REALITY SHOWS: of artifice, botoxed babes and voices that could cut glass.

 

Illustration courtesy of Gary Brookins politicalcartoons.com

All right, I know there are people out there who like reality television shows.  Good luck to them for having something on their sets to watch when there isn't a good comedy or drama scheduled.  I'm not one of them but I'm still fascinated by their appeal.

I first heard of reality television or its precursor, the infomercial, just over twenty years ago when I was holidaying with my mother in Port Douglas in Queensland.  This was a rare treat as we had never had a mother/daughter holiday before.  I was still reasonably attractive at that time, even a little 'glam', and my appearance drew the attention of a married couple who were sitting around the hotel pool one day.  We exchanged greetings and started chatting.  It turned out that they had something to do with producing shows for television, I can't quite remember in what capacity, and asked me if I'd heard of infomercials.  I had not and they went on to explain that these were a long form of advertising in the form of entertainment.  They said a lot more than that and more succinctly but that's the gist of it.  They went on to say that they thought that I'd make a good presenter on such a show.

Well most people would have said something sensible in response to this that might have landed them a job.  Not me, no.  I remember thinking to myself 'how ghastly' about the notion of such a show and, although I don't remember my exact reply, I'm sure it wasn't as enthusiastic as it should have been and they did not follow up with an offer of employment.  If I'd had a brain in my head at the time, I should have gushed about the idea.  I had, after all, been a model for things such as hotel brochures, newspaper advertisements and the like when I lived in Hong Kong.  I'd also appeared in television advertisements  when I moved to Perth.  Deep down, however, I did not like the idea of advertising as entertainment but I confess to being disappointed at the couple ignoring my disinterest and not offering some work.

For some years after that I waited for infomercials to make their appearance on television.  It took a while and I can't remember now which Australian made version of such a show came first that would fit the infomercial category, but I think it would be The Block.  I have to confess to never having watched it, but because it promotes the use of hardware and like materials I figure that it rates as an infomercial.  Even if it doesn't mention a product's brand name, it undoubtedly encourages people to renovate, which in turn sends them to their local hardware store.

The type of shows that followed it were not in any way what could be described as infomercials and I haven't heard that word again since the nineties.  Survivor and Big Brother followed and they weren't trying to sell anything.  In my mind the only thing these shows helped to sell were advertising slots for the stations that showed them.  What they also accomplished was to help television stations comply with the percentage of Australian content they were obliged to broadcast.

I can understand if you criticize me for writing about shows I haven't actually watched but I have watched as much of them as I could stand in the beginning except for Big Brother.  The commercials for Big Brother alone were enough to turn my stomach.  I was simply appalled such dross could make it to our screens and some of it was morally questionable to even the most open minds.  I've watched commercials for the most recent Big Brother and it seems to have lost the seedier aspect of the show but I'm still not going to watch it.

Most shows of this type now fall under the heading of reality television.  Shows such as Masterchef, Dancing with the Stars, Big Brother and Survivor fall into this category along with The Bachelor, Australia's Got Talent and The Voice.  The Block and Better Homes and Gardens probably would be considered what the couple in Port Douglas had in mind when they were planning to make infomercials.  While they are not classed as reality television but as lifestyle programs, to my mind the difference between the two is semantic.  Here is the blurb on one website for Better Homes and Gardens:

"With a total audience reach of over six million, Better Homes and Gardens is the country’s original and most successful multi-platform brand, combining a TV show, power-house print magazine, thriving digital and social platforms and dedicated e-commerce vertical, bhgshop.com.au."

So this is a show that is both entertaining and designed to sell products while the talent, survival and peeping Tom style shows such as Big Brother and The Bachelor are there solely for entertainment.  Well, some people's entertainment.  Okay I'm being derisive again but I do know plenty of people love these shows.  My son, his wife and mother-in-law do, at least Survivor and Masterchef.  A friend of mine in Sydney, with whom I was staying for a week, also made me sit through days of Australian Idol when it first aired.  I did have the privilege of watching Guy Sebastian win it.  I didn't mind it too much as Sebastian has a stunning voice and I was plugging for him to win.  I think I even voted but that was the end of my Australian Idol watching days when I returned to the safety of my reality show free watching home.

If anyone thinks reality shows aren't scripted, think again.  In my taxi driving days a few years ago I drove a couple early in the morning to the airport.  They had to be on the Big Brother set down south and they worked on the sets as I recall.  At the time the shows were live at Dreamworld but before the people who actually appeared on the show arrived and it went public, the couple informed me that other people rehearsed the scripted scenes.  So much for the reality component of the show.

When I watch advertisements for The Bachelor, The Voice or even Beauty and the Geek what I mostly catch sight of is people on the show feigning extraordinary surprise with their mouths wide open and their hands up to their cheeks at the antics of fellow contestants on the show.  With The Voice it is even more ridiculous as highly paid celebrity judges jump from their seats, arms akimbo in admiration at a contestant's talent.  It is so obviously over the top and designed for the audience that it is an insult to the intelligence.  Added to this, while some contestants may have admirable voices, they all seem to choose songs that push their volume to the limit and make them sound like a cat mating.  What happened to a bit of mellow crooning?  Do they have to flex their vocal chords to breaking point to prove they've got what it takes?  It is these feigned emotional responses and formulaic method of presenting songs that puts me right off watching the shows even if I ever toyed briefly with the idea of doing so.

I have recently seen advertisements, way too often I might add, for the latest series of The Bachelor.  In one I saw the bachelor sucking on the lips of three different women who were vying for his affection and that was in the one advertisement.  It just seemed unhygienic and how can people on these shows actually show natural emotion after they're placed in the ideal position, the lighting set up and then the cameras start to roll?  It's so fake it's mind boggling but apparently I'm a cynic.  Or perhaps viewers get a laugh out of it.  I suppose that makes it entertainment.

On a final note, and this applies probably only to me, I have a problem with the 'strine (Australian vernacular for those who don't know the expression) accent of some of the people on these shows.  I am Australian and, I believe, no snob.  I just hate the accent and hadn't heard a strong one until I met my future husband, his family and friends.  I must have lived in a pretty isolated community.  His family and friends assumed I was snooty, which I wasn't, but my voice apparently cast me as such.  It's a common Australian attitude I've discovered that the more roundly spoken are considered snobs.  It's known as the tall poppy syndrome and I can tell you that it's enough to make you a snob because you are judged when you are not, in fact, judging.

I do believe, though, that I have become a voice snob.  Before the seventies the Australian accent wasn't really heard on our televisions.  Our newsreaders were roundly spoken and enunciated clearly.  Then along came Bob Hawke and the Labor government after decades of a Liberal and more elitist government.  Bob Hawke did many great things but his voice sounded like a saw hacking through metal.  Bob promoted and financially supported the Arts and Australian television and cinema.  Also great, but there was a catch.  It had to reflect real Australia.  Unfortunately and for a time, it only tended to reflect what was then termed the working classes and most of them spoke with the heavy 'strine accent.

The Australian film industry at last had some money to churn out films that they tried to sell internationally but they had little success at first because the Australian accent and colloquialisms were too strong for the international moviegoers to understand.  Besides the actors talked too fast.  How to fix this problem?  The film makers then reverted to making period films set when Australia was younger and spoke with a more British accent.  Such gems as Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Man From Snowy River were the product of this and our films began to sell overseas.

How do I know this?  I studied Australian Film and Television as part of my Media and Communication degree.  There was even a period called the Ocker Period in Australian films, ocker being another term for the Australian accent.  These were the films made with the Australian vernacular that flopped.

Okay, that was a long side track.  The point I was going to make before going on it was that I hear too much of this vernacular on our reality shows.  Pretty women with botoxed foreheads, plumped up lips, tattooed eyebrows and voices that could cut glass.  Yes, I know other Australians probably couldn't care less but it makes me wince.  Have you noticed how many well known Australian actors have become internationally famous?  Yes there's Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and many others but when they appear in films in the USA or the UK they take on the accent of the country in which the film is set.  Only occasionally does our accent pop its head up and when it does, it can be quite appealing but not when everyone in the film has it.  Only Paul Hogan got away with it in Crocodile Dundee but that was because the whole film revolved around a very lovable Australian larrikin and his 'strine was part of the story.

Don't judge me too harshly.  I'm immensely proud of what Australia has achieved in its television and film industry.  I'm just terribly sad that it doesn't promote more rounded speech as much as it allows the heavier and less melodious accent run rampant.  I can live with both but I'm afraid Australian children only hear more articulate speech on shows that come from overseas and, frankly, I don't want them to sound American or copy variations of the British accent.  The Australian accent can be very pleasant when it's not over the top or the words all slur together when it's spoken too fast.

I doubt if I'll ever change my mind about reality television shows but enough people like them to keep the industry coming up with more and more of them.  It seems that, like Cricket, I just can't escape them.

END

 

 

 

 

FUSSY EATERS: the bane of a cook's existence.

 

I remember not being a particularly fussy eater as a child.  I believe the only problem with me was that I didn't eat much.  This may have been because I wasn't very well until I was about five years of age.  After my antrums were drained my health was restored but, judging from childhood photos, I remained a string bean.  Boarding school made me a fussier eater but hunger drove me to eat all but the most gross offerings.  These included beetroot and junket.  To this day I can't stand either.  I gave beetroot a good try when it was served with salad three days in a row at lunch.  I forced it down the first two but on the third I gagged too much and gave up.

I hadn't run into a fussy eater until my son came along.  As a baby he was just so easy care he was a dream and remained that way in all but one respect.  He was a fussy eater.  Once he went onto solids there was a repertoire of foods he would stick to and from which he would not vary.  These were: eggs, sausages, fish fingers, corn on the cob, salami, cheese, noodles, bananas, ice cream and spaghetti without sauce.  He did eat cereal with milk and may have eaten toast, I can't remember.  Straying outside these lines just wasn't worth it as he would just stubbornly refuse to open his mouth.  I told my doctor about it and he said that my son was getting enough protein and sustenance and not to worry.

I would give my son his dinner early when he was young and cook for my husband and I and we would eat later.  Eventually son developed a liking for my Spaghetti Bolognese, a passion he retains to this day now he and his wife make it.  We lived in Hong Kong when he was between the ages of two and five and a half.  We would take him with us to restaurants and one of my favourite memories is of watching him eat a bowl of noodles with chopsticks.  His head would be just above table height and he would use two hands to stick the chopsticks into the bowl then bring the sticks together and grip them in one hand, raise them up high with their clump of noodles, bend his head to the side and then lower the noodles into his mouth.  He enjoyed doing this and didn't want help.  To me it remains a sign of his tremendous self reliance that has endured and I admire to this day.

I remember being five years old and having breakfast with my parents.  My mother, father and I would sit at the dining table and eat poached eggs on toast.  I used to have cloudy apple juice to drink with mine.  I would watch fascinated as Dad would cut the egg that sat atop his toast into nine squares by slicing two lines one way and another two the other way.  This left the nice, soft, runny yolk sitting on the middle square and that was the best bit.  He always did it this way and for years I did too.  Over time, however, I realised that to get some yolk with the other parts of the egg I had to be less tidy and after that I carved mine up so I can get some in every mouth full but I am still nostalgic for Dad's method.

As I grew older my father would become very frustrated watching me eat a roast dinner accompanied by vegetables.  Dad would put meat with gravy on his fork, add potato, pumpkin or whatever and then squeeze some peas on it as well.  I ate everything separately.  One night he took my fork over and made a compilation and asked me to try it.  I did and went straight back to eating everything separately.  Mum told him not to worry.  Eventually I ate the way of adults.  It all comes around in the end.

This brings me back to son.  There is something particularly galling about trying to encourage your teenage child to try some salad with dinner.  Once he began to eat the same meals as we did, I would put out salad with certain dishes like spaghetti or steaks and urge him to try.  I gave up pretty quickly and the salad remained untouched by him for years until one day when he was about fifteen.  We were eating and, all of a sudden, son puts some salad on his plate and, lo and behold, begins to actually eat it.  I gazed at him in wonder and said, "And when did you start to eat salad?"

"Oh, I tried it at a so and so's place," he replied.  I can't remember his friend's name now, hence the 'so and so'.  I was pleased I suppose, but also a bit miffed.  What had so and so's mother or father done to make salad so appealing?  My thought is, however, that it wasn't the appealing look of the salad but the fact that another teenage boy was eating it.  I think that was why he deigned to try it or was shamed into it and then discovered that he liked it.

The worst experience his father and I had making him eat was on our return journey from living in Hong Kong when he was five and a half.  We arrived in Perth, Western Australia on a weekend.  Now Perth was a bit backward about opening anything on weekends and that meant we had to rely totally on the kitchen of our upmarket hotel to feed us.  I think the chef was deeply insulted at having to create dishes for our son that were to be delivered to our room.  In fact we didn't want him to create anything.  When we ordered an apple and some cheese that's all we wanted but, not only did it take an hour but what arrived was a cored apple with cheese grilled in the centre.  Guess who wouldn't touch it?  We sent a message: simple please, no embellishments.  Next time we ordered a bowl of spaghetti noodles.  Please don't add anything.  Either the chef was brain dead or toying with us.  He melted butter over it and then ground fresh parsley on the top.  Again son starved as he wouldn't touch it.  I think he survived on milk the entire weekend.  There was simply not a shop open where we could buy him anything.

I also spent years trying to get him to spell properly.  You know how parents have to go through the spelling exercise at night with their children on the words they are learning that week.  This went on into high school and, brilliant as son was in most subjects, his spelling was never perfect until year four of high school and then suddenly it was.  I will add here that I was a brilliant speller from the get go.  Son, however, was like a chrysalis in regard to things such as food and spelling.  At some stage he just emerged from the pupa and did it properly.  Actually I think he just made the decision to do so and before that happened he just went with the flow.

Having a child is like being handed a self drive car that comes with absolutely no instructions and is designed to be self autonomous and take no passengers.  First you have to figure out what fuel it takes, and it spits quite a few types out, then you must maintain it until it can start its own motor and begin to steer itself.  Having then put your heart and soul into looking after it until it reaches self sufficiency, you then watch it putt putt off into the distance and hope it comes back to visit.

Of course it's not just children that sometimes prove difficult to feed.  My ex husband had a grandfather who used to demand a roast lamb dinner every night of his married life from his long suffering wife.  Apparently he put her in a mental home for a few years but she eventually returned home.  He was eccentric and my guess is that he had driven her to a nervous breakdown.  It's not always the nuts who end up in the nut house.

I live with a Polish man and have for many years.  He is lovely in so many ways and so utterly perverse in others.  So many meals I used to make are now off the menu as he simply refuses to eat them.  I ask him what his ex wife used to cook and tell him to get the recipes.  But it's not just that.  In his world and his past he could open the refrigerator door and find all manner of goodies to eat.  You know, pre-cooked meals and so forth as well as smoked meats, sausages and cheeses.  It never occurs to him that food goes off and also that it costs money.  My fridge always has the necessities but I'm not going to keep it fully stocked with different meals to fancy someone's hunger pangs at any hour of the day or night.  When I dare to ask him in the morning what he wants for dinner so I can get something out of the freezer to cook he grumbles.  I then tell him that he's lucky he doesn't have to go out and hunt for something to bring back to cook.

As for Polish food, some is good and a lot of it is not.  I recall a meal at his friend's house that began with an entree made up of a boiled egg around which was wrapped a herring, both of which sat on a potato, carrot and pea salad in mayonnaise.  As for Bigos, well it's basically a hunting stew that, in the past, you would keep adding to as time went by.  Modern versions have smoked sausages, pork and I honestly don't know what else but it always tastes distinctly suspect to me.  My partner will bring things home from his ex's house that she has kindly cooked.  We all get on famously.  I love her pirozhki and some of her desserts but some things I leave to him to consume and there is always so much.

He also loathes lamb.  I think they used to get mutton in Poland that wasn't very good when he was growing up and nothing will make him eat it.  There is also one other thing I simply can't get him to try and that is a prawn.  I don't much like fish but I love crustaceans.  A prawn does not taste like fish but he just says they are the cockroach of the deep and won't touch them.  I love lobster too but when I realise some are boiled alive, I'd have to be pretty sure they were killed humanely.  Even so they can live to be one hundred and I would just feel like a spoilsport if my desiring to eat one cut short a long life.

My partner also just goes off things at a whim.  One moment he'll like my curry, the next he won't.  I make a pretty mean Chili con Carne but, no, it's too spicy and besides, like Bolognese, there's tomato in it.  He hates tomato in cooked dishes and there aren't many stews and sauces that don't have it.  My one staple for him, pork rissoles, he decided the other day I was making too thick so he formed the patties next time I made them.  They were just as thick but smaller in diameter.

Now I come to my grandchildren.  The eldest boy lives on not much but noodles and wraps, sometimes with chicken in them.  Oddly they all love my Spinach Pie.  Granddaughter likes Taco boats with sour cream and she also likes noodles.  Youngest grandson isn't picky yet but I'll bet you anything he'll like noodles too.  The Chinese really came up with a winner there.

Children usually grow out of their choosiness but I am blessed with an adult who is like a child but he makes up for it in other ways.  Aren't we lucky to be able to be so choosy?  Imagine if we had to hunt and grow things to eat to survive without any farmers or supermarkets to help us.  Also imagine the time when humans ate what they caught raw.  Apparently cooking food led to us being smarter but what on earth made us so picky when we have so much choice?

END

 

 

UPROOTED: longing for a long lost home.

The view from my home when I was a teenager after the pool was put in.

I was born in a place as close to being paradise as you can imagine and it has been a serious liability to me.  I don't for one moment regret it but it has had a curious and irreversible effect on my aspirations.  You see, I didn't develop any until after I left it.  Nowhere else has come close to what I felt for my home and nothing will ever live up to it.

People may come from less appealing surroundings or even hardship but at least this makes them strive for something.  It's like a rocket booster to thrust them onward to better things.  I didn't want to strive, I just wanted to stay put.

I count myself as very fortunate that I came from, not only beautiful surroundings, but also a happy home.  From the time I could perceive and think I fell in love with the nature and beauty around me and reveled in it.

My grandfather, my mother's father, bought a large parcel of land situated overlooking Pittwater, a large inlet of the Pacific Ocean thirty kilometres north of Sydney, Australia.  

The land sloped down to the water through bush and tall eucalypts and had a north easterly aspect.  Our house was built on land my father bought from my grandfather.  It was higher up on the slope than the house my grandfather built and had, in my opinion, the better view.  Over the bay we could see Scotland Island to the left, which protruded like a headland, and further out over the bay to the right, the headland that contained both suburbs of Newport and Clareville.  The bush and trees were so dense on these that the houses on this headland only peeped through the foliage but at night the lights from them sparkled like stars.

A narrow, sealed road runs along the bay beneath our land and leads further into Church Point and onward to Kuringai National Park and also West Head.  It is single lane in both directions and only a couple of metres from the water.  There is a small rock wall of sandstone a couple of metres from the road that is barely a metre high and at which the water laps at high tide.  At low tide the water can recede up to fifty metres exposing sand and some mangrove aerial roots.  At Christmas however, there are king tides and it was always a thrill when the water would come up to the bitumen and sometimes encroach on it.

 At night I would lie in bed and listen to the musical sound made by the masts and rigging of the yachts moored on the bay and some nights the moon would cast a glorious path over the water.  Happily my bedroom window had a bay view and also a door that led out to our patio.  There was one annoying street light down below on the road that, although at least two hundred metres distant, would shine into my room.  I did have a blind and would pull it down.  I loved the darkness even as a child and to this day I loathe street lights that intrude into any bedroom I occupy.  In fact I am annoyed by the fact that street lights near houses aren't turned off at night.  Now I know this isn't practical for safety reasons but that doesn't stop me feeling that civilization is intruding upon nature and the natural peace and darkness of the night.

These days, if I look at a photo of the view that once was mine it does look lovely but no photo can do justice to the scene.  The bay's mood would change throughout the day because of the angle of the sun on the water that either sparkled or became varying shades of blue depending on the time of day.  The sound of insects filled the air and the various greens of the bush and trees, the lantana, the smell of frangipani and the bush itself created an incredible palette for the senses.

As I faced the bay standing in front of our house, to my left was another block of land that ran the whole distance down to the road below.  On it there was an empty house that had been built many years earlier and was called by the neighborhood children 'the haunted house'.  It was owned, so we were told, by a Papua New Guinea plantation owner.  It was built of dark, purple brown bricks on a foundation of beautiful sandstone blocks.  It wasn't easy to get to as it was surrounded by lantana that surrounded the house and also most of the way down the hill to the road.  We had many fun excursions through that jungle to the house undeterred by snakes and spiders.    In fact, we never saw anything dangerous although we knew they were there.   We were fearless and, as an adult today, I would never have the courage to do the same.  Other local children had left chalk drawings on the bricks but nobody went inside as it was fairly secure.

When I reached my twenties the haunted house property was sold to a retired airline pilot who subdivided the land, thankfully into large blocks so that the natural beauty of the area remained intact.  He demolished the haunted house and used the sandstone blocks as a foundation for his house, which he built on the block he had designated for himself closest to the water.  I was grateful, however, that the land had remained a jungle throughout my childhood.  It had been completely taken over by nature and was a playground for our imaginations and adventures.

Our property had a long driveway that went down to the road below.  At first it was a dirt track but was later concreted at great expense to my parents.  We even had a little boat that we could take down to the water and go out on forays into the bay.  It was a dinghy with an outboard motor as my father was never into sailing as so many in the district were.  I'm with him there; I loved our boat.  Sail boats just seemed like work to me.  You can fish from a dinghy and explore.

We also had a driveway leading up to the road above the house.  Until I was about eight years of age, the road ended at the top of our driveway until one day the council decided to extend it about one hundred metres.  This required cutting upwards into the hill and then it finished in a cul-de-sac.  This also had to be cut into the hill and a great cutting into the orange clay made up its upward side.  Houses were built precariously above this and a driveway also extended from the end of the cul-de-sac on either side of which other houses were built.  The one on the lower side was built further up above where the haunted house had been.  Many years later that house went for a trip down the hill thanks to rain and the unstable clay.  Another house was built in the same spot on the land but with a very wide, concrete open drain built into the clay above it.  I saw it on a visit to my old home although I don't remember if it was after my parents sold up or earlier.

When this extension to the road was planned the council did something I could never forgive and made me, if I wasn't already , an ardent greenie.  I used to try and estimate which was the tallest gum tree in our area.  One was on my uncle's property next door and one was at the top of our driveway where the cutting was to be made.  We were informed the tree was to be taken down and I was, all eight years old of me, furious but there was nothing I could do to stop it.  When it was brought down I salvaged a large thick piece of its outer trunk.  It was at least 45 centimetres long and 20 wide.  I kept it in my cupboard for years until my mother, an obsessive tidier upper and thrower outer, threw it out.  She'd do this kind of thing when I was away at boarding school.  She threw out my teddy bear and another dear stuffed toy when I was away and in my teens.  I never forgave her for it.

The good thing about the cul-de-sac was that it was on a hill and was just great when we reached our teens and had bicycles and would launch ourselves down the road.  One day my girlfriend and my male cousin started off from there.  Now the road, Bakers Road, was two way, although narrow, and had driveways going off to houses along the road.  Some of the driveways went uphill to the houses on the high side, some downhill to the lower houses.  Well my cousin lost his brakes and yelled out to warn us and we followed him with our hearts in our mouths.  Bakers Road is one steep hill and went all the way down to the water but there was also a road at the bottom, the one that curved around and met our lower driveway.

My cousin made the brave decision to head up an uphill driveway to stop his descent but, unfortunately, a few metres up it, a gate was closed blocking it and behind that a parked car.  My friend and I watched horrified as my cousin hit the gate, went up into the air, did a somersault and landed on his back on the car.  Happily and amazingly he didn't break any bones although, to this day, he has a very bad neck.  I don't know if that had anything to do with this incident but I had also witnessed him fly off a cemented area into lantana beneath it on his tricycle years earlier and disappear.  He was nothing if not resilient.

My parents sent me to two different boarding schools during my youth.  One was a primary school in the leafy suburb of Wahroongah.   I cried for two weeks but eventually got used to it.  I would go on Monday morning and come home Friday afternoon.  I was there for two years and then I was sent to a school overlooking Sydney Harbour, or part of it, for high school.  I had a bad dream about it before I started and it was right.  I hated the school with a passion for six years.  It was also weekly boarding but nothing would convince my parents to let me go to a local school as a day pupil.

It was situated overlooking Rushcutter's Bay in the wealthy eastern suburbs and looked directly over the bay to Bellevue Hill with its many apartments and houses that were older in style than those of the north shore.  I found the view distinctly inferior to that of my home.  I liked to look at trees and bush.  It also smelled because of the smog that settled so heavily over the city in the sixties.  What I really resented most was not being home.  I loved everything about my home.  Oddly my mother did not.  I don't know to this day what her hang up was but she was a depressive and generally unhappy without knowing the cause.  She had a good life but I think lacked purpose in spite of her many friends.  I have very few friends to this day but as long as I have nature around me I'm fine.  Sadly that didn't work for her.

After leaving school I was encouraged to go to University but, having been so miserable at school, I had developed no direction.  I studied Science for a few years and dropped out then sat around at home thinking what to do next but no one would let me take time to think.  My parents encouraged me to do a computer programming course.  Apparently my presence wasn't appreciated in the house and it never occurred to them the damage that had been done by keeping a psychologically distressed teenager in the wrong environment against her will.  I had had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder badly since I was six and eventually panic attacks.  I'd coped at the first school but not the latter.

I did the course and worked as a programmer for nine months, decided it wasn't living, dropped it and agreed to marry my boyfriend of four years.  Harsh as this sounds, he was my friend and the only chance I had for peace and to heal.  We had a son and divorced after fifteen years but I am eternally grateful for those years he gave me to become whole before the marriage fell apart.

When I married, naturally I left home and that was the hardest thing of all.  It isn't that I was a natural homebody, it's just that the place was magic.  I truly had been in love with my environment since I could remember.  My husband's work took us interstate and eventually overseas and we lived in some decent houses and owned a couple but I could never feel anything for them.  To me they were suburban boxes with no view and fences.  There wasn't a fence in sight where I grew up.  The houses I lived in were also close to one another on grid like streets and had no soul but they were comfortable.  My old home wasn't at all grand, just comfortable and reasonably large but it was the surroundings that were exceptional.  Yes, I was spoiled and terribly grateful for having grown up there but the sad thing is that nothing else could live up to it.

Over the years I would go back and visit my parents of course who were now relieved to have me off their hands, their one and only child.  They also loved their grandson who was able to see my old home until he was about four.  We were living in Perth when my parents gave me the news they were selling the house.  I was dumbstruck.  I think Dad needed extra money to retire and they liked the idea of starting afresh and to my horror they chose Perth, a place I had come to loathe.  They didn't like it either and two years later moved south to Dunsborough, which they loved.

I don't remember when I last saw my old home.  When my parents owned it I came and went thinking it would always be there to go back to.  There was a time I saw it for the last time not knowing it would be the last.  It's probably just as well or my heart would have broken then and there.  I had always thought I would at least inherit it.  If I had wild horses couldn't have dragged me from it.  It is well out of my price range now and I wonder what I would do if I suddenly won enough money to buy it back.

Something tells me it wouldn't be a good idea.  A home is not just a place, it's a time.  It's the people that surrounded you and the times you had there and it was the most wonderfully close neighborhood in the golden age of the fifties, sixties and even the early seventies.  I am just incredibly grateful for what I had, even though it wasn't exactly mine but in a way it is because it is part of me.

END

FUTURE IMPERFECT: the eroding effects on the mind of the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

Picture courtesy of The Guardian

Here I sit on a cold and wet winter's day during a global pandemic and wonder what life holds next.  I may no longer be in my prime but I wasn't planning to be dead any time soon.  I used to feel that I had up to twenty good years left in me based on my family history; okay, those family who haven't turned their toes up young.  In fact, I was setting myself the goal of doing better than my forebears.

When I wake in the morning these days, however, I am finding it increasingly difficult to feel any sense of hope or optimism.  At night as I attempt sleep, I chide myself for this and think of those people around the world who have worse things to contend with as well as a pandemic, which sits like a cherry atop their other miseries.  I think of the refugees from Myanmar, the children starving in Yemen and the refugees from Mozambique and so on.  All of this suffering comes from the actions of lunatics pushing their own vicious or greedy political agendas without care about the families caught in the middle.  So many of the perpetrators of these little wars are young, fanatical or opportunistic young men who are guided by older, slyer and more jaded ones.  Women are probably involved in there somewhere too but mostly they are being violated in some way or watching their children suffer.

I really shake my head and wonder how fanatics can carry out their agendas during a pandemic?  I guess the point is that they are fanatics and all else pales to their vision of utopia.  God forbid what that might be after they've made life a hell on earth.

Do these thoughts about the suffering of others make me feel better about my own situation?  Well how could such thoughts make one feel better about anything?  In answer to this question, no they don't.  It does though, help me put my feelings in perspective but someone else's suffering doesn't reduce one's own unless one is a sociopath or sadist.

Before I lost my job to Covid, I retained hope.  I long ago ran out of money due to divorce, having Chronic Fatigue and other factors but I live comfortably enough.  When I got over Chronic Fatigue I found a job that provided me with a living and, when I reached pension age and worked part time, what my job gave me was the possibility of affording a vacation or something to look forward to.  It also kept me busy.  That is now something completely off the table.  I don't own my own home and am enormously grateful to this country for its social security that gives me a pension.  It's not where I envisaged being at this age, having come from a reasonably privileged background, but I've taken some pride in being able to take it on the chin but I'm not taking things on the chin as well anymore, which rather surprises me.  I thought I was made of stronger stuff.

It may have to do with the way this last year and a half has panned out for me on a personal level.  If you, reader, have read any of my other blogs, you may know I took a year to come off an antidepressant I'd been on for thirty years.  I also caught pneumonia.  When I first caught it the clinic that I visit to see a doctor wouldn't let me in as I had a fever so I went off for a Covid test.  At that time I wasn't particularly worried and, when the test showed negative I just stayed in bed and waited to get well assuming it was 'flu.  It was my son who eventually called an ambulance.

Since then I've had two viruses and had to have a Covid test each time.  Both times I have been very nervous and upset that the results would be positive.  Neither were but I sure didn't feel good and the wait for a result each time played havoc with my nerves.  I don't even know how I got the last virus given the precautions I take and that is a worry in itself.

That's one of the big problems about this pandemic, it's shredding our nerves.  There are some people out there who don't worry or simply don't believe there is a pandemic and that it's all a conspiracy.  In a way I envy them.  If I'm going to get Covid, I'd rather just not worry about it first but I think this year has taken its toll on me and I can no longer stop worrying.  My mood sometimes improves but, with any new concern, it plummets to new depths and this is becoming a concern to the point I am considering going on another antidepressant.

I am, of course, I suspect not the only person whose mental state is deteriorating.  When I told my general practitioner doctor that I was feeling more optimistic a few weeks ago after having my first vaccine shot, she said a lot of her older patients were too.  The virus has obviously been preying on the minds of those of us who were anticipating a couple of more decades of life.  After my last virus, post the vaccine, I began to lose that hope again.  If it was only a rhinovirus, it was a beauty.  I didn't have a fever, blocked nose or cough.  My lungs were fine too.  I had a mighty sore throat and just felt as if I had the 'flu.  The thing is, I've had a 'flu shot.  If the virus made me feel this bad, how capable am I, even vaccinated, of dealing with Covid?

Perhaps I am being a wuss but I'm rather tired of being sick or feeling unwell.  I am really wondering how other people are feeling mentally at this time.  It isn't easy on any of us but I also wonder how many people are keeping their fears to themselves.  I have sometimes, when wearing a mask to the shops, had people come right up to me and talk to my face.  I figure that these types are not big worriers.  They also can't take a hint.  I remain pleasant but wonder where their heads are.

The old saying that ignorance is bliss is true.  It's become so that I really don't want to listen to the news on television at night and hear one more thing about Covid or vaccinations.  I see it on the internet but can skim past.  I take in the rudiments and the latest local figures and move on.  The television news, however, just won't let it go.  For the last sixteen months we've been fed a diet of Covid related news.

I yearn for the day when I never hear another mention of Covid and I'm sure you do too.  I yearn for the day I can shop or got to a cafe or restaurant without worrying and for the time I can travel again, even though I really no longer have the funds.  I'll just take a road trip to anywhere and enjoy the scenery.  I long for the day I can look forward to thinking I may see my grandchildren reach adulthood.  I just long for another day.

END