The importance of the ceremony.

With the ingestion of a third pie yesterday we thought it might be a worthwhile enough event to try and include it in our list of daily rituals. The main one on awakening is always the first coffee and tea of the day, together with scanning the news. Despite fervent wishes to get ‘new’ news, we invariably get disappointed. I pour Helvi’s (percolated) coffee first and then proceed to make my tea. I like to dangle the tea-bag for it long enough to give my cup of boiling water just the right dark colour, before adding milk to both beverages. I gave up coffee some weeks ago after finding out that my  percolating bowels often resulted in a fast run to a  toilet. This often happened after morning’s coffee. So far, it has done the trick and since changing to tea, all seems settled.

We mostly, depending on the quality of the previous night’s slumber, sip our drinks in silence. I broke the silence this morning with suggesting to go for our daily walk before breakfast, and even offered that we might get something to eat in our little town of Bowral instead!  Of course this breach from our usual protocol imbued our sipping ceremony with a strange flavour. I felt that a sudden transmutation in the order of things can often enhance the pleasure.  Of course, in younger years almost everything is a change and its pleasure never ending, and wildly adventurous. It is odd how in advancing years we experience change as an entity to avoid. We get used to our own pyjamas,  the mellowness of own pillows, and can get quite upset to find a pair of socks inside our Headache & Medications cabinet.

We got dressed and walked to Bowral with enough time on our hands to take it easy. Taking it easy, is one of the pleasures of retirement, and our town of Bowral is a haven for ‘taking it easy’ couples. The tapping of canes on pavements is a familiar sound giving great comfort for those without as yet the need for a cane. I know of course that many old people relish being maddingly fit, busy and they show off on TV how at the age of 92 they still go on running on bush tracks saving Koalas, or, how they can still do push-ups and study for PhDs.

With a third meat-pie now making its entry in our lives and consumed just outside at the Gumnut Pie shop it seems reasonable to assume that it has taken a hold in our list of habitual events. The transgression of our habitual daily routine has taken us to an unexpected turn, ripening the pleasures for those like us, ‘taking it easy’. One can never take things for granted and that change ought to be accepted as an unintended gift in spicing up our daily ceremonies.

We have as yet to formalize the eating of our meat-pies. It will take time and habits will ensure that it will grow into a similar yet different path of a ceremony, like our first tea and coffee mornings. This third pie was taken with a sachet of tomato sauce of which its secrets of opening it without squirting, was achieved by some forbearance and patience. It was  a splendid gift of an unexpected morning’s pleasure. Every drop of this fragrant meaty nectar with tom-sauce was consumed with an  aura of a rebirth.At moments like this we are re-born with life revealed, ever renewed by the power of another ceremony.

A Pox on Advertising

A Pox on AdvertisingPosted on January 6, 2011 by gerard oosterman

  

 

Here in our compound of 8 villas/town-houses there is just one post box which has ‘no-junk’ on it. This is rather surprising because each week now we get a bundle in one package of about 12 different advertising folders. They are colourful brochures singing the praise of many different bargains to be had for the canny shopper. They run the gamut from Big W to The Good Guys and include such mouth-watering shopping venues as Fantastic Furniture, Dick Smith, IGA and even good old Woollies.

Did you know that SUPER IGA this week has, wait for it: Whole Economy Rump for $ 5.99 a kilo and it includes 200% guarantee on freshness & quality. Now, I ask you, how could anyone resist the 200% guarantee? But it gets even better. They have Peters Overload ice cream at $3.99, Minties at $1.99 and a 2 litre tomato sauce and 2 litre Barbeque sauce at both for a mere $3.99. Can you imagine 4 litres for $3.99? The mind boggles. I simply can’t imagine rushing out and get 4 litres of sauce to squeeze over food. I am not going to live that long, neither would you want to suffer that fate.

And that’s just the beginning. Cop this. At Fantastic Furniture, just for you, and as advertised, the magnificent Dallas Chaise in ‘living fabric’ reduced from $ 399.- to $299.- included 5  year structural and 10 years foundation guarantee. It’s all too much. I’ll just have to lay down on my own battered Euro Chaise and rest, rejoice in all those bargains.

Seriously though, who in earth studies those brochures? I must admit I have always felt a terrible bout of weariness coming on when it comes to anything with advertising. I just don’t get it. Do people really look at TV ads or newspaper ads? I must confess to having peeked into a Real Estate window when we were looking for a place to live. Mind you, I probably would look that up on the computer now.

When the kids come over they watch The Simpsons and they now know how to get to that channel.  Apart from SBS we never ever watch a commercial channel. SBS has ads but I never really know what they are advertising because my eyes are on automatic when faced with advertising and just glaze over, and I take a nano nap.

I remember going to Moscow many year ago. It was heaven, not a billboard or ad in sight. No shops either. On SBS’s I love watching global village especially when it features continental Europe.  It’s pure bliss seeing street scapes without those advertising hoardings so familiar here. Do Europeans buy less because advertising is so much more modest? It is all rather puzzling. I do think much man made architecture in Australia could be improved by making advertising subject to some sort of control.

Any trip along Sydney’s Parramatta Rd almost results in the need for a rehab, or a solid bout of counselling. Nothing in the world could possibly get any uglier. How can addicts to alcohol or drugs remain clean when visually assaulted everywhere they go? Trying to get repeat tourism to Australia the best thing would be to get some kind of aesthetics committee up and running and try and introduce standards in public use of advertising space like they do in most countries that are more sensitive to the world of vision. After all, why should we have the freedom to visually insult so many locals, let alone tourists, by imposing ugliness in the form of hoardings and screaming advertisements?

Anyway, Coles Beef has No added HORMONES and No added COST to you.

Fantastic, I must rush out, go to IGA for the 4 litres of sauce and 200% fresher Economy Rump then of to Big W to snap up the 5pack of Bonds hipsters.