Benazir Bhutto - and the death of hundreds

The temperature at 4.00pm in Melbourne was 39.7 degrees. In Pakistan the temperature may have been about the same. For us it was a day to hit those wonderfully air-conditioned malls, or to stay inside with air con or fans. In Pakistan it was time to riot.

I chose to read about Benasir Bhutto in the weekend papers.

The media has cover almost everything about her life and death but I have yet to see any mention that the world has lost a remarkable woman in a country where women have next to no chance to be remarkable.

I believe she was one of the great women of our time. And I wonder if she has been a role model for young Pakistan women?

Did they look up to her and see a possible path for themselves even it was only to change the smallest thing in their lives? Is her sort of courage catching?

I also wonder if it's possible that she had no influence on the women of Pakistan. That they saw her, as a sort of god-like creature, that had no relevance to them or their lives.

Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for her murder. They also appear to have been behind the first attempt on her life when she arrived back from exile.

On both occasions al-Qaeda have killed, injured and maimed hundreds of other people. They have shattered the lives of their fellow country men and their fellow Moslems.

As I type this I understand that rioting is going on throughout the country, killing more people and further damaging lives and livelihoods. I also believe that a great many of the people killed will be men.

In Pakistan society the husbands and fathers are the breadwinners. They look after the families. What happens to the wives and children who are left? Who will feed them? Is this a chance for al-Qaeda to step in to make more converts?

How will these women view Benazir Bhutto? Will they take on her courage or will they blame her for their misfortunes?

I would like to think that we in the West would get some news of these people for they are the people most like us.

The question I keep asking is; what justification can there be for anyone or any cause to create so much havoc and misery to so many people?

St Kilda Beach Post Christmas

The shags were out in full force at St Kilda beach this morning.

Most of them were fishing but these two were staring at the clean-up team and the early walkers and joggers.

The sand had been raked and carefully manicured but the beauty was marred somewhat by the piles of rubbish that were sitting around waiting to be collected. Collection is a major job. It is mind boggling to see the size of the piles. Some of it comes in on the tide but a lot of it has obviously been left by visitors to the beach.

This morning was a great time to be there. The air was still crisp but there was that magical tang that promises a hot day to follow.

Christmas Traditions

We had Christmas Dinner along side two enormous tomatoes plants. Had I realized how big they were and how they formed the background for dinner I might have decorated them with silver balls and coloured lights. As it was they were decorated with little round green tomatoes and the insignificant yellow flowers tomatoes produce.

It got me thinking about Christmas traditions. We hear about a ‘Traditional Christmas’ it has become as much of a catch phrase as ‘Working Families”. Both meaningless.

I come from a very small family. In such a family if the members aren’t available tradition falls by the wayside. There is also the fact that in a small family one person’s preference or vote carries a lot of weight. For example I am the only person who likes the traditional English Christmas pudding. There is no point in me sitting in solitary splendor at the Christmas table being watched as I eat it. I’m better to wait until after Christmas and indulge myself when the prices drop.

I have read about Christmases where people converge from near and far. They rush home laughing and smiling in expectation of mince pies, turkey, pork, cranberry sauce, apple sauce, sausage stuffing, Christmas pudding, brandy sauce, truffles etc etc. All this served up with goodwill and joyous reunions.

I remember a Christmas, when my son was young and not long before my father died, when we had Christmas lunch at my home. We sang some carols, mainly because my son had learned some at his church school. My father had a good light tenor and knew the words. My son sang along with him, very pleased to have brought something from school home and to find his Grandfather was up with it all. This could have become a tradition – a few carols with a glass of bubbly. It didn’t, because without my father there was no one to lead them.

Traditions can start with the simplest things. Last year it was cold and we ate inside and one guest volunteered to shell all the prawns. She very kindly and lovingly volunteered again this year. Now, that’s a tradition that I believe should become an unchangeable part of our Christmas !

I am grateful for all the wonderful Christmases I have had in Australia. I have learned a lot over the years and I believe Christmas is what you make of it with the resources available to you on the day.

We should let the spirit of love and contentment seep into us and leave us grateful and relaxed with whatever the day brings. With all this talk of traditions and the building-up of expectations that are often unrealistic the day can fall flat and leave a residue of disappointment and depression.

My recent Christmases have been full of love and happiness but next year – next year is unknown. I will be grateful for whatever comes my way. And I will remember Christmas 2007 as one of the good ones.

Victoria Market - Christmas Eve

My family has developed a new Christmas ritual since we have lived in Australia. On Christmas Eve we turn up at the Victoria Market with a long list in our hand.

It’s an exciting time. Today we left home at 6.30am. The roads were quiet yet when we got to the market there was a queue to get into the car park and the traffic was at a stand-still. We whipped around the side of this queue and found a park nearby where we have parked every other year.

We hurried through merchandise area and saw one or two lone people beginning to open up. We noticed that we could buy a new barbecue brush. Cleaning the barbecue at our place is always a problem. I’d love to know how other people deal with this.

It’s exciting to enter the Food Hall and hear the stall holders shouting their wares. It’s always a joyous moment when we know that we have become part of a huge crowd all gathering goods to prepare for the same celebration.

Buying steaks and sausages is the easy part it’s fish that everyone wants.

The area was jammed with people and their shopping carts. We don’t take a shopping cart as it could only add to our struggle as we try desperately to check out the prawns and oysters. We saw a guy struggling with a large cart and an eskay on the top level. Today wasn’t hot enough for it to be useful.

I often wonder if the fish stall at the beginning of the Food Court is the best. We have never been able to see it. The buyers are about 10 deep and trying to wriggle through and see the merchandise is impossible. I am only there on Christmas Eve but I must go some other time to check-out this stall. My belief is the crowd gathers because it’s the first one they come to.

The fish purchased, we moved to the Delicatessen area where the crowd is thinner but increases where the bread is. We have bought some disasters here in the past and I think it is an expensive place to shop. This year we bought a Danish Blue cheese to add to the ones we already have.

The whole place abounds in good cheer. People smile, laugh, chat, remark on the size of the crowd and wish strangers Merry Christmas. They allow themselves to be served in the order they arrive rather than push ahead. The spirit of Christmas is alive and well here. But this is early; people are surging in as we leave. The atmosphere could get less tolerant and festive later in the day. We vow to be even earlier next year so we can get a really good look before we buy.

We were too early for the Spanish donuts. We ate them last year. We bought a wire brush for the barbecue and were home for N to go to work and me to get myself to the gym where my favourite instructor ( see my blog dated October 3rd) took the pump class.

He began by saying, “Gee it’s a long time since I did one of these but I know how it goes”, and grinned cheerfully at us as he cranked up the music.

I noticed the time table doesn’t have him down for another one so he’s not keen to come back to it.

The Best Dog Blog

I have set up my new blog DOGS OF MELBOURNE and posted my first post. Check it out. http://dogsofmelbourne.blogspot.com/

This is a blog for all animal lovers and especially dog lovers. It’s what I call a chance to get a ‘DOG FIX’

I want to recognize the dogs of Melbourne and the way they weave in with the city life.

When I arrived here I felt this was a city of dogs. Everywhere I went the dogs were part of the life. They took their owners to the gym, to the markets, out to coffee and meals. They walked in companionship with their owners. Sometimes they took the city air from the top of a shopping cart and sometime accompanied disabled people in their chairs displaying a bond and loyalty that brought me close to tears.

Owners stood in packs in parks chatting , bonding and watching their canine friends romped and play. A colleague at my first job here told me how her dog-exercising-group had arranged a pre-Christmas dinner together. Sadly, the dogs that brought them together would stay at home.

On another occasion one of the dogs had a birthday and brought treats for the park group of canines to scoff down in celebration of the event.

I had lived with two dogs( see the picture) the last one, Goldie, (centre) had died just before my move to Melbourne. The part the dogs play in everydat life here in Melbourne was new to me. I lapped it up and reported it to a friend in my home town who was grieving for a much loved Labrador. She asked me to take photos of the dogs I saw. I panned to but I got a job and Life took over. I believe now is the time. I am still in need of what I call a ‘dog-fix’ as my current circumstance doesn’t allow for a dog. My blog is photos and some writing..............

The photos are not portraits. The intent is to capture the dogs as they go about their lives.

Please tell me what you need for a fix and anything else you would like to suggest. This blog is to share my love for the dogs and the people in Melbourne.
http://dogsofmelbourne.blogspot.com/

I will continue with this blog which is a sort of magazine of my life – I enjoy doing it.

ONCE

ONCE
I saw this film in NZ. I had seen the shorts here but a quick look at the paper suggests that it has yet to be shown in Melbourne. I may be wrong and it may have come and gone.

Wellington has three movie theatres under the Lighthouse banner –They are small, intimate and have couches rather than chairs. You can take in food and drink and the idea is to relax and enjoy. There is one out of Wellington at the Pauatahanui Inlet. It is hard to know how it could be a going concern in such an out of the way place and I look forward to seeing if it is still there on my next visit. It is to be hoped the locals turn out for all the showings.

It is next to Rushes Restaurant and also has a café attached. So food and a movie work well. There’s a nice atmosphere in the theatre complex.

Two old friends and I lunched at Rushes then popped in next door to see ONCE. We took the back row and sank into a comfy pink couch. This still means that we were closer to screen than I like to be - it's a very small space.

The story is simple. It opens with a busker singing his heart out on the streets of Dublin. Glen Hansard, the busker is the lead singer of an Irish group called Frames.

Glen as the busker sings other people’s songs during the day for money and his own in the evening for his pleasure. Marketa Irglova, plays a Czech immigrant who is drawn to Glen’s original material.

It is a fascinating movie of two people drawn to each other and who endeavour to make music – a demo disc.

There were some lovely parts and some quirks. It is heart warming watching them put together the beautiful song “Falling slowly”. The words for this are on the marketing flier at the cinema. There is comedy where she is following him with a vacuum cleaner flowing behind her behind as if she was taking a dog for a walk. Just a few of the moments that keep coming back.

The film is quirky. For one thing the two main characters don’t have names. It was only afterwards, when we were discussing it that I realized this. They are referred to as the guy and the girl.

You could say it was a little movie, filmed with a hand held camera and I gather on the smallest of budgets. It is even more impressive because of this. I like the way it ends. They both face the reality of their lives and move on in a very practical and probably mundane way. Then that’s what a lot of life is about.

I didn’t know of Glen Hansard before this and I wonder if the music itself would mean more if you were familiar with his style. I wasn’t drawn to it enough to get the CD.

Try to see it even if you need to wait for the DVD.

New Zealand and home

Melbourne has embraced me again. This evening I sat outside in the warm balmy air with a lone cricket chirping away.

It had been almost a year since I was last in NZ and I thought my first impression on arriving could be interesting – given the time lag. However Wellington was the same – completely familiar and I fitted back like a foot into a worn and out of shape slipper.

The only remarkable thing about this trip was the weather. It was fine and windless.

The lack of wind made people uncomfortable. One of my mother’s careers announced, “Something is going to happen. It is all too still! It’s very weird and you can tell it’s not natural. Something will happen. I can just feel it.” Nothing happened while I was there except everyone smiled and was more friendly than usual. The weather was warm and hazy for days and I agree ‘weird for Wellington”.

I have posted photos of the Raumati Beach where I walked in the morning and then again in the late afternoon. The first photo is of the early morning. The horse appeared lame and the handler spoke soothingly as they wandered along. The photo with the dog and the one with two oyster catchers fosssicking about for food is late evening. The haze over the sun took colour from the sea and the evening was as silvery as the morning.

The one change I did notice was the number and the variety of birds. The locals put this down to the Karori Sanctuary (http://www.sanctuary.org.nz/). Even if the sanctuary is miles from where they live they still believe it has a positive influence on the birds around their homes. In Wellington itself a sighting of a tui, a native bird, is now common. Once seeing a tui was remarked upon. The birds are especially loved by NZers. Check out the photos on these sites. (http://www.treknature.com/gallery/Oceania/New_Zealand/photo143709.htm) (http://www.birdingnz.co.nz/directory.php?op=17)

Now the birds are in everyone’s gardens.

The ‘sweet sound of bird song’ is very much part of everyday life in Wellington. This is a change from my back yard here in Melbourne, where the soft cooing of the pigeons and the raucous sound of the crows and the rosellas indicate that birds are around. The rosellas are prettier than anything you will find in Wellington.

It’s always good to be home.

Raumati NZ

I've been at Raumati Beach, New Zealand, with my mother for a week now. A time of sparkling weather, very slow progress as my mother moves around, old friends and numerous jobs.

I have hired a Daihatsu Sirion in a beautiful gold colour. The little car purrs around the streets and it is just the car for my mother to struggle into. Fairly high with a very wide opening door on the passenger side. I recommend it.

Internet access isn't easy here - I haven't found any Internet Cafes. I discovered that the local library has a couple of computers available and this one at Computer Solutions in Margaret Road, Raumati Beach.
I opened up to find hundreds of e-mails. Christmas is the time for advertising!!

There is nothing like a few hours with old friends to feel I have never been away. Sadly two of them had money in Bridge Corp Finance that has collasped. They are with 18,000 other people who are changing their dreams and their lives to cope with the lose of the Money. They are the little investors. The question they are asking is how the lives of the Directors are going to change. At the moment there is no answer to that.

I have learned that a number of NZ finance companies have gone to the wall over the last year leaving investors with nothing.

This doesn't make me proud to be an NZer and it also takes away any trust we may have in having our money looked after for us - where should any of us put our money??

Thank's Anonymous for your comments on the corks and Kingston Estate wines. I'll take your advice and try something from the range again. I now have a reliable cork screw.

I'm returning to NZ next week.

A Mighty Heart

Last week I saw the movie A Mighty Heart. It's the sort of movie that it's hard to know whether to take the trouble to see it at the local down the road, or to wait until it comes out on DVD. This is because we know the story. Danny Pearl is abducted by terrorists in Karachi, Pakistan and he is killed. What is there to hold our attention? Some how the movie does grab us and the tension builds and we are caught up and held to the end.

I assumed the Mighty Heart was Danny but we learn very little about him from the movie. He is, in a sense, a bit player who is the catalyst for the action. Marianne Pearl, his wife, played by stunningly by Angelina Jolie showed her love, strength and a mighty heart. She never gave up hope and kept it alive in others. It's a movie worth seeing - perhaps on DVD.

I'm off the Wellington at dawn tomorrow. As I said a couple of posts back I will try to add to my blog when I'm there. Impressions are often best jotted down immediately.

Screw top wine bottles

On my way home from work last Saturday I bought a bottle of wine to have with my next meal. There is no word, I know of, for a meal that combines a very late lunch and an early dinner. That is what I had – a very late lunch or an early dinner or a combination of the two.

As I began to assemble the food I craved a glass of red. I grabbed the bottle by the neck and twisted. Nothing happened! I studied the top. A cork! It’s a long time since I saw one of those. I felt a surge of pleasure. I’ve missed that unmistakable pop of a cork being withdrawn from a wine bottle.

I searched the top kitchen drawer for my old and trusty cork screw. No luck. I went through the second drawer. It wasn’t there either. The third drawer down is full of odds and ends and it gave up an ancient bottle opener I hadn’t used or seen in years. It is a fearsome object with handles and arms and screws. I went through the drawers again. Old and trusty was missing. My desire to drink a glass of red increased in proportion to the problem of removing the cork. I struggled with the fearsome object I had found and while I struggled I remember why it had been chucked in the bottom drawer.

The cork did eventually come out but in pieces and the pop was very subdued. I got to thinking about the new screw top bottles and how long it will be until none of us are able to pull a cork. I’m off to buy a new cork screw just incase I come across another cork but it wouldn’t surprise me if I had difficulty finding one. The new feature of wine drinking is grab and twist. So easy.

The wine was pretty ordinary when I finally got to it. Was that to do with the cork? It was a Kingston Estate Merlot bottled in 2006 and on special at out local bottle store. You may like it but it tasted sour to me and not worth the struggle.

Cat -S

My cat S and I have been having a tranquil and mutually enjoyable relationship over the last few months. I give her two tablets a day, she swallows them, I open a can of cat food and she eats it.

Back in May (see my blog dated May 26th 2007. and blogs in June) she almost died then rallied and began to eat again. She slept and ate her way through the remaining days of winter and into spring.

Summer is now upon us and she is sliding backwards and looks to have given up eating once again.

This weekend she has turned down the special ‘heart-smart mince’ I go out of my way to buy for her because she once considered it a treat.

The stock of tins I have in the cupboard no longer contains any thing that she wants to eat. Even a long time favourite, Jellimeat, has been turned down. I put it on the plate and went outside to lounge in the summer warmth. She followed me out, sat down on the step, narrowed her eyes, fixed the slits on me and gave a demanding “Wow”.

Jellimeat is no longer something to be swallowed. Eventually I got up and checked the cupboard. Flaked trout, another long time favourite was available. I put some of that on her plate. She nibble a little and then went back to bed.

When I rang my mother on Sunday I mentioned this and she reminded me that her mother, a farmer’s wife who always had a house cat, said that her cats always lost condition during the heat of the summer. I hope my Grandmother’s words are true for S too because it has been very hot here over the last week or so.

Catching up with my Blog

I’ve neglected my blog for the last couple of weeks. This is because I have been in a state of anxiety about my job. I could have posted all my conflicting thoughts that swirled around and around in my head. Occasionally they settled down but the slightest thing set them whirling again and they whirled at great speed. They were neither particularly interesting nor very lucid thoughts. But they did serve their purpose by getting me to re-evaluate my job. I leave the job on Friday. When I made this decision I felt a huge weight lift off me - a sense of lightness filled me. I will unemployed from Friday and I plan to stay that way until the New Year.

I have booked to spend two weeks in New Zealand with my mother. It will be almost a year since I was in New Zealand and six years since I moved away. I will try to up-date my blog from there.

I have noticed that while I posted less frequently I had fewer hits to my blog. I hope all you people who have been flicking in for a quick read and felt cheated or let down by finding nothing new will excuse me and come back in your droves.

Michael Clayton

I have just seen the movie Michael Clayton. A great thriller. Slowish but it is still the edge of the seat stuff. How could it be otherwise with George Clooney and some superb support acting?
George plays an in-house “fixer” in a big New York law firm. He is said to be great at his job but his own life has fallen apart and there is no one to fix that. This gives his character a vulnerable dimension.

I hate people giving me the plot of a thriller so suffice is to say it revolves around a legal battle with a huge agrochemical company that has endangered the health of a rural community. Shades of Erin Brockovich there.

The casting and the production is all great.

Strangely there is no love interest and at the end I missed this. Of course it would have made it a different film and Michael Clayton a different person. Probably a lesser film. The only woman of any consequence is Karen Crowder played by Tilda Swinton. She gives an amazing performance as the slick, ruthless company executive and behind the scenes the insecure person who anxiously practices her speeches in front of a mirror.

George Clooney has a beautiful voice. It is such a pleasure to listen him. This may strike me so forcefully because I live in Australia.

I have read that Cleopatra was not particularly beautiful but she too had a beautiful voice - a voice that brought Caesar and Mark Anthony to their knees.

Check out ‘Michael Clayton’. It is one of the best films I’ve seen in a while. Go and listen to George’s voice.

Melbourne Places - Carlisle Street, St Kilda East

MELBOURNE PLACES

The railway bridge across Carlisle Street Shopping strip – recently refurbished. Cafes are multiplying, the place is buzzing and there are great delicatessens.

Horoscopes - October

Susan Miller http://www.astrologyzone.com/…. is the horoscope I read every month.

A friend describe is as "the horoscope of my choice”. She's wrong in that. I didn’t select it from others. It is the only one I found a year or so ago that gave a monthly forecast. I am happy to be introduced to another free one if anyone knows one.

When I first read Susan Miller I felt her predictions were reasonably accurate. This year it has been different. I am a Capricorn and I find that she has been considerably off beam. A friend who is trained in this field tells me that Susan is premature with her predictions as far as my life is concerned – it will happen but not when Susan says. With this in mind I decided to read October’s horoscope at the end to the month and then review it in light of what has happened.

An interesting exercise!

It didn’t appear to be about me and October 2007. A large part of it covered progress at work and my career. Someone would offer me a job (out of the blue). “Watch for an intriguing phone call”. It also suggested I could make considerable “career progress” and that there would be a big change in my financial fortunes – a bright financial future – “lucrative new professional developments”.

I started a new job in mid September that I had high hopes for it but two months into it the hopes haven’t been realized. The innovations the firm was going to put in place have not happened and the current situation is somewhat stagnant. It is possible the company could be struggling with cash flow. Odd considering the Real Estate world is booming - record sales, record prices. But then you have to make a sale to hook into the avalanche of dollars.

Now is the time for some one to come out of the woodwork and offer me that job I can’t resist.

If my friend is to be believed and I have no reason not to believe her, this should happen to me this month.

When things are going really well we don’t look for signs and reasons why this is so. We get on with it and think it is to do with us. We are a success. When we are at cross-roads or the road appears to be struggling with the gradient, we search for meaning and hope.

A while ago I went to a ‘fortune teller” clairvoyant and a card reader. I was looking for direction and positive signs for the future. She spent her time discussing the past. An area I’m only too familiar with! I won't got there again. I'll spend the money on a good bottle of red wine.

I will read my November Horoscope at the end of this week.!! But should it be my October one?

Are all Capricorns waiting for their "career progress" to happen??? And don't forget the money - the bright financial future.

Away From Her

I hadn’t wanted to see this film but sometimes you have to give in. And I did want to see Julie Christie. I still carry the image of her with Dirk Bogarde in the 1965 movie Darling. She is no less beautiful in Away From Her. Julie Christie’s character Fiona is struck down with Alzheimer’s disease.

This movie shows the sadness for Grant ( Gordon Pinsent) her husband of 45 years as he watches her decline. There is the pain of watching him adapt to the changes and the hurts it inflicts upon him.

There are many ways Alzheimer’s can develop and these are quickly outlined near the beginning of the film. Fiona was struck in the kindest way and I believe that many people who have watched their loved ones with the disease will feel a sense unreality.

I find Alzheimer’s is a disease that is as frightening as cancer. Of course cancer is more universal, striking all ages. Dementia will strike more and more of us as we find more ways of living longer and longer. It is one of the saddest diseases.

Those who saw the film Iris where Iris Murdoch reverted to a child may see a more common manifestation of Alzheimer’s.

Away From Her moves slowly through the snows of Ontario. There is coldness in the scenery and this reflects the way Fiona’s and Grant’s warm and loving relationship is heading.

It is a slow meandering movie sometimes going into the past and forever moving through scenes of snow but your attention is held.

On reflection the film isn’t so much about Alzheimer’s as it is about a relationships and how one person can be left to struggle with the changes on their own.

The film was adapted from a story by Canadian writer Alice Munro called ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain’. I like that title much better. ‘Away From Her’ is some how clumsy.

There is publicity suggesting that Sarah Polley, the director, should be up for an Oscar. My money would be on Julie Christie.

I’d be interested in your view.

St Kilda Beach - early morning

Low tide and an early October morning at St Kilda Beach in Melbourne creates a sort of magic. There's no better tonic to start the day with.

Are other beaches just a good for the spirit? Let me know.

City from St Kilda Beach

DEATH AT A FUNERAL - REVIEW

This is a laugh out loud movie...

We had thought that it would be very predicatible, you know the sort of thing - funeral jokes etc. That sort of thing.

We were wrong. We laughed from the opening sequence. It was predictable with a street map and a coffin moving along it, but it was funny. Was it the day, our mood or the fact the movie is very funny in a slap stick, farcical way? It was probably all those things. I laughed out loud, I was moved by the emotions and at others times caught up in the tension that was there.Well known faces popped up - Matthew MacFadyen, Jane Asher, Robert Graves Peter Egan and Peter Vaughan etc. The story is the funereal of Daniel and Robert’s father at his country estate and the dysfunctional family that is brought together for the event. There is also a blackmailer who has come to expose unsavory episodes in the father’s recent past. Some of it is predicable, some plain silly, some scatological and some gloriously funny. It is also a family drama and full of family problems.If you want to lighten the day go and laugh. We all need something to make us laugh. The shots of the inside of this country house are fascinating – what a beautiful house.

Let me know what you think. I need to get someone elses opinion.

BLOG ACTION DAY………..

……….and the environment. I thought I’d leave global warming, deforestation, and all the huge issues for others to write about.

I want to write about how one person or in this case one shop can cause a shift in our thinking.

There’s a book shop I know that makes a difference. I believe it gives every customer a mental nudge – a little green nudge.

‘Book Talk’ houses over $15,00 pre-loved books and an unknown number of new ones. All these are displayed very carefully, cleanly and neatly around a café. The café tables wander through the area with a few ending up outside.

A notice near the café counter tells us that we can’t take NEW books to the café tables. We can browse these as we stand at the shelves and numbers of people do.

Another notice tells us that you can bring in your own books to exchange.
And yet another notice tells us that if we buy a book and return it we will be refunded 50% of the purchase price.

The latest best sellers are on display. The Booker Prize short list was up when I was there last and those books available. I saw ‘Mr Pip’ by Lloyd Jones in both the pre-loved and the new section.

There are children’s books both new and pre-loved and stands of beautiful cards for $1.00

The atmosphere is relaxed and slightly bohemian. The café tables are used by people in heated discussion, by people studying, by people writing, by people reading (there’s a great selection of newspapers and magazines) and by other’s sipping coffee and watching the world. The café food is wholesome and delicious and slightly under priced for the area.

Their plastic bags do not have the name of the shop on them, instead they advertise the bags degradable properties, a suggestion to re-use them and an explanation that they disintegrate by heat, oxidation and sunlight. They will not be littering our beaches and our landfills. There is a web site written there where this can be checked and similar bags ordered. www.maxpak.com.au. Many people following the conservation theme pop their new book in a bag they have with them.

After a coffee and a browse through the well tended shelves I come away thinking ‘re-useable’ and don’t litter and I have a feeling of wanting to care for my fellow human by doing the right thing by them. I’m very careful to put my pay-and-display ticket in a bin. I also wonder why these plastic bags are not used by my local supermarket.

In my view this shop is making us aware of eachother and of our environment and our need to share it and our need to sustain it – encouraging us to make one further step towards ‘green’. It’s a message that has a ripple effect. If all of us take one step today the world will be a greener and better place for everyone. Sometimes we have to think small to get big results

Death at a Funeral

I saw this movie on the day Melbourne made a brief returned to winter. It was cold, bleak and drizzling. (Of course the drizzle is a good thing in this rained starved country.) Parking was a problem and we were a little late and had to blunder into our seats in the dark.

We laughed at the opening sequence. It was predictable with a street map and a coffin moving along it, but it was funny. Was it the day, our mood or the fact the movie is very funny in a slap stick, farcical way? It was probably all those things. I laughed out loud, I was moved by the emotions and at others times caught up in the tension that was there.

Well known faces popped up - Matthew MacFadyen, Jane Asher, Robert Graves Peter Egan and Peter Vaughan etc. The story is the funereal of Daniel and Robert’s father at his country estate and the dysfunctional family that is brought together for the event. There is also a blackmailer who has come to expose unsavory episodes in the father’s recent past.

Some of it is predicable, some plain silly, some scatological and some gloriously funny. It is also a family drama and full of family problems.

If you want to lighten the day go and laugh. We all need something to make us laugh. The shots of the inside of this country house are fascinating – what a beautiful house.

Rabbits on the Prowl

There are times when I want to laugh and dance and forget the problems of the twenty first century. That feeling surged over me when I saw the rabbits in this photo. They are my new slippers. They came as a pair but as you can see they are not alike which only makes them more endearing.

We need some nonsense in our lives. There’s so much to worry about, horror to listen to and disaster to contemplate that I can feel myself weighed down by it.

These ridiculous rabbits progress around my house on my feet. Their ears flap in different directions and two of the paws make a little thudding noise as they connect with the floor. No one else sees these animals on their evening journeys, except me and my cat S. I laugh out loud as look down at them. I don’t want to endow them with animistic qualities but they appear to have a personality and soul of their own. I stroke them and smile at them and I’m careful in the kitchen not to splash them. S watches them pass and I can see her allowing her mind to drift back to the days when she would have pounced on a flip flopping ear and killed it off. She occasionally raises a paw if they get too close but rousing herself to interfere with them is too much trouble.

The grey rabbits will have a short life. They are aging already and I have had to do repairs to their outer skin. Their life at my place has given lightness to the atmosphere and they will be remembered with love.

October and My Favourite Gym Insturctor

A new month and I’m saving my horoscope to read in a few days time. I thought I would live a week in October and then check out how things are suppose to be going.

Postings from the Northern hemisphere are never up on time for me to read my horoscope on the 1st of the month. This month the 2nd (before I read any horoscopes) produced an unexpected change in my life. Hence my interest in living through seven or so days of October before I read Susan Miller http://www.astrologyzone.com.

I know now why people have relationships with their personal trainer. We lean on them emotionally. I don’t have a personal trainer but from trotting along to regular gym classes I can see how it would be. My favourite gym-class instructor has gone. I arrived on Tuesday and someone else was there and announced they had replaced him. No reason was given. I am bereft. His class is one of the highlights in my week. I go to a couple of other classes but they are a sort of tag-on his.

All through the class I thought about what had made him special. How can you stand out in such a large group as a group of gym instructors? Physically he is unlike the usual mould. He is tall and gangling. Yes gangling is the word. Others are sort of compacted, slim and neatly put together. His face breaks into a wide and cheerful grin and his voice is loud. If he is taking a class as you approach the gym you can hear his voice bellowing out. That always makes me smile and lighten my step. His humour is light and flippant and acknowledges the individuals in his class. He winks at slackers and shouts “keep it moving. Keep the pace up”. He keeps it moving in a casual easy way and we all work harder for him. His classes were packed and it was often hard to find floor space. “Here,” he’d say swinging a step in the air for latecomer, ‘There’s room here!” and he’d lower the step into some space where he felt there was room.

His absence has started October with a sense of loss. I will have to re-build my enthusiasm for the gym. Standing tall, being supple and having some strength will have to be enough to motivate me to go on. The fact that I am hooked into a payment system will also motivate me!

Forbidden Lies -Forbidden Love-Norma Khouri

The movie, Forbidden Lies, has been described as gripping, irresistible, thrilling, remarkable and incredible. These are just a number of adjectives that have been applied to it by the promotional material. Remarkable perhaps. Norma Khouri has charm, good looks and style but she is incredibly irritating.

It’s actually a documentary about the “true story” in the book Forbidden Love by Norma Khouri. The book is about the horrific honour killing in Jordan of Norma’s best friend, Dalia. It turns out that this is not her real name.

The book was a runaway best seller around the world and then Australian journalist Malcolm Knox exposed it as a work of fiction. Norma went into hiding and according to the promotional material has been in hiding ever since but decided to come out and talk to the director of this movie-length documentary Forbidden Lies. It is hard to know why she made this decision.

I was kkeen to see the documentary. I use to make radio documentaries and although they don’t have a lot in common with a full-length movie, the problem of what to put in and what to leave out is a decision all directors have to make. It is also possible to slew the content to fit the hypothesis you have in mind. We see this all the time in Australia in television magazine programmes like Today Tonight and Current Affair.

What is indisputable here is that Norma Khouri is able to write a pager tuner. Thousands of people all over the world were gripped by her story. I suppose a question we could ask is whether they would have been so gripped if the book had been marketed as fiction.

During the interviews in the movie Norma refuses to answer questions and tells one lie after another and when she is found out then tells another to justify the first. I felt that director Anna Broinowskit showed great restraint in not slapping her but just occasionally her impatience showed through. At one time she pleaded with Norma to give her something that was true: some fact that that would check out.

I found all this evasion, contradiction and justification (“I’m protecting the people involved”) boring. To me it wasn’t thrilling or exciting it was dull and I found at one stage I had dropped off to sleep. I think that it is remarkable that Anna stuck with it.

This may be because I can’t find it in me to care greatly if this honour killing was true, fiction or an amalgamation of a number of such killings. Not because I’m not appalled by honour killings. I am. I am grateful that I have born into a society where women are not a possession of their family to do as they will with. This story may be written with a fictional killing at the center but there are still such killings and Forbidden Love has made many people, who may perhaps have never heard of such a thing, aware. Ultimately this story could be one more step in a path to prevent such things. Perhaps this is why I don’t care whether it’s fact or fiction and watching Norma wriggling around on the end of the interview’s questions is not particularly interesting. At the end of the film Norma Khouri was still an enigma..

It is a finely put together documentary with great camera work and the interview style is generally sympathetic and well balanced but in the end we have to ask ourselves do we need 106mins on Norma and her book. I believe that Anna succumbed to the dilemma “it took me so much time, effort and money to get this I can’t cut it out.” I am of the opinion that a great deal could have been cut and we would have ended up with the same outcome.

What makes it remarkable is that it is about one of the great publishing hoaxes of last century.

Let me know what you think.

Blogging

It’s always interesting when I check out who's entered my blog. I don’t do this very often but when I do I feel I’m on a world tour. I love it that people in Nevada and New York have accessed it. They may have given the content only a quick glance but they were there. I have visited both these place in the USA. It was a while ago but a number of mind-pictures have stayed with me so I can bring them up on my mental plasma screen.

I have had some one in Adelaide reading me off and on and in England and Hong Kong. Now there’s a place that feeds the imagination. Other places pop up from time to time. Writing a blog is largely self-indulgent and I mentioned this is my first blog, but it is also a way of connecting with a wider group of people, and becoming a citizen of the world.

Do keep accessing my site and try this one wwwstrollingplayer.blogspot.com interesting but don’t go there when you’re hungry the food is mouth watering and the photos great.

After the Wedding

J and I always hope for some vicarious travel so we chose a Danish film this week. We do get some Danish crime on T V that gives an idea of life in Scandinavian but not enough to satisfy the would-be traveler. ‘After the Wedding’ is an unforgettable drama from Danish film maker Susanne Bier. And pictorially Denmark comes out reasonably well.

To begin the film gives the cinema-seat-traveller some great glimpse of the teaming masses in India. Jocob Peterson (Mads Mikkelsen) is a Danish aid worker in Indian. He is persuaded to return home to Denmark to meet with an aid benefactor Jorgan (Rolf Lassgard) who is only going to ha over the aid cheque in person..

In a sentence you could say the film was not about Jocob but Jorgan who tires to arrange everyone’s lives. Mads plays his character in a rather grim way. Perhaps he always acts like this but he has a great reluctance to smile. Very occasionally gives us a glimpse of a smile that lights up his face. Jorgan has manipulated Jocob’s return and his time in Denmark to bring him face to face with a past he has tired to forget.

I found the camera work a great irritation. The camera closes into someone’s face and enlarges their eye and perhaps the side of their nose or their mouth. We don’t need to see the enlarge pores or the larger than life eye in its wrinkled socket. In day-to-day life we don’t jam our faces so close to others that we get these views and I found it distracting. Jorgan lives in a Baronial mansion that houses the usual trophy heads on the walls and the camera zooms into the dead eyes of a buffalo or deer and delivers them to us hugely magnified – very off-putting.

The threads of this mystery are woven and tightened by Jorgan until finally the clothe and its flaws are revealed to us. It is an unusual story and the ending not in least predictable.

Even with enlarged eyes popping on and off the screen there are some very memorable moments and some shorts scenes that are likely to become mental flash backs in the days after viewing the movie. The characters do evolve and it’s a film about everyone learning something that causes them to re-evaluate who they are and where they in life.

It’s worth seeing. You may like the eyes and feel they are giving an opening to the internal struggles of the owner. I think any internal struggle the trophy heads may have had has long since gone.

Horoscopes Again

To follow on that theme. I have read Susan Miller’s predictions for a couple of years and I have found her to be reasonably accurate. However the last few months seem to well off center

I wonder if you’ve found the same? I’m Capricorn and it may be that every other sign is dead on the mark.

I use to read my family’s too and if it looked positive I would send them a copy. My pragmatic and housebound mother said that her life was so uneventful it was difficult for any thing to apply to her. Now that I’ve written that I must go back and see if I can read the month covering her fall from her chair. That was far from uneventful.

Horoscope - September

I haven’t written anything about this month’s horoscope. Once again it doesn’t really seem to relate to me.

Susan Miller's horoscope says nothing about a different job – new challenges and a new start. Nothing about success, nothing about a good time to make a move - although it would be too late for that. I’m committed to the move.

Once again it is all about money and not getting what is my due. As I write I see that it could perhaps apply. Getting any salary that I was owed from my other job has taken a few phone calls. I now have what I assume must be my final pay but it appears to me to be short – not enough money.

My horoscope says that there could be problems with finances over a divorce or child support or a business break down. I guess my salary would fall into that category – a job that has broken down.

The Home Song Stories

J and I go to the movies on a regular basis and our choice of movie depends on the time it is being shown. Our time frame is between 6.15 and 6.45pm on a week night. Last week the Australian film ‘The Home Song Stories’ was on at our time. We chat about the movie over coffee but it would be good to get other opinions. I will post my thoughts on our weekly movie. Even if I don't get your thoughts it may help you to decide whether you want to see the film or not.

The Home Song Stories is the story of a Hong Kong nightclub singer who has two children and marries an Aussie sailor, Bill played by Steve Vidler. He brings them all home to his suburban brick veneer house that is inhabited by his mother. The mother is portrayed as a bigoted, sour and unhappy woman who resents the new comers and makes no effort to welcome them. We don’t find out why she is like this or in fact anything about her life and this is a pity.

Bill leaves them there while he goes back to sea. This is an obvious recipe for disaster.

The film grabbed me right at the beginning and held me as the characters pitch from one disaster to the next. I pitched with them and in the end J and I were wrung out and emotionally drained

The film is said to be the true childhood story of the director Tony Ayres. Joan Chen, who is such a pleasure to look at, plays Rose, his mother and eleven year old Joel Lok plays Tony Ayres or Tom as he is called in the film. Joel was remarkable in the part. Very expressionless most of the time but his actions conveyed all the emotion. J and I wondered afterward whether because his face showed so little emotion we projected what we thought he was feeling onto a sort of blank canvas. It’s hard to know I would have to see it again to be sure.

You do feel a sort of emptiness or desolation in the characters but this doesn’t carry through to the end because we know that things turn out surprisingly well for the two children.

This is a film for a chat around the water cooler and I hope enough people see it to make it talked about. It is easy to discuss what Rose could have and should have done but like so many of the film’s characters she was flawed. It’s also hard to take ourselves back to the mid 60’s and understand how life would have been for someone like Rose, a night club singer from Hong Kong, dumped into suburbia with no friends or support and a husband who takes off to sea again. Bill her husband is a remarkable character. He appears not to understand Rose but he is forgiving and accepting of the person she is and is ready to look after her and her children should they need him.

A great movie – go to see it if you get the chance.

Wine glasses and watches

Time out from work and I’ve been browsing. Not at your big shopping malls but in those quirky little shops along the shopping strips.

I’m sucker for wine glasses. I love them and I know the wine tastes better when it’s drunk from a beautiful glass. This one is so like some really expensive coloured ones that I’ve seen around. The ruby colour becomes more transparent with the light and gives a beautiful glow to red wine. I’ve tried red and white but red is the one. It’s a sensual pleasure to look at, swirl the wine then take a sip. Such amazing value at $30.00

My other delight is the ladybird key holder that opens to become a watch. It is ticking away merrily and keeps excellent time. All this, including the battery, for only $11.00. The ladybird will be my talisman for the new job.

Waking at 2am

I have more time - a few days off work before my new job. It’s a chance to re-charge but also to become nervous about the new job. I woke up last night and began to worry as you do in the early hours of the morning. Two or three am is when a slight rise on a flat surface takes on the form of a steep mountain.

My doubts are about whether I will be able to deliver all those things I professed to be skilled at during the job interview. This time next week I will start to find out. I start at 9.00am next Wednesday the 12th. I will have to learn a new computer programme first off. In my interview I said I didn’t see this being a problem as I had used two other Property Management Programmes in the past. At 2.00am the doubts crept in.

I had to get up and make a cup of tea and find a boring book to read. In the past I have found one way to go back to sleep in the middle of the night is to try to remember the plot line of a recent read novel or movie I’ve seen and follow it in detail. This is usually a winner and before I know it morning has arrived. Last night it took ages to drift back into sleep.

This morning things were different and I found I was looking forward to the challenge of the new programme and increasing the number of properties the companyhas under management. That was another thing that I didn’t see as a problem when I went for the interview. I’m also looking forward to the working environment. From this distance the vibes in the office feel good and people helpful and friendly.

Flat-Packs

The words ‘flat pack’ should be eliminated from our language. I have spent Sunday assembling a bookcase.

A few months ago I gave over an entire long weekend and my living room to assembling two sets of shelving from Bunnings for my shed. The second set should have been easier and quicker but it wasn’t. When I finally got them together I proudly displayed them in their new home and I found that the slightest touch caused the units to move. Someone else tightened the numerous screws for me and I now have my shed organised. The assembly of the metal was damaging to my hands and nails and I vowed not to buy a flat pack again.

This statement is easier to say than to stick by. Everything comes in a flat pack. A lot of research has shown me that a set of white books shelves is only available in a flat pack.
Ikea was my first choice but I live outside the delivery circle so delivery was going to cost more the flat pack. I measured for the car but the pack was too wide.

The ones I assembled came from Fantastic Furniture and they were maneuvered into the car and strapped into the fully reclining front seat as if they were a passenger. The quality is not great but I have finally got them assembled. Assembly has to be done on the floor. They suggest laying out each piece as if it was a jigsaw puzzle so a space had to be cleared to allow this to happen. For the rest of the day I crawled around the floor with my hammer and screwdriver. I won’t say never again but I will be very wary of anything that says ‘self-assembly”. I have booked a massage. I ache from the body contortions and I have realized that I can have two massages for the price of the Ikea delivery.

Now that I have sorted out my books I find that I need another set. The shelves look good and there is a space that is just right for a second set …………….

Avalon Road

Where I live and work I always find places that become special to me. These places delight me, warm me, leave me in awe, amuse me or trigger some long forgotten memory. This photo is of Avalon Road. It warms and amuses me.

The road has a twist at one end and if you enter from the other end it appears to wind into the distance rather than to a busy thoroughfare. I don’t know the history of the road but I see it as someone’s folly and it never ceases to make me smile.

Today we live with councils that are heavy with regulations so it’s hard to imagine anyone getting permission to plant trees with such disregard for their future growth. To plant trees in the roadway today would be impossible. As you can see in the photo there is a pavement and some nature strip but these trees grow in the road pushing the surface up with their heavy roots. The other wonderful thing about this is that the council trims the trees and lets them remain. This is one of my favourite streets in Melbourne and I drive down it whenever I’m in the area.

One or other of the houses along the strip are always being renovated so during the day the place is jammed with tradesmen’s vehicles. After they leave and before the residents return to park between the trees there is a short time when the street is empty. That’s when I took the photo; just before dusk.

Summer has arrived. People with glasses in their hands are swelling out of the cafes and clogging the streets as they bask in the warmth. More tables than ever are squeezed onto the narrow footpaths of Carlisle Street and everyone is smiling.

This exciting city of Melbourne is my ‘Seachange’. And I can’t believe I have been moaning about the winter and how long and cold it has been this year. Melbourne today and yesterday have been magical compared with August in my home city. How complacent I have become since I have been here. Expecting the winter to be mild and the sun to shine daily. It is so easy to become accustomed to our good fortune. Melbourne is my lucky city. Today and yesterday I felt bathed in sun, luck and the delight of daffodils. I drank tea in my courtyard and purred.

I’m trying to see where I can put some vegetables in my tiny garden. Years ago I read a cook book written by Don Dustan the then Premier of South Australia. I hadn’t been to Australia at the time and knew nothing of South Australia however his book captivated me – he cooked and grew his own vegetables. It was very evocative and if I remember it correctly full of good recipes and gardening hints. I’d love to come across it again especially now I live in Australia. I wonder if he mentions vegetables that possums do not eat?

Recently I heard a snippet of a radio programme asking listeners who they thought was charismatic. His book had that sort of pull. I wonder if he was charismatic in real life.

Where I’ve lived in Melbourne there are dead trees. In this house there are two in the property behind me. Pigeons like them. I can’t tell one pigeon from another but when I’m in my courtyard several of them will sit and coo at me from one of the dead trees. In the photo my still living silver birch is softening the dead limbs of the next door tree.

Spring has come to Melbourne

A daffodil munched by a possum.

I think I mentioned how exhausted I felt. Yesterday I was overcome with tiredness. It took an amazing effort to actually get to work and during the whole day everything was an effort. Finally when I got home I crawled into bed.

This morning I slept and this afternoon I basked in the sun, pulled weeds from the front garden and took some photos of my garden's greeting to spring.

As I walk in the gate I am surrounded by the sweet smell of violets. They have survived the drought and produced a surprising number of flowers. They spread around the water meter and the garden tap.

The daffodils were planted by kind and thoughtful hands and are popping up all over the back garden. They give spots of sun on grey winter days.

I have a visiting possum. I haven’t seen him but he enjoys a diet of passion fruit vine. He eats every new shoot. He is also partial to daffodil flowers. I have a mental picture of spots of yellow moving through him as he digests yet another golden bloom.

In my last house in C Street I enjoyed the sight of a possum running along the top of the board fence. I felt it was a treat to live so close to the CBD and have the privilege of wild life in the garden. I don’t feel quite the same now that he is eating things I treasure. In the garden in C Street there wasn’t anything that he fancied or anything that would have mattered if he had nibble away at it.

The daffodils have been spots of sun in an otherwise grey landscape. First there was one then a second one then three at once not counting the ones the possum has eaten. What did Wordsworth say about them? I’ve forgotten but I think he was seeing hundreds at a time. Just one bloom in an inner city garden is enough to bring a yellow glow and a smile.

Magpies

For the last few weeks I’ve been woken about 5.30 every morning with the raucous sound that has come form a group of about five Magpies on a lamppost opposite my bedroom.

As suddenly as they came they have gone. For the last two mornings there has been silence at that time. This morning I roused about 5 and decided to lie there and listen for them. It was just possible that I had become used to them and didn’t “hear” them any more. A bit like the trains when you live close to a railway line.

About 6pm this morning a few other birds started up with their version of the dawn chorus but there was no sound a magpie. I missed what the NZ poet Denis Glover called the ‘quardle ardle oodle ardle wardle doodle’ of the magpies. I'm curious as to why they came and equally curious as to why they've gone.

Good news for my mother she has passed the test and will be going home from hospital on Wednesday. She found the exam exhausting and thankfully sank into bed when she arrived back at the hospital. If all goes according to plan she will be home two and half weeks after her slide from her chair.

Moving On

The job is mine!! I want to shout it from the rooftops and dance in the street. However the process was exhausting and I’d like to go to bed for a week. It’s not just getting this job but being out there looking and looking for something that I want that has been exhausting. When a current job falls apart there’s a great temptation to rush out and think anything is going to be better. At one stage I was almost persuaded that a position on the other side of the Westgate Bridge would be okay. I hate long heavy-traffic journeys to work.

So I’ve given in my notice but it looks as if I will be forced to work the full 28 days. Now that is a depressing. I want to wave goodbye to my old job and move on immediately. It is so hard to feel interested or engaged with what is happening now that I know that I’m going to be released. There is sadness to that, too. Before this year I have had a number of very happy years there.

It’s been a good week for my mother. She has progressed to the stage where today she is going to be given a test of physical ability. She is being driven to her home to see if she can cope on her own. One of the tests is make a cup of tea. Level one of this test would be to put a tea bag in a mug and pour on boiling water. My mother’s tea making requires an honours degree. She uses leaf-tea kept in a caddy on a shelf, the teapot needs to be warmed, the tea spooned in and then the pot filled with boiling water. As she only drinks from a cup and saucer both these items have to be assembled before she can pour out. She can eliminate one step because she doesn’t take milk. She has described her moving speed to me and it appears to register only a flicker above stop on a speedometer. The cup of tea will take some time. If she passes this and other yet unknown tests she doesn’t remain in the house she is still to be returned to the hospital. A pass means an ultimate discharge – a failure? Well, I was wondering if the test could be taken again. She says she is sure she can manage and that she will have to because she is more that ready to go home.

In Limbo

This week has been a roller coaster of a week. I wanted to think of a different way to describe it but roller coaster was what it was.

On Monday I worried about my mother and what was happening to her. On Tuesday I had a second job interview and for the rest of the week I worried about my mother and whether I was going to get the new job.

The week has started with the uncertainty about the new job still in place but my mother is making progress and is moving slowly about the rehab ward on a pair of crutches. I ring the hospital daily and generally get to talk to her on the ward’s cordless phone. Today it looks as if she will be able to go home and continue to enjoy her sunny house.

Today I was supposed to get a job contract in the mail. This was promised to me last Thursday and it was a great let down to rush home from work to find it wasn’t there.

I put on my runners and walked for an hour in the very chilly evening air. I walked fast so by the time I reached home the endorphins had kicked in and I was feeling better. It gave me the courage to ring to say I hadn’t received the job offer. I set up an appointment for 2.30 Tuesday to go into the office and read the contract. It’s worth being pro-active in these things!

There needs to be a resolution regarding the job tomorrow. Limbo is exhausting. I got my last job through an agency – easy. They did all the negotiating and came back to me with feedback and interview times. It was in their interests to get me into the job so they could get their commission and they organized it well.

Rosellas believe spring is here

The Melbourne Rosellas are washing away the winter dust. I caught this group having a midday swim and frolic in an over flowing guttering as I walked to the shops. I love the pigeon as it gazes at them from a superior position on the roof ridge.

New Zealand Police

I ring my mother every Sunday evening at 5pm Melbourne time. I get home to do this even in the summer when the days are long and 5pm is like the middle of the day. This Sunday I was in the studio of my artist friend J. We were talking about painting in the style of Henryk Szydowski or HS as he has become to us (see my blog of May 27th) J has bought a book of his work and we poured over this choosing symbols and colours and making a list of the ones we liked. We were engrossed and time took off. I rushed to the Acland Street Safeway to get S's ‘heart-smart mince’. This is what she eats at the moment. I grabbed that and a couple of other things and raced for home.

At five I had dumped the groceries put some mince on a plate for S, poured a glass of red and was dialing my mother. I got her voice mail. I tried again. I still got the voice mail. I waited a few minutes and dialed again. Still voice mail. I tried to check the line for faults with Telecom in NZ. It’s impossible to do this from Australia.

My mother is housebound and my hour-long phone call on Sunday is part of her weekly programme. She has the phone in her hand waiting. What to do? I walked around the house, stared at the phone then called the local NZ Police.

They were fabulous, wonderful - courteous, helpful and understanding. Have I gone over board here? I couldn’t. There was nothing I could fault and a weight rolled off me.

Two cops headed for her place and found her on the floor. She sits on a cushion at the table and the cushion had slipped off the chair and onto the floor and she had gone with it. The cops who rang me here, in Melbourne, explained all this and told me how she was and that they were sending her to hospital.

Such a silly little accident but she was on the floor struggling to get up for about 3 hours. She listened to the phone ringing but she couldn’t get to it. Tonight she is in hospital. The X-rays say nothing has broken but her right leg is too sore to put weight on.

My mother lives in a house with the entrance on the ground floor and the living on the first floor. Over the years various people have suggested she move and live on one level. She has resisted and continued to slowly make her way up and down the stairs with one hand on the banisters and the other using a crutch. Living on the first floor gives light and views and sun and with these things comes a boost to the spirit.

What next? She sounded defeated. She told me she couldn’t move about even with a walker. I told her that strained muscles usually take a while to heal.

South Yarra Views

I took these views of South Yarra on Friday. We have just let the apartment with these views. The apartment is small, old and rather shabby but the outlook gives it this fascination. I love these inner city Melbourne views. This is South Yarra near Toorak Road. Grey slate roofs with verdigris. Old houses that are to me European in flavour but at the same time essentially Melbourne and then the massive gum tree with is beautiful pale grey trunk and branches.

My August horoscope is all about finances. My job interview went well on Thursday and I’m back for another interview this week. I’m visualizing myself doing the job. It’s three days a week!! And I want to keep putting exclamation marks. How blissful would that be?? It would also offer a challenge and I would have to prove myself. I am also visualizing handing in my notice at my old job.

My horoscope has nothing about a job change but a comment on my last blog mentions that the astrologer that I read is jumping the gun with Capricorn. I’ll keep visualizing!

Horoscopes

On the first day of every month I flick into Susan Miller’s site and read my horoscope. http://www.astrologyzone.com/ Recently it has been well off beam. July should have been a good month according to Susan. “As you enter July, you should be feeling fantastic.” Not so. Work-wise I’m feeling anything but fantastic. The disaster that is work seems to creep into the rest of my life.

I loved my full-on Property Management job. Humming along in my car to work in the morning I often felt elated. I was stimulated and challenged.

An office restructure has brought onboard a new person and life has changed. Then, of course, I lost those three properties- see my first blog of April 20th $30,000 is the amount the director believes the company has lost because of that blunder. The outcome of the disaster is still in-waiting as I am still working for the company. The office is no longer a supportive and caring office. We keep secrets and we whisper. The elation is seldom there and the morning ritual has become a chore. Time to move on?

I was on an in-service course one day last week where a high flier told us how she organized her life and work. She has a Life Coach to help her with this but in essence she makes a five-year plan with a goal at the end and steps of what she has to do to get there. Not new thinking but sometimes we have to get a reminder.

My July Horoscope also said
“ No matter when your birthday happens to fall, all Capricorns are about to enter the best of year of their lives in 2008. Your wonder year is actually slated to start in late December 2007. Your mission now should be to decide which people and elements of your current life will belong in your new life to come, as well as which elements and relationships need to be eliminated. If you don't go through this process of editing your life, you won't make any room for new opportunities that are coming your way.”

Both the course and the horoscope are timely if that is correct. I will take the advice and work on a five-year plan. The idea is to start with an end goal and work backwards.

Not so easy. Five years can be a long time when you are think ahead. Of course not so long when we look back and wonder where the time has gone.

All this is saying that it’s time I changed my life and moved on.

Today is the last day of July and in a couple of days I’ll be able to read my August horoscope.

I have a job interview on the 2nd of August. If I got the new job it would it be a step on the way to somewhere – where has yet to be decided. I'm working on my five-year plan in particular the end goal! All these steps need to be going in the same direction.....

Melbourne has rain!

A wet Friday and TGF (Thank God it’s Friday) whirred in my head as I drove home through the dark and down pour. The rain kept the streets quiet. Usually orthodox Jews fill our streets on Friday evening but this evening they weren’t around. I’m use to seeing their black clad figures in Inkerman Street and missed them.

I like Friday night’s gym instructor but not enough to make it there through the bleak winter evening. Now had it been the Tuesday instructor…

I rang my mother when I got home. She has a skin complaint that has covered her body with something akin to hives. The GP had no idea and after a wait of six weeks she managed to get an appointment with a skin specialist. Her name came to the top of the list this week. I talked to her at the same time the gym class heaved weights around. In our modern world we struggle to prolong our lives but the longer we live the more hurdles we have to jump. The skin complaint is just another for my mother. There are more drugs to take and the chance of side effects and no guarantee that the skin complaint will improve.

Not wanting to go there I turned up the gas heater, poured some red wine, heated some pasta and listened to my favourite opera. I first heard Bellini’s Norma in Vietnam when I worked in Qui Nhon . A colleague loved it and copied his tapes for me. I still have those tapes but now I listen to it on CD. It covered the hiss of the heater and I disappeared into the music and left the world behind.

I often think that we like certain music because there was something special happening in our lives when we hear it for the first time. Yet, Neil Diamond drifted around the paddy fields and shantytowns of central Vietnam at that time and he’s not a favourite in the same way. I didn’t see him when he came to Melbourne but I eagerly booked my ticket for the Australia Opera Company’s production of Norma. So much for a theory!!

When I went to bed I found myself thinking about my mother and the extreme discomfort she’s been in for weeks and why it is that the medical professionals can transplant lungs and hearts but can leave an old lady to struggle with something so distressing.

Weekend Life

A Prahran balcony cat on duty.

On Sundays R and I plan to make the 9.00 Gym class. We both worked this Saturday and I was very pleased when the phone rang at 8.00am. I knew we wouldn’t be going. And don’t say I could’ve gone by myself. R told me the temperature was two degrees and a damp mist hung over my house. The Sunday paper was lying on the path and the gas heater pumped away..........

The newspapers are making the job of Property Management harder. They are full of articles about the tight rental market. According to an article written last week, properties are in such demand, prospective tenants are making offers well above the asking price and people are becoming homeless because they can’t find anywhere to rent

If you had been with me while I did eight opens this weekend you would have written a different story. In the middle where we mainly operate there is no pressure. The cheapest place on my list on Saturday was a large two-bedroom unit in a rather dodgy block for $310.00 per week. There were four groups through it and only one group took applications.

Of the eight properties I opened two didn’t have a single visitor and three only had one.

The problem is to tell the owners that their properties are not getting the interest we would expect and we should consider lowering the rent. They’ve been reading about rising demand and rising rents and lack of available rental properties and think we must be doing something wrong. What's wrong with their property when every other property is racing out the door with half a dozen people chasing it.

I had an unusual experience. I arrived at a three-bedroom unit in a quiet block in a quiet street in Armadale. Three young men were lounging outside waiting for me. I had the usual bunch of keys and as always it is the last key that opens the door. This block shows individuality by having the unit number hidden behind the screen door so it’s only visible when the door is open. I ploughed up the stairs with the boys behind me. We studied the doors.
“Excuse me,” said one in a polite voice. “I think seven is on the ground floor” We ploughed down the stairs. He was right and I went through all the keys again.

They spent a while looking around, then took application forms and headed out. One popped back,
“Excuse me. Are you here for much longer?”
“A few more minutes”
“Would you like us to wait so you’re not on your own? We’re not in a hurry. We could do that.”
I thanked him and said I was fine.
“Are you sure? It’s no trouble for us.”
When I did leave he and his mates were on the corner. It occurred to me that I had been in the unit for sometime with just the three of them. Interesting. What is risk? And so much for the hectic rental market.

The sun came out and that’s when the balcony cat watched me with yet another bunch of keys.

Find the cat?

You didn't get the picture on the first posting.

Cat and Cow as One.

I have always liked the idea of a black and white cow skin rug. It’s stylish and elegant and in my mind rather French and I think it’s more sophisticated than a brown and white one.

Those were the thought in my mind as I bought this large beautifully patterned one. S’s welfare was far my thoughts when I laid it on the floor and admired it.

It took S a few weeks to feel really comfortable with it. She walked across it and was sick on it but she didn’t lie on it. I thought the hair might feel odd rubbing on her fur. I was wrong. The evenings are so cold now that I have to have the electric heater on to boost the temperature in the living room. S finds it cold too and now sprawls out on the rug with the heat soaking into her. She and the rug merge so well that I trod on her tail as I walked past. I simply didn’t see her. She yelled and jumped up and went out of the room. It could have been so much worse. My foot could’ve come down on a different part of that thin body.

An evening at home by the heater is no longer relaxing. I’m afraid to move. I have to decide what to do. Take the rug up and store it? Buy a brown and white one to put on top? At the moment I am leaning this way. I need some sort of floor covering and we can’t all be sophisticated and French!

Animal skins appear to be making a comeback in the Armadale antique shops where prize pieces of furniture are displayed with them as backdrops. One shop has a Zebra skin and another an antique chair covered in goat skin. To avoid a horrible outcome a brown and white seems the best solution. There is one brown and white one in Armadale but I’ll buy mine in from a wholesaler in Abbottsford who sells to the public.

In The Age last weekend Mia Freedman wrote about how hard it can be to break up with your in-laws when your relationship breaks up. The piece was prompted, so she said, by an article where journalists found it strange/unusual/worth comment that Jennifer Aniston still visited with Brad Pitts' mother. It seems that Britain’s “Now” Magazine in particular thought this was odd. Mia Freedman, herself, didn’t think it odd. I’m with Mia Freedman I don’t think it’s odd.

However, I work with young women who would think it was very odd.

These 20 and 30 year olds have a lot of trouble relating to and in some cases even being with their partner’s parents and family. Hair-raising stories are related where the in-laws appear of have done everything in their power to alienate their son’s partner. I hear one side of the story. How the in-laws, on the other side, feel is never revealed to me.

It may be that I am just blessed and I feel blessed when I hear these stories.

My first meeting with son’s girl friend, some years ago, struck the right note for an on-going relationship. This is my view. I haven’t asked her.

It was a hot February night and she and my son called at my place and for some reason, incomprehensible now, We travelled in my car. We went to Cafe Dang on Fitzroy Street, St. Kilda. It would be 15mins at the most from my house. There was a quarter hour park outside the cafe and not another park in sight. We chose a table were we could keep watch on the car. After some time an hour park became free further up the street.
“There’s a better park! You can move into it!” announced my son.
“Someone will get it before I managed to get the car sorted out’” I said.
My son’s girl friend jumped up. “I’ll stand in it and keep people away.” She rushed off.

I retrieved my car and managed to get into the Saturday night Fitzroy Street traffic and crawled forward. My son's girl friend waved would-be parkers away. I positioned myself, cars stopped and I backed into the space. There was a resounding crash. I had backed into the car behind. I put my car into drive and straightened up.

My son stood up at the table as if to braced himself for trouble. I got out and locked the door. We studied the car behind me. Traffic and people surged past. No one took any notice of us. We walked back to our table. “What you need is another wine”said my son’s girlfriend laughing. She was right and as I was a bit shaken and a bit tense I spilt it.


We have remained friends and I believe over the intervening years our friendship has depended. I value her opinion and her views. For me it’s a good friendship. I feel sorry for the girls who have stressful times in company of their in-laws but I feel more sorry for the in-laws. A real joy is missing from their lives.

I think Brad Pitts’ mother is lucky to see Jennifer as a friend she can visit. Of course I have no idea why they visit but I like to think that it’s because over time they have developed a friendship they value.

We have dined at the Café Dang on a couple of other occasions but none have come up to the level of the first dinner where our lives clicked together and we were united over Vietnamese food and a soft merlot.