NO, I'M NOT ON A DIET.

Many years (read decades) ago, when I lived in Hong Kong, an astrologer (Canadian, not Chinese - he'd come to me highly recommended) told me that, with Jupiter in my sixth house, I had a propensity to put on weight.  At the time I was by no means overweight but, at 5'4" (164cm), when I did put on weight, it showed easily.

During my adult lifetime my top weight has been 65kg (10 stone 3 pounds).  That's not including my fully pregnant weight, which topped that, but it doesn't count.  I mean, I had another person in me.  My bottom adult weight has been 50kg (8 stone).  Presently, I weigh in at 54kg and I'm happy with that.  Unlike most post-menopausal women, I have lost, rather than gained, weight.

I have never been a big eater but that's not through choice or a desire to remain thin.  It is simply because I grew up with an appalling and easily upset digestive system.  I was a reed thin child but, as adolescence crept upon me, I was deposited in a boarding school.  The school's nutritional guidelines were disturbing to say the least.  Bread with every meal and afternoon teas of cream and jam filled buns. Fat deposits began to accrue on me.  Well, obviously, I needed curves, that's the point of hormones after all, among other things.  Those other things included a severe case of cystic acne that lasted well into my twenties.

Nonetheless, I was never overweight, but was always conscious that I might become so because my mother had been thin when she married my father and, by my teen years, she was two sizes overweight.  She wasn't fat, she just wasn't thin.  I resembled her in so many ways that I decided that I would always have to watch my weight.  She also wasn't a big eater and I presumed that we both had, what is termed, a slow metabolism.

Before I fell pregnant with my son, my weight had dropped to 50kg from around 61kg when I married.  Post pregnancy I was 63kg and this weight would not shift until four years later when I was living in Hong Kong and it plummeted, for a number of reasons that I won't go into, down to 50kg again.

Fifty kilograms, for me, is not a natural weight.  I tend to look skeletal.  Nonetheless, once back in Australia I wanted to maintain my svelte appearance but, try as I may, I began to gain weight, about one kilogram (two pounds) per year.  It took ten years for me to go from 50kg to 63kg.  I was eating normally, which is to say, not much, and so I began to eat less but I still gained slowly and relentlessly.  It seemed that the astrologer was right and Jupiter had it in for me.  I had a friend at this time who was very slim and could eat two helpings of everything and not gain a thing.  I believe it comes down to genes, rather than planetary alignments, but who knows?

I discovered one very important thing from trying to stay at a weight that my body didn't approve of: the body decides our ideal weight.  It will more than happily let us go over it, but it won't let us stay under it.  It would rather we gained fat in case of a famine and, for the same reason, will make us gain if we fall below a certain level where our fat deposits won't sustain us in a crisis.  At least, that's my theory.

I think it comes down to the fact that, throughout most of human history, we have not had food readily available to us.  Only in the last ten thousand or so years have we become agrarian and it's only in the last hundred or so years with the Industrial Revolution, mass global transport and trade, that most of humanity has been assured of food.

There are exceptions of course.  Wars and civil wars, including tribal wars in Africa, even more than drought, are usually responsible for food shortages in these food abundant days.  Our bodies genetic coding, however, is based on hundreds of thousands of years of the human experience and has programmed us to survive, even prepare for, periods without adequate sustenance.  Our brains also aid in this survival mechanism and make us crave fattening foodstuffs that have allowed food chains such as McDonald's, Haagen Daz, Pizza Hut, Dunking Donuts right down to your local fish and chip shops and greasy cafes to pander to your starvation avoiding whims.

What a pity our genetic coding doesn't instill a loathing of war in us as well.  Unfortunately, war probably arose out of skirmishes between people over food and hunting grounds and may be coded into us as well.  We haven't outgrown what was once a survival mechanism.

I eat less than most people do.  I do not exaggerate.  I am known for it in my family and by our friends to whom it's a bit of a joke.  I used to be able to eat more, when I was younger, although not much.  I watch with barely concealed envy as my daughter-in-law and her mother (both normal sized women) make scones for afternoon tea with an assortment of jams and cream and eat them with my grandchildren.  If I attempted the same, I would not be able to eat any dinner.  When my partner has our friends to lunch, he will also bring out a dessert of some sort that they will scoff down joyfully.  I watch in dismay and take a bite from my partner's plate just to get a taste.

My stomach has been my dictator since I was five years of age.  After what it put me through in my youth due to lactose intolerance and whatever else upset it, I do not test its limits.  It simply isn't worth it.  How I would trade with someone else for a day just to know the pleasure of eating a decent size meal followed by cheesecake or some such, let alone to be able to consume same with a milkshake or frosty shake.  However, it's just not even on the cards.  I don't even want to think where that would take me.

I'm sure you're not feeling sorry for me.  Most people would like to be able to curb their appetites at will but, if you have to sit at a table and watch your lunch companions eating a whole roll each, perhaps two, filled with ham, cheese, salads, mayonnaise etc., and you literally can only consume a third of what they're having without getting a stomach ache, it is just plain sad.  It is only since menopause that my usual small portions have not been responsible for me slowly gaining weight, as I did in those ten years when I was younger and tried to stay underweight.

I envy people who can go to an 'all you can eat' buffet and get their money's worth.  I am a huge devotee of the doggy bag when I go to a restaurant.  When I asked for one at a restaurant when I was first dating my partner, he was appalled but he came to understand that it's only fair considering my inability to eat enough.  I also can't eat too quickly and so, taking a doggy bag home, means I can enjoy what I couldn't eat in one go, later on.

Friends are now telling me my face is too thin.  This is the result of ageing and fat deserting my face.  Unfortunately, you can't stick fat back where you want it.  It has to be applied all over unless you have the money for a plastic surgeon to place it artfully where it is needed.  I'm not about to try eating enough to fill out my cheeks and couldn't even if I wanted to.

So, to end this blog, my advice to those of you who can eat well is, enjoy.  If you need to diet, don't do crash diets.  They just confuse the body because it thinks it's in a famine and you'll just end up programming it to gain.  The best way to control your intake is long term discipline, something I've had to acquire thanks to my temperamental tummy.  You don't have to starve yourself thin.  Go about it slowly and don't develop an, "I'll binge now and diet", later mentality.  Discover your body's ideal weight and work at keeping it.  It's also silly to say that any particular food is bad for you or fattening.  It's really all about how much of it you eat.

END

CLOTHES, CLOTHES EVERYWHERE, AND NOT A THING TO WEAR.

 

It occurs to me that, if I live to be one thousand years old, I will never have, in my wardrobe, the perfect outfit for any occasion that just happens to arise.

For example, recently, I had to attend my partner's son's wedding.  It was a daytime wedding followed, later, by an evening through night-time reception and dinner.  It wasn't quite black tie, but it was well dressed.  It was also in an in-between sort of season.  You know the kind, Autumn going into Spring but, potentially, also Summer.  October, in Australia, is a pot luck kind of season.  Although I now live in Queensland, which is north of New South Wales where I grew up in Sydney, October can be fickle, to say the least. In Sydney, just as you were warming up from a cold Winter heralding the promise of Spring, October would blast us with an early heatwave before abating and pretending to be Spring again.  I'm talking in the 90 degrees Farenheit or the high 30's Celcius.

To put this in perspective, Sydney is relatively cooler, on average, than Brisbane where I live now.  Brisbane, however, can also deliver October heatwaves.   This is what caused my clothing conundrum for the wedding.  I had saved the dress from my son's wedding eleven years earlier.  His wedding was in our Australian Autumn of April.  It was an expensive, long sleeved, knee length dress with a bold black and white pattern.  I studied the long sleeves and decided that I would probably end up too hot if I wore the dress.  I have a propensity for overheating at the drop of a hat.

I have a kind neighbour who used to attend the horse races a lot and this required dressing up.  She offered me a selection from her wardrobe and I chose one dress as a standby.  I had tried her dress on in Winter and it fitted, looked nice but not exciting.  It would do.  I wasn't the star of the show, the bride and younger women would be.

The wedding day arrived, hot and sticky so, at the last moment, I put on my neighbour's dress.  Immediately, my skin could not breathe.  If there is one thing I can't wear here in Brisbane, it is any fabric containing polyester.  In Winter it had felt fine, so I didn't check the label.  If I'd realized that the dress was a polyester blend, I would have known it would be too hot on a warm day.  I stood before the mirror contemplating whether I could get through almost twelve hours in the dress.  The wedding was at 1.30pm and finished at 3pm.  The guests then had to find something to do until 5pm when the reception began in a ritzy nightclub in the city, some distance from where the wedding was held.

I doubted I would make it to the threatened hour of midnight, that my partner told me I was expected to remain, up until the bride and groom left.  We agreed I would take off solo at 9.30pm.  That, however, didn't solve the polyester blend dress problem.  Standing alone in my bedroom, partner long gone to attend to his son and make whoopee at a swank hotel, I had to make a decision.  I looked desperately into my wardrobe, which holds items up to thirty years old, classics too good to throw out, and grabbed a twenty-year old purple linen, sleeveless dress that I had had made by a dressmaker.  I had added some gilt edging to the neck at some stage to liven it up.  I had lost six kilograms since wearing it, but it looked okay.

I had also invested in patent beige shoes to go with the borrowed polyester blend dress, and I put these on but, as an afterthought, I took a very ritzy pair of high heeled sandals because I knew my feet would hurt.  I also took a black bolero jacket in case I felt cold.  I never did.  It just became a nuisance to tote around with me.

I arrived at the church, where I met up with my partner, feeling cool but underdressed.  It didn't matter.  All the young women were dressed to the nines and looked gorgeous.  The bride wore a very expensive gown, the material alone costing a fortune.  It was her dream dress and she looked lovely.  In fact, the whole wedding went off beautifully including the reception.  At the end of the service, however, my feet were complaining hugely, and, in the car, I changed to the ritzy sandals which let my bunions out for air.

In spite of all my preparations for the day, I ended up in a make-do twenty-year old dress.  I don't go to many events these days, but it surprised me that I had so little to choose from for this one occasion.  To be honest, I really didn't want to spend money on a new dress that I would rarely wear again.  You buy something for an occasion, and it ends up staring at you forlornly from your wardrobe for the next ten years.

I have tried, over the years, to accumulate a wardrobe that can cope with any occasion that arises, however, life changes and fashion changes.  Even when I think I have classics in my wardrobe, I find they have begun to date.  I've pulled out jackets that I think will do just fine after years of not having worn them, only to discover they have shoulder pads, are too loose or are too 'something'.  Some things stand the test of time, but most do not.

That's not the worst of it.  There are things that, at seventy, I do not feel right wearing any more.  My body is still slim, but I don't feel right wearing a halter dress that shows a lot of my upper back.  There's nothing wrong with my upper back, but I'm seventy.  The really, really galling thing are my arms.  The part of me I thought would never age have creases running vertically down the upper arms.  I will still wear sleeveless dresses, but I just don't get how these lines happened.  My mother was plumper than me and she didn't have them.  I figure that my slimness is the problem.  You really just can't win with age.  The lines are there, not too obvious yet, but they're working on it.

When I watch television and stream movies, I see some very beautiful older actresses who have had plastic surgery.  They look great through the years as they maintain their tweaks and tucks, but then, a little too much tweaking and their faces look startled and gaunt.  Fat departs from the face and botox freezes features.  There comes a time when too much is too much and you have to learn to be your age but, no matter what, you have to be cool, and I'm not going to hide my bad bits.  I shall wear them with pride or, at least, pretend to.

END.

AM I LAZY OR JUST TOTALLY UNMOTIVATED?

 

Image courtesy of Shannon Wheeler.

Is there a fine line between unmotivated and lazy, or does one just lead to the other?  Honestly, I don't know.  I do know that when I have something to do or undertake a project, I go at it full pelt.  Having something to do motivates me.  Finding something to do, however, now that I'm retired and don't have to work, is difficult.  At first, I'd try to find useful things to do to fill my day and, not finding enough, had guilt trips.  What is the point of living if you're not contributing in some way?

This line of thinking became rather tiresome and just led to anxiety as well as to the mindset of digging my heels in and not wanting to do anything, because I was pressuring myself too much.  I've pressured myself all my life and I'm fed up with it.  When am I allowed to do absolutely nothing without guilt?  I know that if I did manage to, I would go stir crazy with boredom anyway.

I will not consider taking up cleaning my house to Good Housekeeping standards to justify my existence.  That is mind numbing stuff.  I do the basics, I'm tidy and hygienic but that is all.  Dust and I, for instance, barely acknowledge one another.  One day when my six-year-old grand-daughter was visiting, she flung herself on our loungeroom ottoman.  To my absolute amazement, a cloud of dust rose up around her.  Her mother was witness to this fantastic sight and so I resolved to vacuum it without further ado.  Every now and then, I also put my glasses on when I am indoors and see the layers of dust on my furniture and force myself to wipe every surface.  It always surprises me when the dust comes back.  It's funny stuff.  You just don't really see it in the air, but it's there.

It occurs to me that it is difficult to do absolutely nothing when you are at home as it is seen as lazy as opposed to being relaxed.  In order to get away with it, one must really be on vacation or on a trip.  This way, sitting around reading a book all day or watching television is condoned.  After all, you're on holiday.  I don't really have the funds for either lately so I must do these things at home, where I will be judged.  Vacations and trips can also prove taxing if you are travelling and must move from one place to the other and take organized tours.  These require effort.  It's an effort that I'm absolutely prepared to take if it's an excursion to the Greek Isles or the Pyramids in Egypt, but not if it's bus trips to places of total disinterest domestically during which people might decide to have singalongs between towns.

I have written about boredom in other blogs and also about hobbies.  In truth, the only thing that really interests me is writing and, sometimes reading, if I can find a good book.  The latter is also difficult.  I have taken to borrowing books from the library again in the last six months. I have read many good books in my time but finding one lately is becoming a quest.  I have read the newly released novels of two well-known crime writers and been appalled.  It is as if they are now being ghost written.  I know this can happen, as I've spoken to a woman who worked in publishing.  I was expressing to her my surprise and disbelief that a particular author managed to bring out a new novel every year in time for Christmas.  I was also amazed that he hadn't died of old age.  She told me that publishers often employed ghost writers to fill in the novels of best-selling authors after the authors themselves wrote the whole plot line.  The ghost writers copy the author's style and fill out the manuscript.

No wonder then, that it's hard for new authors to get a break in the industry, especially as publishers must compete with the internet and online publishing.  Unfortunately, although that resource allows new authors to publish, we miss out on the marketing and advertising that publishers take on for an author.  It is expensive and that is why we want to be accepted by them in the first place.

When I go into my local library, the newly released novels will have little stamps on them like, "Staff's top picks", meaning the library staff.  Most of them also boast, "New York Time's Bestseller".  When I come to that last one now, I go straight past the book.  As sure as it has that label, I will hate it.  I can't believe the dross I have picked up in these last six months.  I have read in this time a couple of new, young female authors, who are both listed in their blurbs as having done creative writing courses at elite universities.  I could tell within the first chapters they had undertaken writing courses as their writing was formulaic.

This isn't sour grapes.  Good luck to them for being published, but I don't want to read what they write.  It was also immature and fit for Cosmopolitan Magazine fiction.  I have, happily, found one author whom I really like.  Kate Atkinson is an English author who can go off on so many tangents, with so many well drawn characters, that I completely lose myself.  I've read five of hers in a row now and need a little break.  I'm also running out of her novels.  A novelist needs to have a unique voice, not one gained from doing a writing course.  There is no template for a novel.  The rule basically is that it needs to have a beginning, a middle and an end with a resolution.  I'm sure some novelists have played with these rules, but then, it depends how artfully they do it.

I've been told by a literary agent, who I phoned for advice, that my latest novel is, 'too long'.  My thoughts are, 'Well, how long is a piece of string?  As long as it needs to be."   She said, "No, it's the publishing costs".   Apparently, that wasn't a consideration with Tolstoy's, "War and Peace", or Margaret Mitchell's, "Gone with the Wind".  Going over one hundred thousand words is not a good idea these days.  Also, she told me that one needs a social media presence and followers.  At this point, I decided to stick with Amazon Publishing.  I'd already reduced the manuscript by thirty thousand words, and I wasn't reducing it anymore.

There is a book I recommend reading regarding Artificial Intelligence and writing and it is, "The Well of Lost Plots" by Jasper Fforde published in 2003.  It is fantasy fiction but very relevant today where AI is writing essays and business letters and the like for people.  In "The Well of Lost Plots", authors are at risk of losing their jobs because a computer program will take over writing novels and the people of BookWorld, a world inhabited by characters from fiction, must fight to save their own lives.  That's a very loose explanation of the plot, however, the novel is very clever and, I thought at the time of reading, very far-sighted.

It is, therefore, also hard to be motivated when I see writing that I personally find uninspiring being published because it will sell easily.  There is also a lot of dross on the Amazon Book site but, because of its sheer size, there are also many good books.  I'm sure many people read the books on Amazon with covers showing men with six pack abdomens and adoring women draped around them, but there are all sorts of novels, including the classics.  Don't always go by the star ratings.  I think people get paid to pump up ratings and some very odd novels have five stars.  You just need the patience to peruse the millions of books on the site and sort the wheat from the chaff.

I now return to my quest to motivate myself into useful occupation or enjoy the sheer abundance, and lack of it, of choice in retirement.

END

HUMANS, THE HIGHEST LIFE FORM. SERIOUSLY!

Apartment Block in Huangzhou, China, housing 11,000 to 22,000 people

Most creatures on this planet spend their lives fighting for survival, but there is one exception - humans.  We consider ourselves to be superior to all the others based on our ability to reason, communicate, invent and have dominion over the rest.  However, in direct contradiction to all this cleverness, is our determination to drive ourselves to extinction.  It is worth noting that no other creature on the planet shares this death wish.  We are supposed to be blessed with foresight, but to all appearances, we aren't using it as we breed ourselves out of existence.

While we turn a global blind eye to population and ignore exponential equations and extrapolation, clever, socially isolated scientists and billionaires are working on ways to send humans to colonize Mars and even further afield.  Firstly, would you really want to live on a barren red planet?  Secondly, there's no place like home and, thirdly, those scientists and billionaires aren't planning on taking a whole lot of people with them.  Can you imagine eight billion people fitting into, say, five to ten space vehicles?  No, you can't.  The resources required to achieve it, let alone in time, simply don't exist.  For such a huge population, the idea is simply unfeasible.

So, let's grow up and stop blaming the burning of fossil fuels, et al, for climate change, shall we?  Those fossils fuels are being burned to sustain the energy needs, industry and travel needs of eight billion people.  The number of cows farting out methane is also based on the number of them being bred to feed the non-vegetarian humans of this world.  Let's also consider the rocket launches, and their associated fuel use, to send satellites into space to feed our addiction to mobile phones and the internet.  Aren't you just a little bit amazed that when a news bulletin shows you images of people in war torn parts of Africa (also courtesy of satellites), where the fleeing residents and rebels are equipped with mobile phones even though they are, apparently, poor?

I also see, via news reports, young, healthy, properly clothed (that is, not in rags) African men overloaded in boats crossing the Mediterranean to escape to a better life.  Some boats include women and children, of course, and some are genuine refugees, but access to the internet in these countries has, I believe, given the people in these poorer countries, an idealized view of life in Europe and elsewhere.  Europe is buckling under the deluge of them.  It is one thing to help immigrants, it is quite another to create economic chaos in your own country so that your own people will need to flee it to get work in the long run.

At base, this comes down to massive overpopulation as well.  Of course, there is a struggle to survive in many African countries.  It's because it is overpopulated and there is also massive corruption.  The overseers of such countries may appear on the media in their tailor-made suits or military uniforms loaded with braid and masses of medals, but no one is actually doing much of anything and that is why they are always having coups, which keep Medecins Sans Frontiers busier than a department store on Christmas Eve.  Coups also just take power from one bunch of corrupt politicians and gives it to another.

Now, getting people to breed less in Africa is a very big ask and I don't really need to spell out why.  China and India really need to get their acts together and address their population issues, by which I mean, they need to make a plan to stabilize their populations.  It will require rigorous education programs, incentives and financial disincentives.   All countries should do the same thing before it gets to the very unpleasant situation of people killing each other for food.

If you don't see that happening in the next thirty to forty years, remember that you are supposedly the species at the top of the evolutionary scale and you have foresight.  I have had people abuse me on Facebook when I have responded to posts regarding population.  I have been moderate and have only suggested people think about where the world population is heading, suggesting couples do not exceed three children.  No one wants a one child only policy, such as the one that failed in China.  I have had women telling me off, saying they can have as many children as they want, it's not my business.  Well, yes, it is my business.  It's everybody's.  They don't live on another planet, and I share this one with them.  The worry is that these people, who do not think of the world they are creating for their offspring, are the ones creating more just like them.

I'm not a dictator, I can only suggest that people think.  It is circumstances that will eventually dictate to us as a species.  Do you think that, if you were invited on one of those rockets taking a very few to a space colony, that there wouldn't be a hierarchy?  It sure won't be Utopia and no one is going to let you breed more than the oxygen supply will support.

I know this is a contentious post but I'm just SO tired of hearing about fossil fuels being the reason for climate change.  The latter is the follow on, the result, of sustaining a population that really can't afford to grow bigger until it finds a more efficient way to produce energy.  Even if we do, do you want to end up living in a high rise such as the one shown on Facebook the other day in Huangzhou, that houses up to twenty-two thousand people?  Do you want the whole world to be as crowded as China and India?

Do you want to crowd the planet so much that other species become extinct? Oh, sorry, that's already happening.  Do you want to beauty of this exceptional planet to be sacrificed for our not very exceptional and transient species?  I'm just grateful I've been able to live here while there is still magnificence left.  If you dream of living in a totally artificial environment to the one that you evolved to fit, go for it, but please leave this Earth intact.

END

SEVEN DAYS A WEEK.

 

Image credit: Pinterest - author unknown (emulating Charles Schulz).

As I come to terms with my recent retirement, one day at a time, searching for meaning and losing track of what day it is, I came to wonder why a week is seven days.  I did a little research, although I had an inkling that the Torah and then the Bible may have had something to do with it.

It seems that our seven-day week arose in Mesopotamia some four thousand years ago.  I quote from: Chronicles of chronology: The power of seven,” Economist, 2001-12-20: - 

"The Sumerians … worshipped seven gods whom they could see in the sky. Reverently, they named the days of their week for these seven heavenly bodies … For the Sumerians themselves, seven was a very special number. They conceived of a seven-branched Tree of Life, and of seven heavens … In spite of all that, Ur’s seventh day was not holy. On the contrary, it represented danger and darkness. It was risky to do anything at such a time. So it became a day of rest. Ever since the time when Abraham trekked westward from Ur, Mesopotamian influences had helped to form Hebrew traditions."

 My guess is that the Sumerians concept of time influenced the Hebrew Bible's creation story, and the Christian Bible.  No other religions' creation stories limit it to seven days, or six, if you will, plus a day of rest.

Anyone acquainted with the Christian bible knows about its version of the creation:  it starts with, "In the beginning", and goes on to say that God took six days to make the heavens and the Earth, and on the seventh he rested.  It doesn't say why God decided to create the universe and, apparently, he didn't have a beginning, which implies that time only started to exist when God took up the hobby of Creation.

With time, however, civilizations imposed the names of their own gods on days of the week, once seven days became the norm.  I could go into how each day of the week came to get its name in English, French or German, etc., but basically, they can all be traced back to gods, Roman, German, Norse and so on.

It is interesting that other segments of time, such as a month and a year, were not defined by the religious aspect but by the natural movement of the Earth's rotation around the Sun and the moon's rotation around the Earth.  That's what makes the number seven, a unnatural choice for a segment of time.  But woe to those in history who have tried to change it by making the 'week' longer, from the Egyptians to Napoleon.  They did not have long term success.  The seven-day week is, to my knowledge, now globally accepted and religion doesn't come into it.  Well, it does, in that different religions have different days of rest, but still incorporated into the seven-day allotment.

What I was also contemplating about the week, was the different feelings each day of the week elicits in us.  Each day has a different vibe for each of us for personal reasons and based on life experience.  I think that we all have favourite, and not so favourite, days.  This is, no doubt, because of the pattern of life, work and recreation that the seven-day segment of time creates.  I also feel that we pace ourselves according to this arbitrary slice of time.  Songs are dedicated to certain days of the week and the emotional effect they produce in us.

Monday has a bad reputation simply because it's the start of the working week, but it does motivate us.  We glimpse the shining lights of Saturday and Sunday in the distance and work towards them.  "Rainy Days and Mondays (always get me down)", by the Carpenters pretty much sums up most people's attitude to the poor benighted day.

Tuesday manages to keep its head under the radar of being typecast as we settle into the working week and put at least one day behind us.  Wednesday, I have only recently discovered, is known as Hump Day.  We've reached the top of the hill at mid-working-week and can now coast downhill.  Thursday we're almost at the finishing line but not quite.  There is a restrained sense of optimism about it, but by Friday, the horse has broken into a canter, and nothing will hold it back.

Friday has always been, Thank God It's Friday, even if you aren't religious.  It's like a fever that's broken after the 'flu.  It's time for whoopee.  

As a child, I loved Sundays.  Saturday was the weekend too, of course, but Sunday seemed special somehow.  Dad would drag me off to church on that day regularly, but it was our time together.  My mother was a Church of England but, basically, just Christian.  Dad, on the other hand, was the product of a devout Irish Catholic mother who died before I was born.  Dad was, simply, the nicest man on the planet in my estimation, and that remains my opinion to this day.

Once home, he would read the Sunday paper and would give me the comics section from the middle.  I would read this as I lay sprawled on the living room floor from the age of five.  Sunday would roll on in its salubrious and unhurried way and Dad would usually end up mowing the lawn, then napping on the sofa.  We would usually watch a matinee on television after lunch in winter.  In summer we might go to the beach.  My mother was a fabulous entertainer and, often, Sundays included guests to a barbeque that Dad cooked on the patio accompanied by salads, baked potatoes in their jackets and ratatouille cooked by Mum.  All this would be eaten overlooking the beautiful bay of Pittwater north of Sydney.

These were the happiest days of my life, and so I rate Sundays as my best day of the week.  They were also filled, eventually, with sadness as I had to return to my hated boarding school on Monday for the week until Friday and, for me, these days were a torment until I left school.  I no longer attend church on Sunday.  Nature is my church, and I haven't found one with as much God in it as the small one at Mona Vale, on the northern beaches of Sydney that Dad and I attended together.

It's now hard enough for me not working weekdays let alone trying to remember what day it is.  A rhythm has been removed from my life that I found quite satisfactory.  It's good when things have a beginning, a middle and an end.  It gives one an anchor, a map and a destination.  Time may not be tangible, but it sure feels like it, forgive the pun.  Perhaps that's an interesting thing to note about human nature; we can take something abstract and give it form.

I'm now trying to find something to fill the form.  I had a pattern to my life but now I need a passion to work on.  When I find it, I'm going to apply my pattern to it again so I can get my rhythm back.

Wish me luck.

END 

DREAMS: THE BRAIN'S SCRAPBOOK.

Credit: Dreamstime stock image

I am amazed at what my brain gets up to at night.  I'm also astonished at how creative it is.  Sometimes it comes up with amazing art and sculpture that I wish I could remember and recreate when I am awake.  It also creates places that recur regularly, with variations, in my dreams, and others that are exotic places I have never visited but must exist somewhere in some reality because they are so extraordinary.

I often wonder if we exist on different planes and visit them in our dreams.  I know one thing for sure, I travel in my dreams, which is just as well as I haven't traveled anywhere interesting on this plane for ages.

Many people don't remember their dreams, but I do.  I have the equivalent of a movie marathon every night and the plots are all different.  My dreams sometimes include my parents, who died many years ago now.  In these dreams I find them together, living in a different place each time.  Some places are variations of houses they did live in or of an apartment they once lived in.  I realize that they are dead, but in a living sense, when I am visiting them and glad to be able to spend time with them.  Sometimes they will take me on a vacation overseas or a cruise.

I often dream of my son when he was young.  In these, I am usually trying to protect him from something, or I am carrying him.  Whatever occurs, I am enjoying him being small again.  The major recurring theme of my nightly movies is my childhood home, which I loved.  I am so often there that I sometimes think that I have returned, and my parents haven't yet sold it.  A strange variation of this is that they have sold it but have remained as caretakers until the new owners arrive.  When this happens, I am trying to persuade them to buy it back.  One of the great regrets of my life is that they sold this house in its beautiful surrounds when I was in my thirties.

Last night I dreamed of it again but this time I saw a sign showing a future development with three, six-storey apartments was to be built on the huge block of land next door, which also overlooks the bay.  In fact, homes have been built there, but the land was subdivided into large blocks and the houses suit the surroundings.  In my dream, these had been bulldozed to make way for the units.  I was beside myself with horror but knew I couldn't do anything about it.  In the meantime, such is the way of dreams, I saw my first koala in the wild (as opposed to a zoo or wildlife reserve) in our huge jacaranda tree and was trying to take its photo.  I know from Google Earth that the tree is no longer there, but my dream is true to my history living in that spot.  The dream moved on from there to something involving possums and park rangers, with me trying to help them before I woke up.  I actually have never seen a koala in the wild even though, by odds, I should have as I live in Australia.

I have travelled to London a few times in my dreams, and once in actuality.  It's not that I am particularly impressed by that city.  I'm not, but recently I dreamed of a London that was fantastic.  It was obviously in the future and the buildings, roads and bridges, that I observed during my taxi journey to wherever I was going, were futuristic and stunning.  My inner designer and architect absolutely gob smacked me on this occasion.  If I could actually be this creative, I'd be rich and famous.  I'm not, but my brain sure is.  This leads me to wonder how my brain does this.  There are two potential explanations: 1. There is another plane of existence, and I am seeing an alternative reality, or, 2. There are parts of the brain we cannot usually access that are more creative, intelligent and that possess foresight.

I speak of foresight because I have had three definite premonitions during my lifetime.  I rule out coincidence because there is no way, in these three instances, that it could have been, nor were they based on fore knowledge.  One dream occurred when I was fourteen.  I dreamed of an event that made the news, and I dreamed about it before it happened.  I heard my father discussing an accident involving astronauts with another man outside church one Sunday and I almost froze to the spot.  When we were alone, I asked dad about it and when it had happened.  It had occurred three or four days after I had dreamed it.  I was really shocked.  I told my father about the dream, and he just said the something along the lines of: "You must have heard about it and forgotten."  I assured him I hadn't.  In fact, I was at boarding school during the week and didn't get news.  I also remember the dream, which was visual and upsetting.

The accident had occurred at Cape Canaveral on January 27, 1967, when there was a flash fire in the Apollo 1 crew capsule during a launch rehearsal and the three astronauts died.  My dream was slightly different.  I saw a rocket on the launch pad that was just starting to launch but failed and fell over sideways to the ground.  I knew the three astronauts in it were dead.  Then a little boy started to run toward the rocket, from where I was visualizing this, crying, "Daddy".   I also had no idea there was going to be a launch and, while the dream wasn't exact, it was timely, the rocket was on the launch pad and three astronauts died.  You can imagine me, at fourteen, never having had a premonitory dream and finding out about it from the discussion of a news item.  Needless to say, I never forgot.  

The second premonitory dream occurred in my thirties   and wasn't newsworthy but personal and stunned my husband when he found out.  He and I had separated for a few months and then got back together.  We were heading to his friend's place, who I also knew, but hadn't spoken to during the separation.  I told my husband on the way there that I'd dreamed that his friend had turned his carport into an enclosed room and written computer programs on the walls.  My husband was driving and actually turned quite pale.  He looked at me stunned before telling me his friend was starting up an I.T. business from home in his converted carport.  I managed to creep out my husband on a few other occasions with predictions I just got from 'vibes' rather than dreams.

The third involved our break-up and I won't include it.  There were others, not as memorable and having had these dreams, I'm not sure I want more.

In my youth through to my twenties, I would have a recurring nightmare that I was on a beach with my family and a huge wave was coming and we had to run from it.  There was no way we could.  I hated this dream and, thankfully, it hasn't repeated for decades.  The year before the 2006 tsunami, I had a tidal wave dream three times in a year.  It was different because I escaped the wave in the dream.

Another dream a lot of people have in common is that of needing help and trying to run, but not being able to, or to cry for help, but can't.  About twenty years ago, during a dream, while trying to scream for help, I finally managed to, but really screamed.  Ever since, I have been able to talk or scream out loud in my dreams.  Apparently, I could wake the neighbourhood.  Interestingly, since going off an antidepressant three years ago, I've stopped yelling.  I'm told that when I did, I sounded like the girl in The Exorcist.

I love flying dreams; that is, ones where I am able to fly, where I lift of the ground and float above everyone.  Every now and then, this dream convinces me I can fly and I'm very disappointed when I wake up.  My two least favourite dreams do recur with variations.  One involves toilets, the other Funnelweb spiders.

Toilet dreams involve me either having to go to the toilet where I am visibly seen or, even worse, using a really, really disgustingly dirty toilet.  The Funnelweb spider, one of the world's deadliest, is native to Australia, particularly around Sydney and its surrounding suburbs.  My childhood and young adult home was in Church Point near the Northern Beaches of Sydney.  We had Funnelwebs in garden rockeries and occasionally, one would wander across the yard at night when looking for a mate.  I dream that they find their way into my bedroom.  We try to kill them but there are more.  Happily, none ever got into my bedroom but, enough said, they terrified me and now, more so, in my dreams.  They are big, black, hairy and aggressive.  Also, happily, there is now antivenom for them but I now live in Queensland, which is free of them, except for a variety on Fraser Island (now called K'gari).

Dreams are completely out of our control to manipulate, and I'm always surprised that, night after night, they can surprise me with new plots.  I may be getting tired about the routine and ho-hum of everyday life and less excited about the things that used to excite me, but my dreams are capable of new and refreshing takes on life every night, sometimes scary, mostly not.  What I have learned, however, and it's taken me this long to realize it, is that a full moon brings nightmares with it.  I put up with these as long as I get the trip to the otherworld of my imagination, the side of me I do not know and who has a remarkable talent for inventiveness.  Either that or it's taken on an interesting twist on psychoanalysis.

END

HOBBIES, OR HOW TO BE BORED PRODUCTIVELY.

The top of my faux Marquetry box

When I was a child, I found it easy to keep occupied.  If I wasn't at school, I would play with dolls, play make-believe and draw prolifically.  Outside I would do headstands, handstands and cartwheels on our expansive lawn.  The rest of the time I was up our jacaranda tree, which had four trunks with numerous forks to perch in and pretend I was in a castle.  I climbed this tree for years, hung from its branches by my arms or legs and never, not once, fell from it.  We had another jacaranda, but it was larger, with a single trunk and not suitable for climbing.  It was too big and, when I did venture up it, I would receive large welts from hairy caterpillars that burned and stung.

As I grew, I started roller skating on our, also, expansive concrete areas.  We had no fences in our neighbourhood and I would skate over to my cousin's house two doors over.  We did build a billycart to ride down the concrete driveway that led to the road by the bay, but it was long, steep and somewhat perilous.  We would also hike through the lantana to the abandoned house next door on the other side of our property.  We never encountered a snake but often ended up with ticks.

My father gave me an old box brownie when I was seven and taught me how to develop film and make prints in black and white.  I gave that up some years later when I was given an instamatic. 

The sad thing about adulthood is that, apart from drawing and photography, most of the activities I undertook are the preserve of children.  We must find other ways to occupy ourselves in our leisure time when we grow up.  Many people turn to creative pursuits, while others challenge their bodies with exercise, hiking, climbing, biking and different sports.

I'm not that into sports, although I love tennis and want to take up golf again.  The trouble is, now that I'm retired, I have to fill every day.  When I became an adult, I discovered that I had a propensity to extreme boredom, to the extent that I can be bored while actually doing something.  Plenty of people can be bored while they are working, but that depends on their job and the same goes for me, but I have to be really involved in what I'm doing to not experience boredom.

As such, over the course of my adult life, I have attempted numerous creative pastimes to fill the void in my leisure time.  Of course, if I am travelling somewhere, I am never bored, but I lack the money these days to go anywhere different often enough.  Only writing and travelling assuage my boredom.

The other day, I was pondering just how many crafts I have tried in order to find my passion.  I believe I started shortly after I married with macrame.  Then I tried string art.  I made a few nice gifts with these but then gave them up.  I also tried my hand at pottery.  It didn't excite me one bit.

After that I completely renovated a house: making curtains, wallpapering, painting, putting laminate on bench tops, making vanity units from scratch (former husband is a dab hand at carpentry, as his father was one, and he taught me the basics).  I tiled a floor and the kitchen wall above the benches.  I should have stuck with renovating, but I wanted a proper job.  Pity, we sold the house for twice what we bought it after one year and I did most of the work as husband was at his job.

Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I had become very good at drawing and portraits in pencil thanks to having a father who was an artist.  In my twenties, in order to get into a college to study Industrial Design, I did two extremely good portraits in pastel as they wanted an example of my artistic ability.  Strangely, they never asked to see them.  I got into the course, but soon dropped out, however, I still treasure the two portraits, one of which I have and the other belongs to my former husband.

Why, you ask, didn't I continue to do more?  Because I am like a Mexican jumping bean and can't settle.  Besides, I wanted to write, and it still took me ten years to get around to writing my first novel.  When I became pregnant, I took classes in watercolour.  I have really never been into painting.  I also tried floristry.  I should include sewing as a hobby, but I have been able to sew since I was a teenager, making some of my own clothes, and this has continued throughout my life.  I also used to knit.  I love knitting but I have jumpers, both bought and made, that are thirty years old because in Queensland, although it can get cold, it does not get thick jumper cold often enough to warrant it.

Through the years I have tried decoupage, folk art and fake marquetry using paint.  This has left me with some nice bits and pieces.

I have made simple loose cushion covers for chair seats and, after that, took the bit between my teeth and reupholstered the seats of my parents' dining chairs.  This required disassembly, new webbing, fabric, cording and a staple gun.  I was very proud of this achievement but don't wish to make it a pastime.  I have eyed my armchair recliner that needs recovering but, having read the mechanics of disassembly, don't want to lose my fingers or wreck my back.  This will have to be a job for a professional.

A reupholstered dining chair

Most recently, since retiring, apart from looking for lucrative, or any, employment, I have tried to learn a new craft so that I can sell something alongside my partner at craft markets.  He has become a masterful leather worker and makes truly beautiful leather handbags for men and women, wallets, and belts.  I feel ashamed that I cannot channel myself to a task with his sheer concentration and all-consuming passion.  He has learned everything he can and will work into the wee hours of the night.

In my quest to sell something beside him at markets, I have tried putting images on candles.  There are two ways to do this.  One way is easy if you can find the right materials, but then the plastic on which the image is printed may give off harmful fumes when the candle burns.  It looks great though.  The second way involves printing the image on tissue paper and attaching it to the candle using a hair dryer or a heat gun to melt it on.  No fume problem here but watch out for your hands under the dryer.  Looks good, but not as good as the other way.  I now have a surplus of white pillar candles.

Next, I learned how to make lampshades.  Not just to recover lampshades, but to make them.  This took some research and Youtubing, and then the more difficult task of finding a certain product to stick the chosen fabric to in order to stiffen it.  It turned out that this wasn't a cheap hobby, but I have two beautiful new lampshades for my exquisite Chinese red, ginger jar shaped lamps bought in Hong Kong forty years ago.  Making lampshades to order, however, may prove problematic, and I'm still thinking about it.

My lampshade

Meantime I have made three little, simple leather frog stuffed toys for my grandchildren.  They managed to damage a cotton one I had that they played with, so I copied it in leather and stuffed it with rice.  I've also sold two at markets, but they are very unwieldy to make.

The list of things people take up as hobbies is endless, and one person's passion is another person's yawn.  The list of hobbies is endless but the ones I haven't tried, I wouldn't want to try as I've thought of every possible one so far and ruled out those that don't appeal to me.

I'm taking a short break from hobby seeking to push my latest novel to literary agents and publishers.  I really need another house to renovate.

END

RIBBIT