such a liberating event. Liberated from the suburban ennui back in Australia with my family and Frank.  A liberation from wanting to work while wearing a suit hoping for recognition, admiration or at least something of achievement. A kind of something that young people are supposed to work towards. A career that would cement a solid future and  distinguish one from failure. All those things are not always so clearly defined but yet one grows up with as an obligation to fulfil to parents. As those early years passed by I did have a skill to earn some money and that stood me in good stead. However, the making of money is pretty boring unless compensated or alleviated  by an all encompassing and absorbing activity for  soul, spirit or psyche.

There are often moments of great significance that are recognised as such at a much later time. The meeting up with Bernard Durrant was one of those chances that on hindsight proved to be of great influence.  At the time in Italy we met for the second time. I had known Bernard in Australia. It was through him I took to chess playing and reading books and visiting State library.  He gave the advice to run your hand over the back of books at a library and pick the dustiest books! ‘They are often the best’, he said, especially in Australia! Reading in the early fifties was somewhat frowned upon. It was much healthier to play rugby or cricket, spear-tackle opponents. Libraries  visits by young men were rare.

I give you here a very short and copied biography of Bernard from a website by one of his friends.

“Already serving in the Army, Bernard was recruited by British Intelligence on the eve of the Second World War and was smuggled into Germany, but was soon discovered by the Nazis due to an inadequate cover story. Offered the choice of switching sides or death, he was posted to Alexandria, Egypt, where his brief was to spy on Allied shipping in the Mediterranean.When he arrived in Egypt, he escaped his German paymasters, and eventually made it back to the British Consul in the country.By this time he was considered tainted goods and was shipped back to Britain.

Once back on English soil he was promptly imprisoned in the Isle of Man under the Defence Regulation Section 18b, which was used by the Government to lock up more than 1,000 suspected traitors during the course of the war”. ( end of quote)

Girl with the’Beautiful eyes’ at Ankeriasjarvi, Suomi.

Bernard become the lifebuoy that saved me from going the normal way of career, block of own land and a house in the suburbs. I came so close to it. He got me to accept and understand that life ought to be inclusive of beauty and art. He went further and told me that life is all about exploration and finding what would give the greatest of joy and satisfaction. It all gelled and came together and I finally felt that my search for the essential would have to come through expressing what I felt strongest about. It might also relieve me from having to worry about career and job. It was so helpful that there were people like Bernard who had also travelled that same path and had found that creativity and expressing it was as much a ‘normal’ part of someone’s life as becoming a cigar smoking bank manager. Apart from all that we would continue to play chess high up the Tirol mountains.  I started to paint while Bernard already was writing poetry, some of which he managed to get published here and there. He had contacts and spoke both German and Italian which for an Englishman was somewhat unique.

Goodbye Suit and Attaché case

Japanese Windflowers

In life we think we make choices that determine our future. Is that true? One could have turned left or to the right. So much is due to the unforseen. The past is never a sign towards the future but only something to mull over in old age and even then it hardly ever surrenders wisdom or insight. That seems to only come about by a presence of mind while doing the dishes or polishing ones shoes or writing a few words.

I do remember feeling euphoric walking to Centraal Station in Amsterdam. I must have taken my suitcase and just bought the train ticket, walked up the flight of stairs to the platform taking me to Italy. It was the absolute right thing to have done. My job at the bank with the daily routine of balancing the books to zero each day had run its course. There is only so much you can do with a zero. It wasn’t easy. I had to make sure there wasn’t a cent in between. This is the essence of good book-keeping. The cost of a postage stamp could throw my day into turmoil and cost me hours of having to work after hours. No one could go home till the books were zero.

Even the director on the swivel chair had to stay back. All the branches had to give the daily figures to head office which would then print the all important statements and post them to the bank’s customers. I often used to offer the bank my own money if there was a discrepancy of just a few cents in order to be able to go home. No, that is not what banking is about. The books had to balance. You can see, dear readers, can’t you, how my career at a bank had to end? To think that at the very best I too could end up a director and swivel around a special chair. Is that what I had to look forward to? Of course to become a director could only come about by appointment. The director at my branch wasn’t too impressed, especially not when I laughed after he fell backwards with a cigar in his hands. It was doomed.

All my sense of importance wearing a finely pressed suit in the tram of Amsterdam had come to not much more than working on the Czechoslovakian Capstan lathe back in Australia, (bar the strange rituals). When my friend Bernard had secured a lovely chalet in the North of Italy I decided to chuck in the job and join him. This decision was made within a split second. The spontaneity of it was breathtaking. I loved it and still tend to act rather rashly which Helvi finds sometimes a bit hard to deal with. Of course, one could question how the bank would feel not even been notified of my choice to leave. I simply vanished.

They must have enquired at my address of the dying uncle. In any case, the book-keeping must have been done by the director till a replacement was found. I never collected my wages or holiday money as I felt it a just penance for not having given notice. The train trip to Bressanone started in rain but ended in glorious sunshine, a good omen. But of that…more to come!

(We will be in Ubud- Bali till the 23 of June. I hope to be able to post but am dependent on doing it on a tablet. I am not sure how that works. We shall see) !

Dutch Bank job, suit wearing and Bressanone.

Bressanone-Brixen

The vexatious uncle now wanted to put all his rancour on my conscience. His loss of two chess games to my friend  lumped together with his unfortunate marital experiences now seemed to have become part of my doing. At the time when I was living with him the vexation was still owned and shared by his ex-wife, even though they had been divorced for many, many years. At least I wasn’t involved and remained free of any blame. However, since my introduction of my English friend and the subsequent chess games, it ( the vexation)  was now shifted in my direction. I warded the blame off and felt that at least with my diligence in mixing and making the mincemeat-bread-eggs and chilli fricandelles, this should have been taken into account when his vexatious behaviour took the better of him. I never promised he would be cured from his cancer and often just agreed that the mixture would do no harm. I mean, the chilli would not harm him, especially not since he seemed to enjoy the spicy taste.

He was a man in his fifties and ought to have been wiser than me. He suffered from cancer but that was well before my arrival and/or the chilli laced patties. It is true, I introduced the chilli as I used it already back in Australia. I had Dutch friends that had been born in Indonesia where the chilli is almost an institute. There is some suggestion in medical circles that chilli is somewhat addictive but that can be only good seeing it contains lots of good vitamins. I mean compared with Coca Cola or sugary drinks I would rather have a chilli addiction! It was the loss of his chess games that tipped it all over with the vexation sheeted home to me for having introduced him to my uncle. Of course, that sort of reasoning is illogical if not unjust as well, but with people there is not always a straight course in justness or logic. One always has to be on the qui vive for unpredictability, especially in oneself. He might have, deep down in the recesses of his inner-self, realised that the chilli wasn’t helping him but chose to cling to this wrongly held belief in the magic curing quality of it anyway. Perhaps today I would have had more understanding of his plight. After all, he was in the last few weeks of his life!

As previously explored in some detail I wanted to have the prestige of working somewhere wearing a suit. It is an odd ambition to have but better to have achieved and overcome an oddness than to forever long for it. Nothing gained if not tried. One could question why the wearing of a suit was so important but I had not really explored the working in an office. My jobs since the age of 15 and a few months were mainly around machinery inside factories, where in the fifties the moods were rather grim and grimy, ( and that, apart from the very fashionable but dubious ‘dating’ habits between the leering men during the fifties and sixties, proving somehow they were hetero after all)’.  After the factories, there was a short stint in spectacle making, grinding glass lenses fastened on convex steel chucks by hot pitch with a rotating concave hood on top of the lens; again very dirty work. This time it wasn’t dating but the smearing of ultramarine- blue dye around the testes of hapless apprentices that was popular. God only knows what went on in England at the time. I am pretty sure this all was an import of initiation ceremonies/rites from the old mother country on the convict transport ships.

The very first office job I applied for I got. It was a small branch of The Rotterdam Bank in the east of Amsterdam. It had three people working including me. I was ‘afdeeling boekhouding’. or department book-keeping. A title that seemed loaded with prestige. I still had my suit from Sydney and had bought a small Hermes portable typewriter on which I furiously learned to type. It took me many seconds just to find an ‘a’ or a ‘f” but on arrival at the bank was shown this enormous bulldozer of an electric typewriter. Even so, I lasted the important first few days and soon understood that debit and credit were terms that one used and spoke about in banks. There weren’t any hints of dating or dyeing of testes.

The director/manager had his own special chair that swivelled while cashier and bookkeeper had chairs with fixed seats.  The manager smoked cigars and read a financial news- paper. We had cigarettes and no paper.  My job also included making the tea and leading customers to their downstairs safes where they would count diamonds or share certificates. The manager had the curious habit of smoking his cigar while tilting back his swivel chair and exhaling the smoke wishfully looking up towards the ceiling. It was one of those peculiar habits that most of us have. A kind of personal expression of something, like rubbing hands together, cupping our chin, doing a little quick step during a fleeting moment of a spontaneous and joyful thought.

One morning while manager was exhaling, the chair escaped underneath him and he fell back while still holding his cigar in one hand and the financial paper in the other. The cashier and department bookkeeping (me) couldn’t stop laughing but the manager could not. Now, that showed he wasn’t ripe for a managerial post. He was unsuitable and was given the sack soon after. I kept up catching the tram to work all dressed in my Reuben Scarf suit and holding my all important attaché case that included documents and all detailed architectural drawing  for an opera house I had designed for Italy’s Milan. Except it held my sandwiches and an apple instead. It also came about that I received a letter that I would be required to enlist for possible National Service and if found healthy enough do a stint of two years in the Dutch Army. It took me just two hours to pack my suitcase and bid farewell to my uncle. I did not pick up any due wages or holiday entitlements from the bank. I took the train to Bressanone- Italy and joined my chess playing friend Bernard in the chalet. The sun shone from then on.

I was cured from my suit wearing.

Escape from Bank and National Service to Italy’s Bolzano.

Helvi in Amsterdam

The trip I took back to Holland was supposed to be permanent. While earning money was good in Australia, the jobs were not. My parents had the house built with the help of the Dutch Building society and a mortgage on ‘easy terms’. Apart from a mortgage, we also managed to get an electric frypan and a large wooden TV on splayed legs, all on easy terms. Life had settled into a routine and if the criteria of a successful migrant family was ownership of a house and white goods, we had achieved that in a remarkable short period, even if on easy terms. As the rest of the siblings grew older they too joined the workforce. Each Thursday evening was the keeping of Mum’s financial books. Our wages were produced and ledgers were ticked off. The family was prospering and it showed in our diets. Eating meat was now common and the sauce bottle wasn’t quite that much rinsed out anymore. A general relaxing of frugality was now creeping into our lives.

While the standard of living was going up the standard of my private life remained static and lukewarm.   I had saved enough and booked my trip back. I moved in with my terminal cancer suffering uncle in Amsterdam.  He was an ex-chess master and as I had picked up the game in Australia we shared many a game. He won all of them. He knew the moves and even had names for them. There was a ‘Budapest in 1933’ move or the ‘Vienna 1867 opening’. He kept on about his previous fame as a chess player while also eating huge portions of my mince meat and chilli mixture, which he thought was a magic cure for his cancer. He vested so much hope on this mince and hot chilli, it was pitiful. He blamed his ex wife for his misfortune and when that subject came up I suggested yet another game of chess, even though you would have thought he would at least give me a game in exchange for the mince-meat voodoo cure.  He never did and would thrash me merciless. I did mix the mince 50/50 with dry bread and an egg to try and bulk it out. He used to wolf it down while rubbing his shoulder in which the cancer was growing, hoping the benefit of the minced meat would shrink the cancer. The heat of the chilli is what he believed would cure him.

I had learnt some chess from a good English friend in Australia. He was a very good chess player but would always give me a handicap of a couple of pieces in order to have at least a fairly equal match. As my game improved the handicap would be reduced. After I arrived in Holland I received a letter he was back in England and was planning to rent a chalet somewhere in the Italian Dolomites to write words down.  He had put an advertisement in the Sud Deutsche Zeitung. He received a response from a German Baroness, a ‘Frau Johnson’  offering him a chalet high in the mountains at Bressanone. He planned to visit me in Holland on his way to take up this offer of the chalet.

Of course, a few weeks before while skiing in Lienz’s dolomites I had already met my future wife. Yet, it would be a few of years before our marriage. I had broken my glasses while skiing on a down-hill frosted over molten snow sheet of ice. There was no grip that my skis could hold and I just slid out of control deciding to just drop down to prevent slamming in a spruce tree. I had a bad nose bleed and broken my glasses. Fortunately I had a pair of optical sun glasses. It was while I was repairing my nose that a young woman asked me if I was alright. I said I was fine and noticed she had taken her skis off and was walking down to the place where I was staying. It was an old farm-house which in winter was let out to skiers and called Gribelehof. My father’s sister had a permanent kind of summer house at the same address.

http://www.gribelehof.com/

It is still there and the same family, the Notdurfter’s are still running it. Amazing after all those years! The woman had beautiful eyes. I don’t know where I got the courage from but I said ” you have beautiful eyes.” Her answer floored me; “Yes, I know.” and calmly looked back at me as if trying to see my reaction. My response was surprise and looking nonplussed. However, there was already a feeling of liking each other. She was encouraging and even she said she was aware of her lovely eyes, there was no sense of exploiting the situation. She was really trying something out. We saw each other a few more times before we exchanged addresses and said goodbye.

But back with my uncle and my visiting English friend from Australia, a game of chess was proposed. It was a rather tense game with uncle being opposed this time to a very good player. It turned bad after an hour or so and my friend won. The uncle looked red and upset but wanted a return game. This game he lost too. My friend left to catch the train to Italy. My uncle was really upset and put the board back again with all the pieces. He remembered exactly the move that he should not have done and played it over, this time making the right move and winning. This gave me some relief. He was not easy to live with afterwards. A few weeks after I too moved to Italy and had a letter from my mother’s sister Agnes. My uncle had passed away. The mince meat-chilli mixture was of no avail.

He had lost the last game of chess as well.

 

 

 

 

Old fools and The Anzacs.

This photo taken during an Anzac parade in the 1990′ Sydney

Just when we thought it safe to go outside the front door, our colds came back. It seems the lull in sneezing and coughing was just the eye of the storm. The worst was yet to come. We are now in full flight of a solid cold but with an appetite for food not diminished it can’t possibly be that bad. It just feels like that. We had booked a flu shot for last Thursday but had to cancel it. In all surgeries signs appear not to visit the doctor while having a cold. Hardly an encouragement for seeking help.

In any case I also noticed a sign blue-tacked below the secretary’s window, ‘the 2015 flu vaccination will not be available till after 23 April’. That date is yet to come. So, why was it possible to get this shot last Thursday? A friend of us told the same story and was told by doctor he could also get his flu shot now but it would be last year’s serum! What the hell. Are we oldies being taken for a ride or what? Who needs a flu shot for last year’s flu? The world is a dangerous place with lurking deceptions as common as specials of Super market’s butter reduced from $ 1.80 to a mouthwatering $ 1.95.

The stubbornness of our colds could also be due to the relentless campaign for the 100 years remembrance of the fallen soldiers at Turkey’s Gallipoli. All TV channels now seem to only feature Doccu-entertainfomation footage of war and mayhem at Gallipoli. The spirit of the Australian Anzacs, the legends and  stories of heroism and bravery, sacrifice and duty for Mother England so the world can live in freedom. On on and on it goes.

And yet, what has it taught us? Our foreign minster Julie Bishop, scouring  war ravaged Middle Eastern countries trying to get agreements, including of all place by Iran, to take back by  force from Australia hundreds of Iranians that sought our refuge, a safe haven, freedom from oppression and bombings!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-18/julie-bishop-arrives-in-iran-for-talks/6402776

“Iran has reportedly been reluctant to agree to the repatriation of failed Iranian asylum seekers.

Earlier this week, Iranian ambassador Abdolhossein Vahaji indicated his country was unlikely to agree to a deal on the issue.

“We cannot put any pressure and impose any forces on them in order to send them back to Iran,” he said.

“This is against the law and regulation and we cannot [do it] according to human rights [laws].”

Even Iran is telling Australia that it would be a breach of human rights. So where does this leave us? Australia is clearly flouting its obligations, but it gets worse. People in detention on Australian soil while getting the refugee status dealt with, in most cases taking years, will be send to Nauru if women fall pregnant. Babies of refugees will not be allowed to be born on Australian soil to avoid a claim for residency status. Can you believe it? While Italy and other countries are sending boats and helicopters to try and save hundreds from drowning, Australia sends warships and tow the refugees back to  where they fled from.

We will remember the fallen of the thousands of Anzacs in private and spend time in ‘Lest us forget’ in silence and contemplation, without all this Government’s phoney hoopla and shabby mean-spirited ploys to a pretence of care.

The Anzacs would understand.

 

The ‘Greening’ of Australia

My grandparents house in Holland.

If greening means anything al  it should at least include the colour green. Gardens that are filled with concrete and pebblecrete are often seen as lacking in some growth of  an organic nature. The inner city suburbs that now exclude anyone without a spare couple of millions, were the first to be bought up by migrants from Italy ,Greece and later on from the  former war torn Yugoslavian countries. While many liked their houses to have some garden, many did not.  Some felt it was a sign of prosperity and of having ‘arrived’ not having to grow vegetables on every square inch of land anymore like back home. Concrete was easy and cheap and it would keep the car parked very nice and clean as well.  They did not migrate to Australia having to continue growing tomatoes, potatoes and zucchini like back home just to stave off hunger and bendy legs. They were now well beyond poverty that they had left behind. A clean start with a concrete yard was the aim of many.

With time passing and migration from Europe slowing down the inner city suburbs with the concreted-over yards became fashionable as the original migrants got old, and as is the norm, ended up below some green grass despite their fear of it. Fading plastic flowers now biding time and keeping watch over the many Luigi’s , Nestors, Marias and so many black cladded eternally mourning Donnas.  .It has come to pass even to the best of them, irrespective of a green or grey priority. We will all end up bleached boned and push up cheerful  nodding daisies. A new and far more moneyed class are buying up the inner city houses, pushing up prices to unbelievable levels. Two million dollars for a 2 bedr. worker’s cottage is now the norm. Those poor Sicilians leaving Messina for Leichhardt or Balmain could not have foreseen that the  $ 600.- back in 1950s would turn into a couple of million some sixty years later.

A different greening is now beholden of so many. No more apparent than at last Saturday’s voting for a state government. The same party did not get booted out as was hoped as they should have, but the Green party with future more in mind than all the others combined gave some hope for this voter. As a member I had volunteered to hand out how to vote for the Green party. After arrival at 8am sharp a Green member was unfolding a little table on which to spread out the literature of what they stand for; anti coal seam gas extraction (fracking), anti coal mining and anti selling the ‘poles and wires’ leases  for 49 years. And for me their main stand on humane handling of refugees.  ‘Fracking’ seems to give the game away just by sheer use of that unknown verb. It is not even in the dictionary. That says a lot already! I mean, how can a worker get home and tell his loving wife; I have done some good fracking today dear, while taking his boots off.

I had a very social time and all the volunteers seemed a happy lot, no matter what party or creed they stood for. We soon crossed over and started talking and…get this…a Liberal party member volunteered to get coffees from the local café just around the corner from where the voting took place. There was not a hint of animosity or rancour. We were all joking and laughing, bonhomie galore. It makes one think that on a level of just ‘normal’ people  getting together there are no problems that could not be solved over a friendly latte, but once they form into different and separate groups and parties, the rot seems to set in.

It might be too simplistic a notion but would banning political parties ( except the Greens)make things better or at least ban Prime Ministers like Abbott or Howard?