HUMANS: DESPICABLE US.

 

Humans are a pretty terrifying species and one reason for this is that most of them don't question what motivates them to do the things that they do.  In pondering why this is the case I started by thinking two very different kinds of people in the history of the world.  My examples are drawn from amongst men rather than women because until recently, and through no fault of their own, women have not figured greatly in positions that gave rise to them being noted in earlier human history.

The two types of people I have considered are the doers and the thinkers.  I was going to call the doers, achievers, but mostly that is not the case.  In fact their desire to do has mostly come with a great deal of death and destruction while, in the case of the thinkers, their inquiry has often been met with punishment and even death.  When I say 'doer', I am not including inventors or those who have created devices that have improved our lives.  These types are, by their natures, thinkers.  The type of 'doer' this article addresses are those who command power.

Species that are not self aware, or should I say as self aware as humans, direct their energy into finding food and procreation; in other words towards survival and the survival of the species.  When they are not active they are usually resting.  They can be terribly busy when they are active, just look at insects, but their activity is directed to a purpose.  They don't take up hobbies to fill their leisure time or become wantonly destructive, as humans do.

It is worth noting that animals can also be bored.  One only has to observe dogs to see that.  They may lie around and look like they're sleeping, but just rattle their leash and you'll see they've only just been waiting for a bit of amusement.  Dogs are pretty intelligent and I believe that boredom is a result of intellect but in humans boredom is both a motivator and our worst enemy.

The biographies of doers get complicated.  Take, for example, Napoleon Bonaparte.  He didn't just decide one day to go and conquer the world out of boredom.  He was a product of his time.  When he arrived on the scene, France was already engaged in numerous territorial disputes and it's own revolution.  Napoleon first entered a military academy before going on to be a very successful soldier involved in France's territorial campaigns.  It was, basically, his job.  Eventually, after he made himself Emperor, he just overstepped himself.  That's where the doer's drive comes in.  They tend to not be able to stop once they've achieved optimum success.  While Napoleon is credited with many positive reforms, such as the Napoleonic Code and those in banking and education, a great many people died as a result of his ambition both in the territories he conquered as well as a huge number of his own troops when he really over reached himself and marched into Russia.

Genghis Khan, another doer, started out by uniting the disparate tribes of Mongolia, which was in many ways, beneficial to the people of that land.  That done, he spread outwards so that his empire encompassed areas that included parts of modern day Poland, Georgia and China.  Whatever good these doers eventually do comes at the cost of the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people, a huge proportion of whom were non-combatants.  At the same time as he was effectively reducing the world's population, he was also working at manifestly increasing it.  He had numerous wives and concubines and innumerable children, however, only the sons of his first wife, Borte, would be considered his heirs.

Napoleon and Genghis Khan are both extreme examples of people born with way too much drive for their own, and everybody else's, good.  They are like tsunamis that, once in motion, cannot be stopped until maximum devastation has been achieved.

The interesting point to note about thinkers is that although they don't have armies or physically threaten anyone, they have been considered as dangerous to society as those who do.  Take Galileo and Copernicus for instance.  Both these men threatened the status quo, which in their times was the Church and its teachings.  The Church, at that time, held enormous political power and wealth.  The thinker's thoughts alone made them as dangerous to the stability of the entrenched powers as any army.  All these two men were attempting to do was to understand the nature of the Universe but their theories went against Church teachings that were based on the Bible and the theory of creation.

The Church wielded immense power in those times, not only because of its immense wealth, but because people from peasants to kings, believed it had the power to pave the way to Heaven through confession and plenary indulgences.  Plenary indulgences reduced punishment in the afterlife for their recipients who had to perform certain good works or recite certain prayers many times to receive them.  Reforms to the Church in the twentieth century have largely abolished these indulgences but, in a time where people were very religious, you can imagine the power this afforded the Church, placing them above rulers who believed the clergy had the power to smooth their way to the afterlife.

While Copernicus escaped punishment for his theories, Galileo did not when he added evidence to support Copernicus's ideas with the help of the newly invented telescope.  For his trouble he spent thirty years until the end of his life under house arrest.

In modern times the way to exert power is through controlling mass communication and technology.  It is interesting to note that the more technologically, scientifically and medically advanced we have become, the less dependent on religion we have become.  Of course billions of people are still devoutly religious but in earlier times people's ignorance as to how the universe worked as well as lack of medical knowledge to prevent an early death necessitated religion to both explain life and to be prepared for the afterlife.

Now we are in the are in the information age and, throughout history, one of the greatest ways to hold power has been to control the flow of information or to suppress it.  In the age of the Internet it has become harder for those in authority to suppress information and so they must have access to the means of transmitting it.

China has its own internet and its population can only gain information through it.  Most information from the west is suppressed.  Don't think, however, that western or free nations are beneath manipulating content.  Just recently when farmers were protesting in India about their rights and protection of their income in a peaceful and orderly fashion, the Indian government cut off their access to the Internet, which amounted to a diabolical misuse of power by a democratic nation.

Let us also look at the case of Julian Assange who hacked his way into the USA government's secret files and then let the world read them all in the name of freedom of information.  Governments suppress information they consider not in the public interest or that will threaten the nation's defenses but the files also showed that the government had undertaken questionable activities it really didn't want the public to know about.  Assange now sits waiting in a British jail trying not to be extradited to the USA where he may be sentenced to over one hundred years in jail for treason.  Governments may have valid reasons for suppressing some information that may make them vulnerable to other governments or show weaknesses in their defence, however, sometimes they're just covering up incompetency or abuse of power and that is why Assange has many supporters who feel that a government's dirty secrets should be exposed.  Unfortunately, when you let one secret out of the bag, the others come with it and these may well make a nation vulnerable to attack.

Privately owned Internet companies can also use suppression tactics.  Take the social network site Twitter, which banned former President of the USA, Donald Trump from using its site because of his inflammatory tweets.  Let us remember that they are a private company and can make their own rules, however, an extraordinary amount of garbage ends up of Twitter and isn't banned.  Freedom of speech allows people to make their own decisions about a communication but Twitter made the call on Trump for them.

On the other hand certain social network sites have not stopped terrorist organizations from using their sites to recruit followers and even to post how to make a bomb, so where does freedom of information become dangerous and then who gets to police it?  There are arguments for and against totally open communication now that the world is truly global and anything may ignite the powder keg of public opinion, which may, in turn, lead to violence and war.

As you can see, I've moved away from my original subject of doers and thinkers.  The world may once have been molded by the actions and thoughts of just a few or a number of governments, but that was once.  While governments and individuals can still get away with a lot they now have a harder time doing it because we are all watching them and having our say.  The population of the world has become Big Brother and this may well be why there are now theories, some call them conspiracy theories, that talk of an elite and wealthy few who are trying to take over the control of the planet and people's thoughts and opinions.

If such a group exists and has some evil plan to inject us all with computer chips or whatever, using, for instance, a vaccine against a pandemic, I think they have Buckley's chance of succeeding.  When you get enough people who don't agree with something or are unwilling to be pushed around there is always a revolution.  Computer chips in the blood stream, if possible, won't stop this.  For one thing no one yet knows how our brains work and for another, the chips would have to be teeny, teeny weensy and be able to fit through a needle attached to a syringe.  If the idea is to terminate people using their micro chips, well, they're not going to have too many people left to follow them like zombies after most people are terminated.  All in all, it's a madman's plan but, as I said at the beginning of this post, humans are a pretty terrifying species.

END

 

 

 

 

DIGESTING PRETENTIOUS RESTAURANT MENUS.

 

I have a beef and I don't mean Wagyu, Angus or corn fed.  I really don't care what kind of poor cow I'm eating as long as it is tender.  I also don't want to know if caramel is salted, I just want caramel.  I don't want rice that is koshihikari, I just want rice.  I don't know what Ponzu is so I don't want it on something.  I don't want Hiramasha Kingfish, I just want fish nor do I want charred Burrata, which is apparently a cheese similar to Mozzarella, with my roti.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't want to have to take a culinary dictionary to a restaurant in order to decipher what I'm eating.  I go out to eat so that I don't have to slave away in the kitchen but now I work up a sweat trying to understand a menu.  What is going on?  If chefs want to try out exotic dishes on diners, or to ramp up the names of non-exotic dishes with befuddling descriptions to make them seem tastier, why can't they put simple explanations alongside them?  Does it have to do with the price they charge for the dish or is it a competitive thing among chefs?

Last year before Covid hit, my friend and I went to a new restaurant precinct in Brisbane.  It was situated right on Brisbane River, a real plus, and there were about ten restaurants to choose from, all owned by the one seafood group.  Now, I have a yen for Garlic Prawns and we walked past every restaurant perusing the menus looking for some but there were none to be found.  There were plenty of cold, cooked prawns at one venue but that is all.  There was a ton of swordfish on offer done many ways, but no Garlic Prawns.  There were restaurants that were of the pub variety, Greek, Italian and even burger variety but, if I'd fired a gun, I had no hope of hitting one that served what I desired.  I also don't remember when Swordfish became a thing.  Snapper, Barramundi and Trout were once 'the thing', so when did Swordfish rear it's curiously adorned head?

There was a time when practically every restaurant offered Garlic Prawns on the menu and perhaps this is what has happened.  Perhaps it just became too de rigeur.  I now long for 'de rigeur'.  This morning I decided to search restaurant menus online in the hope of finding a decipherable one without success.  Following my search I'm giving two examples of menu items that are indicative of the type of dishes I ran across.

The first item: Hervey Bay scallop, burnt peanut cream, nam jim, crystallised peanut.  The second item: Grilled ox tongue, sticky date hoisin glaze, furikake.  Well I know what a scallop is and where Hervey Bay is although I don't care much what part of Australia the scallop comes from.  As for burnt peanut cream, I presume that it is burnt peanut butter or possibly sate.  Nam Jim I've had to look up and it's a dressing made of chillies, cloves, lime juice and such  while crystallised peanut is self explanatory.  Basically I'd guess that what would be served up to me would be a spicy scallop sate with crushed peanuts on top.

As for the grilled ox tongue, I know what hoisin sauce is, but made from sticky dates?  Furikake I had to look up and it is a Japanese seasoning based on sesame seeds and nori, or seaweed.  The dish might be delicious but as I've never tried furikake, am I willing to spend good money to find out?  Also the idea of ox tongue in Hoisin sauce, sorry, glaze, may be a bit experimental for my tastes.

I appreciate experimentation and Australia's cuisine has benefited enormously from it as we have absorbed immigrants from different cultures from around the world for over five decades now.  Chinese and Indian cuisine terms have become as familiar to us as English language ones as have the seasonings and condiments.  Japanese terms are catching up but have a way to go.  It is, however, a certain pretentiousness that is causing some terminology to muddle up menus.  I'm sure many of the seasonings and dishes that the chefs use are real but new to Australia and still obscure.  If there are too many of them on one menu, it does not make for a relaxing or enjoyable way to have to choose your meal.

Another two items that also appeared on the earlier menu, although separately as ingredients in different dishes, were Boquerones and Yuzu kosho.  If I'd had to decipher the menu of this very well reviewed restaurant, I would have kept the waitperson a very long time requesting descriptions.  It is so much nicer to peruse the menu at leisure and with comprehension without requiring your waiter to translate it.  By the way, in case you didn't know, Boquerones are white anchovies and Yuzu kosho is a Japanese condiment based on chilies.

When I was young, from the age of about seven, my parents would take me to restaurants with them as we were reasonably well off.  I don't imagine that in the 1950's and '60's there were many children who had this privilege.  In those days, in cosmopolitan Sydney, restaurants had good quality western style meals along with some French and Italian influenced dishes.   Some entrees I remember were prawns in a seafood cocktail sauce and also French Onion soup.  For some reason I can't remember other entrees.  For mains there was always a roast meat meal on offer of either beef, pork, lamb or chicken, a fish dish either battered or meuniere, Chicken Maryland, which was crumbed, fried and served with a crumbed, fried banana and pineapple ring on the side.  That was a favourite of mine.  There was also Steak Diane in its rich dark garlic sauce.  If we went to a seafood restaurant, there was often Lobster, which was also a favourite of mine.  What a lucky child I was.

There weren't Chinese dishes on the menus then and only the occasional Australian version of an Indian curry.  Good Chinese restaurants started to appear when I was in my early teens but it wasn't until some decades later that supermarkets began to stock the ingredients and condiments that would allow us to attempt to cook Chinese food at home.

I'm telling you about my early restaurant experiences to let you know that I'm no stranger to eating out and so the present problem I have with menu descriptions is not because of my lack of restaurant savoir faire but because menus have changed.  The principle of simpler is better has been forgotten.  I would happily try any of these new dishes if I didn't feel I was hacking my way through thick jungle with a scythe when I was trying to decipher the menu.  I go out to relax not to work.

Some of my favourite Brisbane restaurants either closed, were upgraded with new menus I don't care for and, in one case took off down the river in the 2011 flood.  That really was a tragic loss.  With Covid ruining so many restaurants' business, I am grateful any survive at all and perhaps that's where this competitive obfuscation comes in.  Perhaps they are trying to impress, however, I now don't venture to eat out without perusing menus online to make sure that there is a place to eat that will serve something I like and, more importantly, so I don't have to take over half an hour to understand the menu.  If it took that long I would have drunk my way through a whole glass of wine and be tiddly before the food arrived.

Maybe restaurants should bring back a few of the old staples and, as we sit and eat them, we can spy on surrounding tables to see what the more adventurous diners are eating so we can try it the next time we visit.  Of course my friend thinks it's rude when I slyly look around to view other diner's meals but then lately he has taken to only ordering garlic bread for his meal and nothing else.  And he thinks I'm embarrassing.

END

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

THE INTERMINABLE HARD SELL VIDEO.

 

We've probably all clicked on a story on an internet news site that's classed as a 'Sponsored Ad' and, then, don't we regret it?

It usually starts with something like: Low cost pain relief the big pharmaceutical companies don't want you to know about', or, 'Anti-ageing formula with secret ingredient used by doctors to the stars'.  You know the type of thing, but woe betide you if you open the site because on it, always, is a video you have to watch.  It's not just any video, it's one that doesn't have a length bar at the bottom that shows how long it is and that's always a sign that you're in for the HARD SELL.

These videos always have one essential component; the person who makes them is a qualified medical doctor.  Not only that, they have appeared on various talk shows, their articles have been published on well known medical internet sites and they rave on and on about the fact at the beginning of their self-aggrandizing talk fests.

I once started to watch one of these.  It was by a 'cosmetic surgeon to the stars' whose cream, containing hyaluronic acid in his own special formula, marketed and sold only by his company, was the reason that his celebrity clients looked twenty years younger than the average woman or man without the benefit of surgery.  Yeah, right.  I only watched it almost to the end because I simply couldn't believe anyone could deliver so much bullshit before actually getting to the point of naming the product or expect someone to continue to watch the promotion all the way to the end.

Perhaps the idea of these videos is to somehow hypnotize viewers into a vegetative state where they are left so bereft of mental acuity that they buy the product at the end of the presentation.  I cannot otherwise believe that anyone with a modicum of intelligence would do so after being subjected to such a prolonged insult to their intelligence

One of these presentations that I didn't watch fully to the end concerned a doctor who was looking for a cure for dementia for his wife who, I might add, was at a very advanced stage of the disease.  They had tried everything when the doctor began his search for alternatives and, when he find the magic formula, it took only a couple of weeks for her to regain her faculties.  The odd thing was that it took him a couple of years to find the cure by which time she would have been dead or well beyond hope.  My recollection isn't exact but I do remember there were jarring inaccuracies in his spiel.  Of course he, the doctor, then went on to offer his cure on his own marketing platform, on his own site.

The other thing about these promotions is that they always seem to be made by doctors from the USA and their accents, frankly, drive me nuts.  Sorry, they just do and I think it's because the USA is the home of the hard sell.  In fact the only reason I recently watched a presentation to its end that I clicked on from an advertisement on a news site was because the doctor had an English accent.  I suspect, however, that it was a voice over because, when the doctor introduced himself in person on the video the sound was out of sync.  He also said his findings were shown on the Mayo clinic site (USA) and in some Phytology journal whose name I can't remember but that was also a US publication.

This particular doctor had patients who suffered pain from arthritis and he specifically brought one of his patients to our attention whose name is Frank.  We heard all about Frank who is a veteran with a high pain threshold.  We know this due to his suffering from numerous war related injuries.  Frank had tried every thing for the pain of his arthritis and we heard about every single one of them.  Some had even given him some mild relief but Frank was determined to find relief and happily stumbled upon the doctor who offered him his magic formula that eased his pain.

Firstly it was made abundantly clear that this relief came from a natural 'magic' golden herb found in India although we never actually hear the name of the herb.  We were informed that our doctor found out about it when visiting an Indian restaurant and began chatting to the Indian owner who informed him that practically no one in India suffered from joint pain thanks to this herb.  Meantime we are seeing people on the video picking a herb that looks like coriander.  The doctor then warns us that if we buy this herb, whatever it is, from sites like Amazon or places where it has been processed, we will not get the efficacy of his version of it that is organically produced and to which he has added other herbs and whatever to improve its performance.  If the Indian gentleman said that it worked fine on Indian people in India why add extras?  Well apparently Indian people use so many herbs in their cooking that this naturally adds to its efficacy.

Imagine, a whole nation that didn't need this doctor to improve their magic golden herb, as he refers to it.  Of course he has named his improved herbal product with a catchy name and sells it only on his site at the end of the video.  Naturally I stopped watching at that point but it did continue although I'm not sure for how long.  I only watched for twenty tortuous minutes out of sheer, perverse curiosity to discover how long the doctor possibly thought he could hold our attention.

I then had a thought.  Are people who make these promotions, which often are made using YouTube, making money from the number of people viewing the actual video as well as the time it takes them to watch it?  I frankly don't care enough to look into this to find out.  What is extraordinary is how many doctors use this method to promote their products.  Why, I ask, and again, why?  Are they counting on people's desperation or their stupidity?  Does hammering irrelevant details into viewer's heads before getting to the point make their spiel more credible?  I think not.  I think it must be an attempt to beat people insensible and into submission.

A few minutes into any of these presentations I am ready to find the particular doctor's email and write to them to tell them how much they have annoyed me and insulted my intelligence.  Added to which I would say that, even if the product does what they say it will do, I wouldn't buy it for just those reasons.  In fact that's not true, I might buy it if I thought it would work but, not for one moment do I believe any of them have actually come up with a product so good it would do as they say it would.  If it did, they wouldn't have to sell it so hard.

I am in my sixties now and have been subjected to advertising since I could think.  When I was in my early twenties my husband made a mute button for our television so I didn't have to listen to advertisements.  Happily remotes now all have mute buttons.  I have to say that, probably, only twice in my life has an advertisement inspired me to go out an buy a product and that was because the product was so new, innovative and interesting that I felt I had to try it.

I am not a follower and am not interested in what others consider to be prestige items.  I can see the point of advertising, in fact it keeps free to air television alive these days, but that doesn't mean I have to watch it.  I do, however, appreciate clever, innovative and entertaining advertisements but feel that the people that use the hard sell should either be jailed or put in mental institutions because they are public nuisances.  They should concentrate on trying to heal their patients and not try salesmanship as a quick fix to making them rich.

END

 

The Extraordinary Constant: HM Queen Elizabeth II.

 

I think it is fair to say that the last fifteen months have left us all feeling a little insecure.  The usual checks and balances of life, the things that make us feel safe, have been frayed about the edges.  It has made me think about the things that make us feel anchored and, for me, I realize that one of those things is rather unexpected.  It is not part of my immediate life but has been part of my life for as long as I have existed.  It has prevailed when many things have fallen away.  It is a person and one who stands, in this day and age, for what is good and constant in the world.  It is a she: the Queen of Great Britain and the Commonwealth.

Yes, I know she is mostly now a symbol but she is a beacon of moderation, a set of standards and of a system of democratic government that has been adopted in countries throughout the world: a Parliament elected by the people with a symbolic head of state who has the power of veto in only the most extraordinary situations.

It wasn't always so, of course, but the monarchy, in order to survive, gradually relinquished power to the people.  The citizens of Great Britain, however, remembering their glorious past as an Empire, have retained the monarchy that reminds it of its former greatness and for which it holds great deference.  This is probably because the monarchy has, like an aging parent, stepped into the background and, from there, reminds people of the standards they should uphold and retain.  It is one thing to lose an Empire, but it is another to lose one's sense of  worth and self.  Somehow Great Britain has managed to fade as a world power while retaining its status as a place of culture, history and comme il faut.

Do the people of India, for instance, love cricket because it is a great game?  Somehow I think not.  I think that it is because the British colonists of the time, with their sense of superiority, arrogance and military know how, simply impressed the people of India so much that they adopted this sport of its upper classes.  India may have wanted the British to leave but they wanted to keep some of the trimmings of this superbly self centered people.  Give the British their due, however, they learn, in recent history especially.  As their power faded they had to adapt and become more accepting

There is also something to be said about having an upper class that won't let people in.  It makes people want in and, to achieve this, they must raise their standards and emulate the behavior and manners of the status to which they aspire.  This is where the Queen comes in.  She maintains the standard.  It must be a hell of a job being perfect all the time: perfectly groomed, perfectly mannered, unable to make a single contentious remark and attend hundreds of public engagements every year.  People think: Oh but she's got so many people to help her.  No, she's the one who has to remain standing, healthy and I admire her ability.  My toilet habits would never allow me to maintain her poise and unflappability.  The woman is as healthy as a horse.  She is also stoic.  It can't have been an easy life, no matter the perks, and it has been one of service.

Elizabeth was Queen when I was born and she is still the Queen.  She is now ninety four and looks more at ease and comfortable in her role than she ever has.  I believe it is because she knows that she has done the duty that was expected of her.  Some wayward members of the family have let the team down, albeit adding a little colour to keep the public amused.  If the Queen hadn't been at the helm, the monarchy may not have survived them, but she has not wavered.  The Queen is now an institution.  In fact she practically doesn't need a country.  She is, in and of herself, what matters.

While this last year has ground me down, along with everyone else, I tell myself that I am, relative to the Queen's age, moderately young.  She has lasted this long and so I must not give up hope.  I don't even dress properly to leave the house anymore but the other day the Queen stepped out in a delightful lime coloured ensemble to celebrate one hundred years of the Australian Air Force at a memorial in Britain.  It was her first outing in all these months and made me realize that I must pull up my socks, even if I don't have a chauffeur driven Bentley to take me where I need to go.  It's about maintaining standards.  It's about keeping our chins up.  It's about hope.  If people wonder why the Queen is there, let them remember that it's to set an example of what civilization expects of us.

There are refugees pouring out of Ethiopia, out of Syria and now out of Mozambique.  There are refugees trying to get into the USA through Mexico.  Everyone is hoping for something better.  Covid is decimating us, little wars are destroying lives in various places throughout the world and we need to imagine a world where things still run smoothly and life isn't tattered around the edges.  We all need to see that world still exists somewhere, even if it's a bit out of reach.  It's like the cinema.  Sometimes we need to live vicariously through other people's lives.  That may seem petty to some, but without hope, there is nothing.

The Queen won't get to take her wealth with her when she goes and I know many people denigrate the monarchy, but it's what she will leave behind that matters and that is an ideal.  She represents the civilization that I was born into and that appears to be falling apart at the seams.  I will be sad to see her go because she has been part of the more stable world that followed the two world wars.  Climate change, Covid and a very unsettled world is our next era and we need to keep our hands very steady on the helm and hope in our hearts, no matter how hard that proves to be.

END 

THE HUT: the accidental guesthouse.

 

Some people have a lot of friends and some, for reasons no one can explain, do not.  My mother could make friends the way a dog collects fleas while I must have the equivalent of an inbuilt flea collar.  The fact that she brought me up, taught me how to interact socially with people through her example, was friendly, charming and engaging, all things I naturally emulated just as one does the language you learn at home, mattered not one whit.  I did not make friends easily.  

Even so I had plenty of company even though I was an only child.  Two of my cousins lived two doors away, there was another family with three children one house down again, no fences and plenty of room to play.  Added to this at five years of age I must have told my parents about a girl I met and got on with at school.  The next thing she was brought around to play and joined our neighborhood group.  She lived barely a kilometer away and we've been friends ever since.  Now, however, like my cousins, she lives in another state or, rather, I live in another state.

From the age of ten I was sent to a weekly boarding school and only managed to see my friends on weekends.  We all went to different schools but would gravitate together on the weekend due to our proximity and the fact that our families were friends.  My school friend would go her own way sometimes and, as we became teenagers, that became more often but still we prevailed.  At high school I was friendless.  I loathed the school and did not fit in.  When I finished there I said goodbye to no one and didn't look back.  Perhaps I just didn't have good friend making skills and, not learning them, this affected me throughout my life.

As I grew to adulthood and married, I moved away from the state and, each place we lived, I tried to make friends.  It wasn't easy and quite often we lived in areas for my husband's work that were quite different from the social background that I'd known growing up and, I confess, that came as a shock.  I had lived in something of a privileged environment.  Then, when the job finished, we'd up stakes and leave.  After three moves interstate, making some ties, then moving overseas and making more ties, then back and two more interstate moves and a divorce, I had made a number of connections and some friends.  I'm very fond of some of those people but they are now far away and some also divorced.

Happily my son was eleven when we, my husband, son and I, settled here prior to our divorce and my son has inherited my mother's stunning ability to make friends.  This has gladdened my heart.  He is now forty two and still keeps in touch with most of his school friends.

By the time I settled in Queensland I was, frankly, tired of trying to make new friends.  I joined a tennis club and tried for a while but the women were a pretty tight knit group and, after thirty, it just gets harder to break in.  There is also something to be said for the fact that you are more like the people from the place from which you originate.  I realized this recently when I managed to contact a younger cousin to whom I hadn't spoken for fifteen years.  She was the younger of the two cousins who lived in my neighborhood.  Fifteen years just compressed into nothing in moments.  We talked for two hours and I realized how very alike in mind, speech and attitudes we were, even though we are two unique individuals.  It was like going home again.

Most of my relatives remained in Sydney so I'm very much a foreigner now and feel very distant from my roots, even though I'm only one thousand kilometers away.  I'm like a transplanted plant.  I've acclimatized but my roots belong elsewhere.  My cousins' children don't even know me and I find that sad.

Close friends would have helped but I have none here.  I do have my partner, a man I met twenty five years ago.  We are more like companions now but he is my rock.  I also have a male friend whom I see regularly.  I seem to get on better with men for some reason but that's okay.  My childhood friend from school and I see one another once a year or so but don't phone as frequently now.  I see my son and his family regularly and, as my parents have passed away, that's it.  Before Covid I worked and met many people, which filled the friend gap, but now, as it has for all of us, life has shrunk.

It's made me think of one remarkable part of my childhood and youth.  It was a place that brought all kinds of people into my universe and filled my life.  It was the Hut.

I have to explain about the Hut.  It was built on my parents' property by my uncle, my mother's brother, for him and his wife to live in while he built a house on the land next door.  Eventually his new house was two doors down because my grandfather, my mother's father, asked my father to subdivide his land so he could build beside us.  He had previously owned and built on the land in front of us, which was lower than our land, but my grandmother died and he sold the house and moved then regretted it later and wanted to move back.  Both the houses, as well as his earlier house, had a magnificent water view and this was one of the draw cards that brought so many people to want to come and stay in the Hut.

The Hut comprised one large living and bedroom space, a kitchen and a bathroom.  Outside it was weatherboard with a pitched fibro roof and inside was plasterboard walls and a ceiling that was probably plasterboard or something but in which bush rats would leave macadamia nut shells and also reside along with the occasional python.  The building had an entrance door with two steps leading up to it and a side door that came off the small hallway between the kitchen and bathroom.

If my parents had charged people to stay in the Hut, I might have been left a rich woman.  My childhood up to my early twenties were full of people who made the pilgrimage to our beautiful and welcoming surrounds.  Our house was a big brick post war house, more modern than those of my other cousins who lived in Mosman.  Their houses were smaller and of a more purple brown brick that I hated.  They had fences and no views.  My house was spacious, red brick with a picture window in the living room that looked out over Pittwater and, off the living room, was a verandah where my parents had barbeques.  These were sit down affairs and Dad would barbeque a scotch fillet that had been cut into steaks.  With this would be served jacket potatoes with sour cream, Mum's version of a Ratatouille, a Three Bean salad and sometimes bread rolls.  Wine and beer would accompany all this.  I was allowed small amounts of wine from the age of twelve presumably because I had a French godmother.

When I was fifteen, Dad decided to have a swimming pool built and, after that, basically every weekend became like a party.  While not actually a party, although we had a quite a few, the whole neighborhood always gravitated to the pool, which had no fence in the beginning and a two meter drop on one side.  There were no small children in the area by that time, no one ever fell off the edge and our Labrador, an avid swimmer, knew where the steps were where she could get out so we never had to worry about her.

The same year the pool was built a tragedy befell us.  My uncle next door died from a massive coronary at the age of forty six leaving a widow and my two cousins, one my age, the other seven years younger.  My aunt, however, was stoic and determined to give her children a happy life.  The cousin my age loved sailing and my aunt was always holding parties for the young sailing fraternity which tended to spill over to our house.  At this stage the Hut also sprang to life as a secondary party place.  These were nice parties, supervised by parents, with food and also some alcohol was allowed as we grew older.  For an only child, I had it pretty good.

The Hut, however, was usually more a place of residence or short stays for other people from my earliest years.  My parents would sometimes allow people they knew to live there for a while, no rent required, when they were stuck for a place to live or building one.  When Dad was still a journalist, a female work colleague who needed a place to stay, occupied it for a couple of months as I remember.  She was a very glamorous woman and I don't know her story, but she was just taken to the family's bosom.  My mother was very accommodating.

I think now that my parents probably needed to keep a roster as there was a continual flow of their friends and family coming to stay at the Hut on weekends.  I just took it all in my stride.  My father's sister would often come for weekends and stay in a bedroom in our house as she was widowed and alone.  Sometimes this would be when the Hut was occupied, sometimes not.  Her son lived there with his first wife for some months, rent free.  He went on to two more marriages but that was later.  While he and his new wife lay in bed there one morning, one of the possums that also made the roof their home, gnawed its way through the ceiling and, the two of them on waking, saw a little black nose and two beady eyes staring at them through a little hole.

The Hut became my grandfather's final home before he went into a nursing home.  After selling the house he had built between our house and my uncle and aunt's he moved on again, twice more as I remember.  His sister lived with him at that stage and helped look after him as he became an invalid but she died and he came back again.  My parents hired a nurse, who became like a friend to them, and she came to care for him every day for some years.  My father put an electric bell into the hut and connected it to the house so he could call for help at night.  Eventually and sadly he went into care.

A couple of years later I even lived there with my husband for some months after we were married.  I didn't like it nearly as much as the house as it didn't have the same view, but I think my mother had wanted to get rid of me for years and I wasn't as welcome in the house anymore.  My mother had a kind of two headed llama attitude to me.  Sometimes she liked me and sometimes she didn't.  There was no particular reason, in fact I don't think she had really wanted me but she did a pretty good job of hiding it until I was married.

Improvements had been made to the Hut even before I was married.  The wall between the kitchen and living area was opened up by half.  It still covered the kitchen bench plus a bit and the kitchen had been modernized as had the bathroom.  The bathroom comprised a shower, toilet and basin but a new lining had been put in and the shower now had a flexible shower hose.  I decided to put tiles on the kitchen bench and it looked really good.  Little did I know that I would fully renovate a cottage in the bay side suburb of Mount Martha in Melbourne in the next year of my marriage.

After we left, further improvements were made when my parents hired my father-in-law, a builder, to add a large verandah to the water view side of the hut.  The inside was also relined.  While it was never a building of beauty on the outside, it became pretty snazzy inside.  People on the North Shore of Sydney were not pretentious and I hope they have remained the same.  Their houses didn't need to be spectacular as they just blended into the hillsides surrounded by a mass of vegetation.  The outside of the Hut was always an olive green that blended into the tropical bush surroundings.

After we moved interstate, the neighbor with the three children who lived beside my cousins gave my parents a shingle to hang on it.  It had come from her and her late husband's hardware store and it said: The Lodge.  My parents hung it on the outside of the Hut but I was not happy about it. The Hut was the Hut and always would be to me and is what everyone called it.

To my utter regret my parents sold the property when I was in my thirties and living in Perth and then they moved to Western Australia as well.  If I'd had the money I would have bought the house.  To this day my heart breaks at the thought of it.  For thirty years some other family has lived in the home in which I was conceived and which I love as if it is part of me.  I hope they treasure the place and that no developers ever ruin it or the places around it.  I imagine the present owners probably think of the Hut as the Lodge.  I know it is still there.  I've checked on Google Earth.

Although I lost the house that I never owned as it was my parents, I wonder if I could go back.  In part your home is not just a place but a time and that time was so full that it could never be relived or replaced.  I am just so immensely grateful that I grew up in a place of such physical natural beauty, which had so many people passing through it.  Not many people get so lucky and it certainly helps me to deal with the far more solitary life I lead now.  To put it the best way I can: I had it all.

END

 

 

WHY HAS THE MEGHAN AND HARRY SOAP OPERA SIDELINED SERIOUS NEWS.

 

I wasn't going to write about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle as it's been done to death, but that got me to thinking.  Why?

Why has this attractive and privileged pair pushed every other newsworthy item out into the vacuum of space?  Why have Covid, the progress of vaccine delivery, wars, national and local news of importance, the situation in Myanmar, Tigran refugees from Ethiopia and so forth, fallen so far down the rank of newsworthiness?  All have paled into insignificance in the face of the couple's interview with the former talk show hostess (host, if you insist on gender equivalency), Oprah.

This fact must reflect on the mentality of the human race in some way and I'm trying to figure out exactly what that is.  I imagine the people of Myanmar didn't drop out of their protest against military rule to watch the interview if, by chance, it was subtitled, however I wouldn't have been surprised given the global attention it has received.

As I mulled about the exceptional number of viewers it attracted along with the opinions that followed, pro or con the couple, I can only come up with one explanation.  It is this: that for over a year the world's population has been under siege by Covid-19 and people needed to be distracted mightily by a real life soap opera in which the word Covid did not rear its ugly head.  At least, I don't think it did.  I didn't watch the interview but, in all the comments I've read about it, Covid wasn't mentioned.

The British Royal family have provided the world with its longest running real life soap opera.  Princess Diana reignited interest in it in the 'eighties with her glamour mixed with sadness and, now, one of her two sons and his Cinderella have defected to the New World.  The fact that they are pretty people has a strong bearing on this and that's another reflection on the human psyche.  If you're not pretty or handsome, you just don't cut it in the world of media.  I have long felt it a shame that Princess Anne, even in her youth, didn't grab the media's attention in the way Diana did.  Anne is quite brilliant, witty and would have made a fine queen but nobody cares because she's unattractive.  It's no use denying it, it's true.

Now let me be almost cruel.  If Meghan looked like Fergie, the Duchess of York, no one would care either.  If Andrew and Fergie had defected shortly after their marriage it would certainly have caused a ripple, much as Andrew's indiscretions have lately in the media, but that has also been eclipsed by The Interview.

How in the world has one woman's supposed mental health problem, (apparently caused by marrying a handsome, wealthy and privileged prince and being accepted by a family who, decades ago, wouldn't have done so, but who have accepted her wholeheartedly), become world news and so divided public opinion?

Meghan has said she had suicidal thoughts caused by hurtful remarks made by a royal or a senior royal staff member or some such.  (Again, I didn't watch the interview, I've read this post the interview.)  We've probably all had suicidal thoughts, I know I have.  I haven't, however, actually got to the point of getting out a bottle of pills or a razor blade but I have been seriously depressed.

There are levels of contemplation of suicide, some serious, some not as, and when people on social media, or even broadcasters, criticize Meghan and don't believe her statements about suicide, they have been jumped on by those who feel they aren't taking her mental health seriously.  In other words, she's become the poster child for those with mental health issues who feel they are neglected.  Totally understandable but also take these following things into account.

Meghan was a thirty-seven year old actress who had clawed her way up in show business and that means she's tough enough to take knocks.  She is coloured and must have suffered a degree of racism in her life, and on her way to the top, and yet she's deeply hurt by someone wondering what colour skin her son would have.  I mean, I'd be a bit miffed by the tactlessness but deeply hurt?  At her age, she must be better at rolling with the punches than that.

When Piers Morgan, the British broadcaster, publicly disbelieved Meghan's statements about her feelings of suicide, he walked off his show in disgust after thousands of complaints about him expressing his opinion.  Meghan also took exception and filed a complaint against him.  Here's the thing though:  she had quoted a remark made by a member of the Royal family, or one of their staff, without naming which one in a publicly broadcast interview and, as such, she practiced freedom of speech but isn't allowing Piers Morgan the same courtesy.  For someone who is as supposedly vulnerable as she is, why was she so quick to file a complaint against Morgan instead of weeping in Harry's arms as she apparently did over the 'What colour her child would be' remark and saying she didn't want to live anymore.

It is because she is not the weeping type but a very assertive woman.  Harry, misguidedly, is trying, through Meghan, to protect his mother posthumously.  For him, I believe, it all comes back to Diana, who really did have mental health issues that were exacerbated by having no one help her.  Harry is afraid for his wife's mental health and it's very sweet of him.

I may be quite wrong.  I'm not in Meghan's head and she may have mental health issues.  She may well not have been prepared for the rules, regulations, service and tradition that would be her lot after being an independent and successful actress.  However, she committed to these things in a marriage ceremony and must have known the ramifications to the Royal family if she rocked the boat.  I believe, not wanting to be a working royal anymore, she's pointing the blame finger to extricate herself.  She wants her cake and to eat it to and has probably justified everything to herself in her own head.

There is one more thing to note, and I saw it in a news clip of the interview.  Perhaps some of you noticed it too.  Meghan is heavily pregnant but get a load of her stiletto shoes.  They're four-inch heels at least.  This is sheer vanity in her present state and, being a woman myself, I am very fond of high heels, but not if I was that pregnant.  Meghan carefully cultivates her image and is one tough cookie.  She has chosen her life and was not victimized into it.

Those in the world who are interested in the story are projecting themselves onto the couple and living vicariously through them.  It beats being in lock down, losing your job and wondering what the new world will be like in its restricted and more dangerous form.  In the western world, you were once reasonably safe and could get on with your life, free of wars and starvation but now no one is safe and we need our fairy tales again, and this fairy tale comes with enough edge to make it interesting.  It's also a series with more episodes to come.  What better way to be stuck in the house with nothing to do than to watch two incredibly privileged people who are also stuck in their house with nothing more to do than trash an institution that took them to their hearts, and to create PR for their forthcoming Netflix production about heaven knows what?

END

 

  

SPACE EXPLORATION FOR FUN AND PROFIT: OR WHY ARE WE FOULING THE ATMOSPHERE FOR A FEW BILLIONAIRES TO TAKE A JOY RIDE?

 

Polluted Earth by Freepik.com

Okay it's time for me to whinge again and loudly.  I may only amount to one small voice on this planet but I can't hold back solely for that reason.  It's amazing how celebrities are heard and quoted even though some have brains smaller than those of pet guinea pigs.  In fact it's truly quite terrifying as, for instance, when Kanye West decided he was smart and informed enough to run for President of the USA.

Money and fame seem to make your opinion matter.  Well I have neither but I've know that I've had a quite substantial brain since I was around seven, although not an egocentric one because no one bothered to build up my sense of self worth.  In fact it wasn't until my mother was in a nursing home that she said to me, "I think that you're one of the smartest people I've ever known."  That meant a great deal to me even though she had dementia by then.  Nevertheless she was undoubtedly the cleverest person I have ever known and so I took her compliment to my heart.

Enough prattle, here is what I'm a tad bothered about.  Firstly, we're wrecking our planet, we know that. Secondly, it seems that any billionaire who has run out of ways to amuse him(usually)self decides to go into space exploration.  Not just any type of space exploration but the kind designed to generate tourist dollars.  Last week (in March, 2021) SpaceX, Elon Musk's space venture company, sent an unmanned  rocket a certain distance into the atmosphere and then managed to land it successfully.  A few seconds later it exploded but his ground team said the launch had been a success.  They now just had to figure out how to stop it exploding on landing at the next attempt.  Apparently by 2023 Musk wants some wealthy tourists to accompany him on an expedition in space but I'd be damned if I'd put my hand up at this stage.  In fact I wouldn't put my hand up at all for reasons I'll get to later.

Richard Branson of Virgin fame has been working on his own space exploration business even prior to Musk.  It seems it's the must do thing for billionaires who have run out of ways to amuse themselves.  Just over a year ago Branson's last attempt went stunningly awry.  The quote below is from the December 13, 2020 edition of the Washington Post:

"Virgin Galactic aborted its third attempt to reach the edge of space on Saturday after the engine of its space plane ignited for about a second and then went out. The vehicle then glided back safely to the runway, and the pilots were reported to be in good health.

It was the first test from the company’s new home at Spaceport America, a taxpayer-funded, modern mirage of a building in the New Mexico desert from which the company hopes to routinely fly space tourists starting next year.

A successful flight would have brought the company, founded by Richard Branson in an effort to open space to the masses, a step closer to flying Branson himself to the edge of space, followed by the line of people who have paid as much as $250,000 for the chance to fly on a suborbital mission, see the Earth from space and experience a few minutes of weightlessness."

I doubt, frankly, if the $250,000 (US dollars I presume) the potential tourists would pay would be enough to cover the fuel required for these little forays into space for no purpose other than a thrill.

Below is another quote from NASA's Shuttle Trivia online web page:

"At liftoff, the two Solid Rocket Boosters consume 11,000 pounds of fuel per second. That's two million times the rate at which fuel is burned by the average family car. The twin Solid Rocket Boosters generate a combined thrust of 5.3 million pounds."

Musk and Branson's rockets may, or may not, be smaller than their NASA counterparts but note the amount of fuel used in a shuttle launch and then imagine the number of experimental launches the two tourist companies undertake to refine their rockets.

Is the thrill of a joyride in space by a tiny number of well heeled persons enough to justify the extreme amount of fuel, and thus carbon dioxide, belched into our already sick atmosphere?  I don't think so.  I hate telling people how to live and what to or not to say, but in the case of using up this planet's oxygen, I feel justified in suggesting that Musk and Branson's companies should stop their tourist space programs.

We have rockets launching, frequently I'm sure, to maintain communication, weather satellites and the space station.  We did survive without these but they have been useful.  Space tourism, however, is no reason to belch more crap into the atmosphere.

I love those people who are all for colonizing other planets when we can't maintain our own.  When I think of humans in space I just imagine them as slightly evolved apes.  You know, apes in space and, instead of swinging from vines, they're making their way from planet to planet to wreak destruction elsewhere in nifty little, fuel consuming rockets.

I  can also imagine colonies of humans in a hundred years or so with children who long to see mother Earth but simply won't be allowed on it.  Earth will be for the privileged humans who survived and re-greened the planet against all odds.  While I still dream of seeing Italy and Greece, imagine what it would be like to grow up on an arid planet, sustained by artificially produced oxygen, dreaming of a green landscape with beautiful blue waters.

That's what we are destroying.  All the talk of reducing carbon emissions is valid but not enough.  What no one dares to address is the population.  It has to be stabilized before people are delegated to having no more than two children, but does anyone really address this issue?  No, they don't.  I think those people, such as David Attenborough, who are really trying to get the mass of humanity to think about the damage to the planet are afraid they will lose their audience and any chance to influence it if they address the sensitive area of child breeding.

Isn't it better to deal with it now?  No one is suggesting anyone be culled, just that we think for the future about how much arable land and living space there is and how many people the Earth can sustain without us having to give up the conveniences, such as power and communications, that civilization has given us.

I once spoke to a fellow who said, "Who cares how many people are on the planet, scientists will figure out a way to feed us."  I wonder if he thought how much space we would be allotted and if there would be enough plants to recycle the carbon dioxide back into oxygen.  The trouble with a lot of people is that they are just not far sighted and only think of the now.

I am fortunate.  I was born into physically beautiful and natural surroundings and fell in love with this planet from the moment I could perceive.  I feel a need for trees, clean air and enough room to move.  I don't need to pay $250,000 to orbit the earth to look at it, while it's still blue from above.  I live here.  It is my father and my father and I respect it.  I can only pray it survives us intact.  I have a very real fear it will not and it is disgusting to look for an alternative place to inhabit if we can't care for the one we have.

END