MEN AND SHEDS.

 

There will come a time when your man reaches the age when he disappears into his shed all day and only emerges for sustenance.  It may happen when he's twenty-five, it may happen when he's forty or when he's sixty something.  Don't let it worry you.  Consider it this way: if he's in the shed and at least you see him at meal times, he's not found another woman to amuse him.  You may occasionally want to see him but at least you know when you can find him.

We don't need to live in one another's pockets when we commit to each other for life, but we all need our space and this is his.  Do not go in and try to rearrange it or touch his things.  This is his kingdom, his castle and a female no go zone.  It is only fair.  You may even find he is creating extraordinary things in his domain.  I know my man is.  He sure spends enough on equipment to create his masterpieces but at least I know where the money is going and see the sense of achievement on his features.  You may even get to see him grow in his craft.

Some men retire after busy working lives and have no idea of what to do with themselves.  I know women retire too but we are better at finding repetitive, useless household chores to do.  Men have overlooked these all their lives and I wish I could do the same.  Housework to me is not a sign of achievement.  If your man, therefore, finds a hobby in which to immerse himself in his domain then great because, for one thing, he won't be picking on your house keeping.

Being in his shed also allows him to retain a very important part of himself, which is his single, pre-committed self.  Every one, male and female alike, needs to keep a part of them that is just for them.  We are single entities who are born alone and die alone no matter who we connect up with on the journey and it is important to be comfortable in one's own company as well as to interact.

I pity men who live in apartments and whose only version of a shed is their parking garage, if they're lucky enough to have a lock up one.  Of course some flats have only on street parking.  I can't even begin to imagine what kind of man can cope without his own space in which to dream.  Going out all the time to find other ways to amuse oneself becomes very expensive.

Some suburbs have community Men's Sheds where the guys can get together, work and exchange expertise.  These places often have tools, both manual and electric, for the members to use.  It is interesting to note that there are no Women's Sheds, as yet, that I have heard of.

I am going to make a sexist statement here but I believe it is true and it is a facet of men that I admire:  men can channel and direct themselves to one task without anything disturbing their concentration.  Of course women can too but, I don't believe, quite to the same extent.  Try getting a woman to do this without thinking about other necessary things she should also attend to while men don't even let these considerations disturb the ether in which their brains exist.

I have a theory about this that I may have written about before.  I believe it became embedded in our genes through the historic behavior of the sexes.  Women became confined to certain tasks because they alone could get pregnant.  You can't go hunting in the latter stages of pregnancy and so hunting became, pretty much, the male's domain, while being confined to the hearth, gathering nuts, berries and watching the children, became the female's, whether she liked it or not.  Now hunting requires concentration.  The hunter sets his mind on his prey, stalks it and follows through with the kill.  He doesn't stop to gather berries or admire a pretty sunset or contemplate the meaning of life, he just does what he has to do.

Women got to multi-task, even though those tasks were boring and demanding.  Keeping your eye on children requires considerable multi-tasking as you attempt to do the other things you need to do.  Programming women's minds to do one task alone just wasn't going to happen but, I believe, it did to men's.  I think we should just enjoy and admire the differences that have developed, after all, variety is the spice of life.

The other good thing about sheds is this:  the initial passion for sex will gradually diminish no matter how loving a couple is and, in order for their commitment to survive, they must find other outlets, both singular and apart, to remain interesting to one another.  If one finds an outlet and the other doesn't, this is sad.  Not all of us have it within us to find an interest or hobby.  My mother used to like entertaining and brought people to the house.  My father was an artist and worked alone but benefited from my mother's social interactions because he met new people through her.

Sadly my mother developed dementia and could not longer pursue her greatest passion, which was to read and, eventually she could no longer entertain, although her friends did not desert her.  During the day, however, she was at a loss as to what to do.  During this time my father never lost pace in his studio cum shed and phoned me (as I lived interstate) concerned with how to alleviate my mother's growing depression.  He was such a clever man but he didn't see what he needed to do.  I had to tell him to put one or two days per week aside just to give my mother something to do: take her for a drive, a picnic, see a movie.

He then learned how to cook for her and do all those little things that had always been her domain and he enjoyed it.  He would even phone me and share recipes he had discovered.  Her version of the shed, the home, finally became his but he didn't resent it.

I remember my father's fabulous ability to direct himself to one task to the exclusion of all else and so wish I had his passion but he didn't fail my mother when he was called upon to partially relinquish it to take care of her.

If your man is happy in his shed, even if you only see him a few times a day, leave him be.  At least he'll still be there for you in a crunch and you for him.  You don't need to be glued to each other to be in a happy relationship; you just need to know the other is there and that you care about each other.

END

PRESCRIPTION DRUG DEPENDANCY AND PARENTS: why they are similar.

 

When you are frightened but have reached adulthood, are so far into it in fact that you have grey hairs and your parents have died long ago, who do you turn to allay your fears?

The wonderful thing about being a fortunate child is being able to rely on adults who love you without question.  Life never really replaces the feeling of security you felt at that time.  They are there for you, nurse you when you are sick, feed you and provide you with shelter.  You learn to trust them implicitly and don't even think to question that trust, because they looked after you from the beginning when you were a helpless blob of no earthly use.  There are many children now and throughout history, who have not known such parents and that sense of support and I truly feel for them.

I don't think I've ever really recovered from my childhood because I was one of the fortunate ones.   When I was ill last year and later when I convalesced and thought I would never get better, I turned to my son for support and to unburden myself of my emotional fears.  He may be forty plus but I didn't feel right about this as it's meant to be the other way around.  In fact I felt pathetic no matter how good he was about it, but deep down inside me there was this vacuum where I was flailing about seeking something or someone because I was frightened and still am.  I realized pretty quickly what that vacuum was;  it was my parents who were long gone and the feeling of safety they gave me.

Even if harm came to me as a child, I had unwavering trust in them.  Whatever happened I knew they were there for me and would do everything they could to help me.  Now, without them here to be my advocates, I have to do it all myself and have for decades even when they were still around for emotional support, which is vital when you are ill.  You need it to help assuage your fears, for advice and just to know someone cares.

One problem is that the older you become the more redundant you also become.  If I were to die tomorrow my son and those who love me (and there aren't many of those around any more) would be sad but not devastated.  My son has children now and I am on the downward side of the peak of my life.  I hope I have many more years but it's me who cares most about that now.  There are no parents left whose hearts would break and my son and his family would mourn a bit while getting on with living.

Don't get me wrong, I don't expect for a minute to be mourned the way a parent mourns their child, that is the nature of things.  It's just hard becoming redundant when I still have the heart of a child, when I have been cossetted and treasured, when I still want to hold onto life in the same way.  I am not redundant to myself.

My last year has been peculiar to say the least.  When I had Pneumonia everyone was concerned even over the two months it took to recover from it.  Before that, however, I was weaning from a long term antidepressant and still am ten months on.  The illness came smack in the middle of this and it was hard to tell if it was Pneumonia still making me sick weeks after I left hospital or weaning from the antidepressant.  It's now six months since my illness and I still have bad days as I continue to wean but it's so hard to tell which is causing me to feel bad.

For the other people in my life, putting up with a person who is distressed for ten months has become tiresome.  I do my best to cover it but it's not easy coming off an antidepressant and it also, obviously, has psychological repercussions.  I don't feel the latter have been too bad compared to the physical but I do know I feel hopelessly overwhelmed.  I also know I am irritating those closest to me.

I feel like a complete wimp.  I have always been stalwart and strong during my illnesses, one quite severe, and always felt I would bounce back.  This behavior is uncharacteristic of me but now, at the age of sixty-eight, I really feel the need of my parents.  Perhaps the absence of the antidepressants has affected me more than I realize.  The thing about being old is that you become the senior.  There's really no one much more senior who is up to the task of being the mentor, the wise one.  The older most people get the more they need care and support so we have to turn to the younger ones who have their hands full of children and making a living.

Hence, while I'm still able, I have to paddle my own canoe through these rough waters and tell my troubles to my much younger doctor.  While what I say next may seem arrogant it is true.  I am highly intelligent.  I spend a lot of time trying to understand what is happening to me and to read everything I can on the Internet about withdrawal.  There really isn't enough out there but what I do have is experience of prescription medicines and how badly the wrong type of antidepressant can kick you about.  My doctor's solution to improve my energy again is to put me on another antidepressant when I'm fully off this one (which was discontinued).

Do you really think I want to go through experimenting with new ones to find the right one?  The wrong ones can really have very adverse effects.  I know I've been there.  I don't want to feel worse before I feel better but I believe my energy won't come back for a long time after thirty years on this drug without resorting to another antidepressant.  I think this is the reason I feel such a need for my parents again; it is because I've been reduced to the helplessness of a child in a no win situation.

Every time I lower the old antidepressant the teeniest bit from its already teeny amount, I feel physically lousy again.  I will have to be fully without the drug for at least two weeks before I can even go through the hell of experimenting with a new one.  Ten months into this horror I don't know why I'm as sane as I still am.  The rest of the world is dealing with Covid-19 while I am dealing with this while trying to avoid the virus as well.

I know I'm far from the only person going through their own particular brand of hell this year.  Covid-19 has compounded everybody's problems.  When I think about it, it has also thrown other major problems into the background because everything pales into insignificance in the face of it.  But we all still have our individual, important problems in the midst of this all consuming one.  It's a real shame we can't all give one another a great big hug and weep together as if we were each other's parents.

I am beginning to see the similarity now between my parents and my antidepressant.  I relied on them both and they bolstered me both psychologically and physically.  I needed both my parents and the pills a lot more than I realized and, while I will always miss my parents, I would really love to be free of my reliance on this drug, which I didn't think I needed anymore until I tried to get out of its grip.

END 

AUSTRALIA DAY: One nation, many peoples.

 

It's Australia Day again and once more we must brace for those who rail against celebrating it and try to spoil it for the rest.

Yes, I agree that the twenty sixth of January, 1788 was invasion day for indigenous Australians.  Eighteen years earlier, on April 29, 1770, Captain Cook had landed at Botany Bay where he and his crew looked around a bit then sailed north, looked around a bit more, foundered on a reef, repaired their ship, sailed north again and, before waving a not too impressed farewell to Terra Australis on 22nd August, 1770 planted the Union Jack on Possession Island, not even the mainland, to lay claim to it and the mainland in case Britain could come up with a viable use for it.

Indigenous Australians were then left in peace for another eighteen years while Britain made up its mind about what to do with such an apparently barren, far flung continent.  It seemed a shame to waste it but it didn't really provide them with the military tactical presence it needed to guard its trading routes and holdings in the Dutch East Indies.  Finally, however, some bright spark at the higher levels of the Public Service thought it might be a dandy place for a penal colony.

Never before did a place with such an inauspicious start become such an equitable, fair and successful country.  In the beginning and for a long time afterwards the true Australians were not treated at all well, to the extent that there are actually no original Tasmanian aboriginals left.  We can assume that not all settlers treated the indigenous people badly as not everyone is a raging, imperialist racist.  There are always fair minded people but, in general, indigenous Australians were considered, as were most people of colour around the world in the British Empire, to be not quite human.  Some proved themselves useful to the invaders, others were mistreated and still others slaughtered wholesale.

Let us keep in mind that it wasn't just the Aboriginals that the British authorities treated badly.  They treated their white prisoners appallingly as well.  Some governors of the penal colonies were better than others but the authorities in Britain, not caring for the encouraging letters sent home by released prisoners, wanted to discourage people from committing crimes so they too could, after serving their sentence, start a new life in a sunny, wide land of opportunity so they sent increasingly sadistic governors there.

This nation was once a set of scattered penal settlements run, basically, by upper level Public Servants who couldn't make the grade in Britain.  No wonder they were ill tempered.  Finally the colonies began to become self-sufficient, nay, to flourish and become self governing.  Indeed they no longer wanted to be tarred with the brush of being penal colonies and, on 10th January, 1868 the last boatload of prisoners arrived.

On January 1, 1901 Australia was federated and became a single, self governing nation but it wasn't until 1962 that indigenous Australians were allowed to vote and it wasn't until 1976 that Aboriginal Land Rights came into effect.

The situation was inequitable in the extreme but, over time, the invaders gained maturity and realized their many mistakes in the treatment of indigenous Australians and have been rectifying those mistakes and will continue to do so.  Surely now is the time to unite as the single people we should be.

There isn't a country on Earth, save New Zealand, that has not been overrun, invaded or conquered and, in New Zealand's case, it was simply because it had no human inhabitants when the Maoris settled there.  The land that is now Australia is one of the more recent cases of foreign incursion and, perhaps, that it why its indigenous inhabitants aren't ready to let go of their anger and who can blame them?

It must be considered that there is no way that the continent, would have remained undiscovered as technology advanced and transports became faster, mankind discovered how to fly and even reach for the stars.  A worse nation than Britain may have claimed Australia.  It is, I believe, fair to say that two hundred and fifty years ago, with the stiff competition in trade, discovering new territories and warring between themselves, the countries of the northern hemisphere were not kind to each other, let alone the peoples they discovered in these lands and who didn't have to ability to fend off incursions by technologically advanced invaders who viewed them as uncivilized and backward.  Slavery and abuse of these peoples was rampant and continued even after slavery was abolished by the British in 1833, the French in 1794 and the USA in 1865.  Despite this indigenous Australians were used as unpaid labour in some industries until 1960.

It would be a rare nation that is comprised of just one race of people.  I can't think of one.  Since mankind began its journey out of Africa millennia ago and some settled in Europe, others in Asia and still others in the Americas, certain racial characteristics developed.  As continents shifted and weather patterns changed people have had to change locations to find food and that often meant invading settled territories.  The races that had developed started to mix it up with other ones and so it has continued.

I have always thought it is amazing that, until now, there have remained at least four distinct races.  I will use the Wikipedia definition to name them: Caucasoid (White), Mongoloid (Oriental/Amerindian), Negroid (Black), and Australoid (Australian Aborigine and Papuan).  One definition also includes Bushmen/Hottentots.  I believe that over the next couple of centuries, thanks to global travel and the greater enlightenment of human beings, the lines between the different races will blur significantly due to intermixing.

I have watched Australia change since I was born in 1952 from a majority white country to a multi-racial one.  I admit that lately I think that this has been going on too fast.  My reason for this is not racist but culturalist, if there is such a word.  Australia has developed an identity in the two hundred and fifty years since white settlement.  It is, apart from its past treatment of Aborigines that it is now very aware was wrong, a fair minded and equitable country.  I have watched a generation of Asian (Chinese) grow up here and delighted in how Australian they have become as have the Indians.  I am, however, perturbed when I see Arab women here clad in burkas.  I shudder at the suppression of women and am not too sure if those of an Arabic and Islamist background will take up our egalitarian attitude.  Frankly, if they don't, I'd rather they leave.  When people emigrate here they fill in a long form to ensure they will conform to Australian society, but will they?

When I worked in the taxi industry I saw young, male Indian and Pakistanis deluge the industry.  They were not immigrants but aspired to be and many were dirty in their habits and misogynist to boot, although fine looking as well as pleasant as people.  If they were to be allowed to live here permanently, I hope they would learn that certain behaviours are not welcome.  These things concern me.  Immigration must not allow a culture that has developed to be overwhelmed by those with different attitudes, it's as simple as that and I think that's why a lot of Australians are feeling the government needs to slow the rate at which it takes people in and give them time to adapt, rather than let their culture overwhelm ours.

So now the descendants of the first white settlers are feeling a bit like we're being invaded but it's only a matter of the rate at which that invasion takes place.  Australia has, thus far, benefited greatly from its multi-cultural mix as people bring the good aspects of their culture with them.  In the last thirty years the Asian immigrants have had an easier time assimilating than the Italian and Greeks immigrants of the fifties and onward.  I have had Italian and Greek people I know tell me how they were called 'wogs' at school and elsewhere and been appalled.  I didn't grow up in the kind of environment where that happened, lucky me, but I've heard it enough to know it was endemic Australia wide.

A nation is like an organism.  It is a living thing that evolves.  It is not a race of people but of like minded people of various races that have agreed on a way of life.  The white settlers who invaded and took this land from its original inhabitants have evolved to be more enlightened and decent and the Aborigines are an intrinsic and valuable part of this nation.  If the 26th January invasion hadn't happened, another one would have but apart from its original horrors, it has brought benefits.  The Aborigines might have been happy to continue living as hunter gatherers with no fixed dwellings into the present day while the rest of the world developed all manner of technology and advances in medicine.  They were in harmony with the land and may, had they been able to see the future and all the amazing inventions mankind had wrought, either have wanted them or rejected them.  That we'll never know as there was nothing wrong with a life where they had all they could eat and a stunning, if harsh, environment all to themselves.  But it wasn't going to stay the same, was it?  Never could.

If the Aborigines want the date of Australia Day changed, what date would they choose in its stead?  It doesn't change anything.  I hope they will accept that the descendants of the invaders and those of the invaded are all Australians now.  We have moved too far from the past to be disparate.   I am not responsible for the sins of my forebears but I am grateful to them or I wouldn't exist.  I am part Scot, Irish and English and that wouldn't have happened if all those elements of my make up had stayed put on their little island in the northern hemisphere.  There are plenty of mixed race Aborigines now too who wouldn't exist except for the invasion. 

I will admit to one thing that bothers me about those who want the date of Australia Day changed.  There is a victim mentality involved in this and one cannot remain a victim and still move forward.  Perhaps the best idea is to create a day for indigenous Australians that will acknowledge their grievance over the invasion but I suggest they also celebrate 26th January to celebrate they are part of a great nation that has grown up to be a fair minded and accepting country.

END 

CASHING IN OUR FREEDOM: the push to make us a cash free society.

 

Some people believe that Covid-19 vaccines will come with a tiny computer chip in it that will enable governments to control our minds.  Really, I know such people.  To them I say: no one knows fully how the brain works so how will a chip make us compliant?  Secondly, governments can't agree with one another, so how will they come up with this plan for world domination?

It is amazing what people believe but God bless their imaginations and, certainly, we do have to watch out for subversive behaviour and attempts to control us.  Why, therefore, are people not up in arms when both authorities and commercial institutions want to trial a cashless society?  Personally the mind boggles at this real attempt at control.

If your money is controlled electronically you can be, at the government, tax office or credit company's whim, cut off from your money.  You may have cash under your mattress or in a safe deposit box but, if you can't use it as legal tender, what's the point?

Did you speak up when the idea of a cashless society was put forward?  I bet you didn't.  I lost my job to Covid ten months ago and that was because the work simply dried up.  Nonetheless at every opportunity I warned my customers of allowing the government and banks to push us to a cashless society.  They didn't seem too perturbed, which worried me.  Australians are a wonderful bunch but, having grown up in a fairly ideal and fair society, they don't see danger coming until it hits them in the face.

I remember almost thirty years ago, when my parents were living in Perth, WA, the Federal government pushed for an identity card.  Everyone, including my parents, was appalled.  They even joined the march through the streets of Perth to object to the card.  I couldn't really see the problem with it because the government already knew everything about everybody anyway.  I mean people had driver's licenses, tax numbers, Medicare cards and such.  This just didn't seem such a stretch to me but I admired my parents for standing up and asserting their objection peacefully and, thankfully, the government in Australia really does pay attention to numbers because they mean votes.  The identity card never did make it through Parliament after the strenuous objections.

These days I like online newspapers and their comments sections.  When a paper was hard copy, only a few people were literate and topical enough to have their letters to the Editor printed.  I know the Editors choose letters representing both sides of an argument because my father and grand-father were newspaper editors.  Of course I'm talking about unbiased media and you have to read between the lines, but most Australian newspapers are reasonable in the letters they print expressing readers' views.

Now back to why I like online papers.  When an article hits a nerve on a topical subject there can be over seven hundred online comments and that wasn't possible with hard copy.  The editors do peruse them to make sure they are not too inflammatory.  I know this as, occasionally, they don't print what I write and I have to amend my comment.  The sheer quantity of feedback is noted by government bodies and it gives them feedback on the way voters are thinking.  I've often seen our Queensland Premier reacting after a news item generated hundreds of comments and having to change the government's plan due to popular opinion.

Take for example this last week of January 11 to 18, 2021.  A quarantine hotel cleaner in Brisbane caught Covid.   The government addresses the populace through the media stating they don't know how she caught the new, more contagious strain, but they're working on finding out.  Hundreds of comments poured in following the online newspaper article, including one of mine, that the air-conditioning was likely to blame.  The news bulletin on television that night had the government agreeing it could be the air-conditioning or balcony contact.  But everyone was taken out of the hotel fast.  That's people power.  Why no one had thought of the air-conditioning, central and pumped throughout the rooms, defies understanding, but no one in authority apparently had.

I hope you see where I'm heading with this.  If you're not worried about becoming a cashless society, please think again and, if you decide it is a bad idea, please start to object peacefully, vocally, online and by discussing it with people you know so that they might also think about it too.  When a freedom is gone, it's gone and usually only violent rebellion can restore it.

The Internet, mass communication and the electronic ease of doing things is wonderful in so many ways but everything comes with a good and bad side.  In fact the better something is, the worse is its dark side.  This is the time to protect our freedoms.  The world moves so fast now, we may lose them before we have the time to do something about them.

END

 

KEEPING OUR CHINS UP POST 2020.

Sitting here twiddling my thumbs during a three day Covid lockdown in Brisbane, Australia, a city and country both blessed with good Covid management and low infection figures, I think about the past and the challenges humanity has suffered, both self inflicted and those inflicted by nature.

2020 has, for those who have survived, or not caught Covid, been tiresome to say the least but how bad is tiresome compared to what the human race has already survived?

I am sixty-eight years of age.  That may seem old to some of you, but it isn't.  In today's world it is probably safe to say that it's just past middle age.  I lost my job to Covid ten months ago and I was healthy and going strong.  I thought, and still hope, to live into my eighties but now there is a large question mark hovering over me.  How long will this pandemic last and will I be able to avoid it?  For someone of my generation born into a world without global war, with penicillin and all the amenities I could desire, that's hard to accept and I'm trying to come to terms with it.

There are conspiracy theorists at large who don't believe in the virus and I know some of them.  I have a suspicion they hold this belief because, living in a world where most diseases are controllable and where wars occur in far off third world countries, they just don't believe this pandemic can be so potent that it has governments scared.  Many also believe it is a conspiracy by an elite, global and powerful few who wish to control the population of the planet by using a non-existent virus to fool them into behaving according to their wishes.  Hitler thought he could control the population and that his Reich would last a thousand years and it barely lasted twenty.  Good luck to anybody who tries the same because you just can't control hundreds of billions of people even if seventy percent or so have have an only average IQ.  People, thankfully, have this tendency to rebel.  It may lead to wars but you have to overthrow despots.

I am far more afraid of a teensy-weensy virus than I am of some global plot.  There is honour in fighting for what you believe in but none in fighting a virus.  It holds no beliefs, it doesn't see your sacrifice, it just wants to replicate in you.  To me that is an ignominious way to die and, even if it doesn't kill you, it can leave you extremely debilitated.

It's been a hundred years since the last global pandemic and, in between, there have been two world wars.  There's also been a myriad of other things going on but after all that time, after all the technological and medical advances the human race has achieved, we didn't honestly believe a mere virus could get us.

I sometimes lie awake these nights wondering if I've stepped into an alternate reality and this isn't really happening.  Now I've always thought of myself as a realist but even I feel like Alice who has stepped behind the looking glass.  It's so weird to think our world has been stopped in its tracks by this invisible threat that travels amongst us in our friends, people on the street, surfaces, everywhere.

Throughout world history people have accepted, until approximately, one hundred years ago, that they could lose family, young children and friends to disease.  Women died in childbirth, their children died of Scarlet Fever or any number of other complaints.  Disease was an accepted, if unwelcome, part of life.  Ether and anesthetics also made it possible to save people because surgery became possible,

For almost one hundred years the human race, at least in non third world countries, has been feeling pretty secure when it comes to viruses and although cancer and some other diseases have not been defeated, many advances have been made to prolong life and also cure people.

The last nasty virus to rear its ugly little head was HIV in the eighties, or thereabouts, but incredible advances have also been made to subdue it.  The Covid-19 virus is, however, a real wake up call.  Basically we've been thrown back in time a hundred years.  Our confidence has been shattered and, for the first time in decades, we don't know what's coming next.

This made it interesting to watch the enthusiasm around the 2021 New Year celebrations, what there were of them, as if we could leave 2020 and the virus behind us.  I really don't think so.  Even if a vaccine can halt its progress, a lot more damage has been done than just to our physical health.  We have all suffered a mental setback of some significance.  I also look at my grand-children and wonder how the memory of what has happened, from the reactions of adults close to them, to the home schooling, to having to take precautions and the concern they sense from those around them, including the media, will affect them.

Some will come through unscathed but the memory will remain and, hopefully, it will make them tougher and better prepared than we adults have been this time around.  I remember being a highly strung child and every night thought I would hear on the news that the world would end tomorrow.  I'm not kidding but here I still am.  Happily my grand-children seem more grounded than I was but I hope this extraordinary time will not leave them traumatized.  We may survive it but it would be nice to move forward with our heads firmly on our shoulders and with hope rather than to wait for the next disaster that awaits us.

I try now to look back to past generations for some inspiration and backbone, to those who survived world wars, pestilence and uncertainty.  There was even the Cuban Missile affair that had the world on the verge of nuclear war that would have probably meant the end of the human race.  We've come this far so let's hope we can go further while not doing too much more damage to our planet.  I can't help feeling in all of this that it's trying to tell us something.

END

 

MON SAC MON AMOUR - a handbag tale.

MON SAC MON AMOUR – a handbag tale.

 

"Just A Minute, I Know They're In Here Somewhere."

(This post was first published in 2014 but had mysteriously disappeared from my blog.  Having just recovered it, (much like those things that inexplicably go missing in my handbag but eventually turn up again in it), I am re-posting it.)

In Egypt in the age of the pyramids the dead were buried with possessions that they were thought to need to pay their way in the afterlife.  These things included food, money and items with which to trade.  Also included were objects that indicated their status in the mortal world.

If women today were buried according to this logic the one essential item that should accompany them is their handbag.  This alone would give testament to those things she considered essential to her daily life.  She may spend the rest of eternity searching in the bowels of this bottomless sack, but she would still feel safe in the knowledge that every item she considered necessary was in it.

These would include the basics through to emergency supplies of medicines such as headache tablets, bowel regulators, antacids, and artificial sweeteners.  As well there might be dental floss, a nail file, sun screen, breath freshener and eye drops.  A sweet for low sugar episodes is also a standby.  Make up touch ups include lipstick, cover stick, eye makeup, a comb and a mirror.

Louis Vuitton’s most expensive handbag – the patchwork tribute bag of 2007, a mere $45,000

In fact, given the number of accoutrements a woman requires when she steps from her home into the outside world, it is a wonder humans ever became mobile instead of rooted to the spot drawing nourishment from the soil.  It seems that movement from the home requires a lot of baggage.

A man has pockets.  Into these he places his wallet and perhaps a handkerchief or tissue.  He puts his pen in his shirt pocket and his phone on his belt.  That's it, the whole shebang.  But just wait until you take this man shopping.  Whatever else he's carrying he will suddenly decide you have room for in your handbag.  This will include his tobacco pouch or some extraneous item he cannot slide comfortably into his pockets.   I believe that when a man takes space in your handbag, it is essentially a return to the womb.

He is also marking his territory.  Placing his things in your handbag is much akin to a dog, forgive me, weeing on something to mark it as his.  Just be thankful he doesn't actually do that to your handbag, but instead, places an item he treasures in there for your safekeeping.

I own one handbag at a time.  While I love shoes I only tolerate handbags.  When it disintegrates, I buy another one.  It must match everything I wear and also fit my absolute requirements.  These are a slot for a mobile phone and an extra pocket on the outside for keys, comb and makeup, things I need to reach in a hurry without having to search the interior.

Going into the interior is much like going on safari.  You simply don't know where you are heading or what to expect.  Anyone putting their hand uninvited into your handbag is asking for trouble.  They may run into a sharp object or some food that has escaped its packaging and floating freely amongst the other articles.  If the weather has been hot and the owner of the handbag is not aware of the food's escape, it may turn sticky or slimy and attach itself to other unsuspecting items on the inside.

Your mobile will never be compromised by this mess as it has its own little pocket, however your tissues, wallet, glasses and business cards will all bear testament to your appalling handbag housekeeping.

Apart from this scenario a woman knows exactly what she keeps in her handbag.  She knows in which section to find an item but it may still hide in the depths of the accommodating pouch.  It is therefore necessary to grope about to extricate the object she knows, without a doubt is there.  Things have been known to go missing for weeks in my bag only to turn up there when I'm not looking.

There is only one reason a woman will not eventually find something in her bag that she knows is there.  It has been taken and the culprit will be, ninety-nine point nine-nine percent of the time, the man of the house.  When you discover his deceit he will do one of two things.  He will swear he put the item back, although he forgets that he actually didn't.  I'm sorry but what man ever remembers to put something of yours back?

Secondly he will have put the item down and forgotten entirely where it was.  There is only one way around this and that is to hide your handbag from him.  There are two reasons not to do this.  One, he will feel insulted as you are implying he is not trustworthy.  Second, it is near impossible to hide a handbag and besides you always need something that's in it as it is so essential.

I have never found the perfect handbag closure.  By this I mean how it is sealed, such as a zipper, clasp or flap.  Some handbags have none for ease of access.  The trouble is that means anyone's ease of access.  Zips are difficult to open one handed when holding something in your other hand, clasps rarely meet the other clasp to snap shut and flaps are just a plain nuisance.  My present handbag is open but also has a large zipped section and this is a good compromise.

At night I leave my bag on the floor near my bed.  I don't know why I do this except that perhaps if a burglar goes for it I can grab it.  Naturally the notion of grabbing anything from a burglar is ludicrous.  I would simply play possum and pretend to be asleep and hope he or she goes away leaving me unharmed.

Once I left some chocolate in my handbag.  That night I heard a rustling sound coming from within.  I knew who the culprit was so just reached over and tipped the bag on its side.  The mouse ran off.  This happened for two more nights until it occurred to me that there must be food in my bag.  I had the sense to remove it.  Mice really love chocolate much better than they do cheese.

My idea of the perfect accessory – actor Daniel Craig

A handbag is ready at all times to be taken with you from your house.  As such it is nothing like a human being.  Like a good boy scout it is always prepared.  I feel that my handbag is my fifth limb.  It should function perfectly and not stand out and make me look foolish in any way but blend into the whole as if a part of me that no one notices.

While I'm not interested in a handbag as a fashion item it is still an essential.  A woman's handbag is her best friend, her companion on all her journeys and her safe place.  If necessary it is also her security as she can whack someone on the head with it.  I caution against carrying a brick in it, however, as these are heavy and likely to throw your back out.

END.

 

2020: THOUGHTS ON A MODERN PLAGUE.

 

20/20 to most of us brings to mind the description of perfect vision.  Well apparently here in Australia, now that we're metric, it's been replaced by 6/6.  I was quite disappointed by this news when I visited the optometrist recently when having my eyes checked but, as the mention of 2020 will, from now on, bring to mind a disaster of global proportions, I'll settle for 6/6.

This year will forever, if it were able, hang its head in ignominy.  Its predecessor, 2019, after which the virus was named because the first infection was recorded then, will not suffer that fate because it was only in 2020 when we all became aware we were in the grip of a pandemic.  2019 is like someone looking the other way as if they were an innocent bystander to a crime rather than the perpetrator and letting the one standing beside it take the blame.  We know you were the culprit 2019, we do, and don't think that just because 2020 has a nice ring to it, we will forget.

Looking back a century to 1919 there was also a global pandemic.  Strangely it was not forever tarred with the brush of ignominy but that's because the four years that preceded it had already dished up such a serve of hideousness and mortality, that it was just the last straw.

This latest pandemic has brought out different reactions in people, ones that I doubt would have occurred in the last one.  It has brought out conspiracy theorists as well as a sense of entitlement; those who feel their rights are being infringed by having to follow government issued edicts to protect everyone, such as the wearing of masks.  These people have been more concerned with their freedoms, their right to chose what to do, than their safety.  It doesn't seem to occur to them that they are destroying the rights of others by breathing their potentially infected vapour onto them.  Perhaps they are redirecting their fear onto something they feel they can handle, such as the government, rather than facing something they cannot, death.

People all have different ways of coping but in a pandemic some of the real danger comes from those who cannot face reality.  For many decades now mankind has eradicated most of the contagious diseases and at least two generations have grown up without Scarlet Fever, Polio, Smallpox and the like.  The idea that a disease will sneak up on them and kill the young and healthy seems to be something out of history.  The sense that there is really nothing out there to worry about has also given rise to the anti-vaxxers and because such people won't immunize their children there is a recurrence of childhood diseases such as Whooping Cough.

Earlier this year my son's Mother in Law asked me if I'd had a vaccine against Pneumonia after I mentioned that I'd had my flu shot and she wanted to know if I'd had the Pneumonia shot as well.  I didn't know one existed but she did and she'd had it.  It simply never occurred to me I would catch Pneumonia.  In fact I thought it was a secondary infection you caught after the flu.  Well I sure wish I had known because, while I was flitting around during the mid-year, shopping in a mask and staying home a lot (I'd lost my job due to lack of customers thanks to Covid anyway), I caught Pneumonia.

I went to my doctor for headache tablets and the receptionist checked my temperature but wouldn't let me inside as it was high.  I had to get a Covid test first and go home and wait for the results before I could go back.  A day later I received the good news that I didn't have Covid but by then I was bedridden.  I didn't worry, it would pass, whatever it was.  Two days later my son came around and called an ambulance.  The hospital X-rayed me and told me I had a nasty case of Pneumonia and there I stayed for one week being pumped full of antibiotics and even anti-virals.

Six weeks later I only just felt human again but there is still the ever present threat of Covid and now my immunity isn't great.  Thank heavens I live in Queensland and the government has protected us in spite of those who think they are immortal or that the economy comes first.  I know the economy is vital but that really won't matter if there are no people left.

Other things have been going on around the world this year but everything pales in the face of the pandemic.  It is almost like a sign directed at our progressed society that we can't fix everything and that we are still merely human.

As for those who think the disease is a conspiracy designed by governments worldwide to bring people under their control, I simply don't believe it.  How could governments worldwide agree on this matter when they can't on anything else?  People think the vaccine has something in it that will either track them or cause them to be a mindless followers or heaven knows what or that it will cause everything to be electronic, such as no more cash only cards, and that we will have no freedoms.  I don't trust governments any more than the next person but I think that this has arisen because people are in denial about not being able to control a disease.  We've come so far after all but what they forget is that we are mortal, biological beings.

I'm just happy to be alive now while once I used to feel confined by not having the money to travel, which now seems a questionable activity at best.  We are far safer in Australia, at least thus far, than overseas.  Europe went through the plague in the Middle Ages and life, well the life of those who didn't die, went on.  The plague re-occurred regularly for a couple of centuries but still mankind prevailed even when there was no relief for those who were dying from it and no understanding about how it was caught.

It is the stupidity and arrogance of those who won't follow common sense rules that will continue to allow this virus to spread as well as those less effective governments who won't take the measures necessary to keep it under control.  Perhaps nature is counting on this stupidity to alleviate the planet of our presence.  We forget that it can take its revenge and the more we foul the earth, the more we will allow bacteria and viruses to flourish in the waste.  I for one, however, would like to live to a ripe old age and see my grandchildren grow up in a sane world.  What a shame there aren't viruses to make people more intelligent and responsible.  We wouldn't need a vaccine for those.

END.