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He loves marmalade, comes from deepest, darkest Peru, and is famous for getting into scrapes. His name is Paddington and he wears a duffel coat and red Wellington boots (with paw prints moulded into the soles).
The creator of this lovable creature, Michael Bond, has just died at the age of 91. The inspiration came to him on Christmas Eve 1956 when he saw a lonely-looking teddy bear in a shop near his home close to Paddington railway station in London, and bought it for his wife.
He published his first book, "A Bear Called Paddington", in 1958, which was a
little late for my first childhood, but what about my second?
Today my usual 10-minutes down the highway, 10-minutes inside ALDI, and 10-minutes back up the highhway shopping routine turned into an hour-long gridlock, as all traffic was halted on both the Princes Highway and Beach Road.
Some quarter of an hour later, vehicles with flashing lights announced an "OVERSIZE LOAD" which turned out to be a giant catamaran the size of a house - well, two houses! I don't know how the truck driver got round that tight corner into Beach Road but he had no option as this monster of a yacht was heading for the slipway at Hanging Rock.
Sydneysiders (as they are quaintly known; Graham Kennedy used to call them Sydney-ites) put up with this kind of traffic all day every day.
Thank God - if we're still allowed to say this in this country - , the Bay is usually a quiet provincial town without traffic jams, without terror barriers, and without radical moose lambs - and may it stay that way!
Lanz Priestley and his pregnant partner Nina Wilson in Martin Place. It's his twelfth child, presumably not all by the same partner
While trivago's website promises "Never pay full price on hotels", Lanz Priestley promises that you will never pay anything for your four-star hotel room in Sydney's CBD.
And he should know! He set up squats in cities around the world, including London and Brazil, before he pitched up in Martin Place in December, attracting more than 65 people, at times more than a hundred a night, to the shelter within weeks.
Martin Place, heart of Sydney's - ehem! - financial district
Dubbed the Mayor of Martin Place, Lanz, who's originally from New Zealand, succeeded in having the hundred-odd members (or should that be without the hyphen?) of the now dismantled Martin Place camp accommodated in the four-star $174-per-night Ibis hotel overlooking Darling Harbour, as well as in other hotels, hostels and motels in the city, all courtesy of the long-suffering Australian taxpayer.
When word spread weeks ago that the homeless were being moved into hotels, homeless people from Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane hitched rides to queue along Martin Place to secure rooms.
"There were more than 300 people queueing to get hotels", camper Salvatore Migenta, 64, said. "Martin Place was packed from Phillip Street to Macquarie Street. The hotels were booked and people were staying in expensive ones and now they are putting people up in cheaper ones. It was crazy."
Let them eat cake and stay at the Ibis Darling Harbour A before-picture of a room at the Ibis Hotel Darling Harbour
Says Adam Armstrong, 38, who has been sleeping rough for seven years, "I’ve got a roof over my head at the Ibis. I’ve got a TV and my phone. I’m not too lonely, but it would nice to have a lady in there for company". Naturally, Adam feels a bit lonely after having shared the same cardboard box in Martin Place with several others. While those uncaring authorities gave him his own room as doubling up would have been against his human rights, they should at least have laid on a free hooker. He might as well drink the mini-bar dry and dial up room service for Lobster Thermidor before complaining to his local member.
Another camper, Ricky Mates, was told on Saturday he could check into the Ibis Darling Harbour. "The fridge is mini, but the shower is nice and I can see out onto the Harbour, it’s beautiful", he said as he slipped on his thongs to take the lift down to the à la carte restaurant for dinner.
I'm still trying to get hold of Lanz's mobile phone number to arrange accommodation for my next Sydney visit. Who knows, by then he may already have his own website. Hotel?Lanz Priestley!
P.S. How the world has changed! In the old days, the authorities would have dealt with vagrancy by offering free accommodation in the local lock-up. And those who couldn't afford the rent would share a house. No one ever thought of dumping themselves on the rest of society. And here's the real kicker: those 'homeless' no doubt collect all possible welfare benefits; if three or four would pool that easy money, they'd have as much to spend on rent, food, and clothing as the average family. Of course, they couldn't afford to live in the CBD but neither can I.
What's wrong with supporting rural and regional Australia and taking them to a quiet motel in the country where the grass is green and the damages they inflict on the place are a lot cheaper to repair?
ℬy the edge of the woods, at the foot of the hill,
Is a lush green meadow where time stands still.
Where the friends of man and woman do run,
When their time on earth is over and done.
For here, between this world and the next,
Is a place where each beloved creature finds rest.
On this golden land, they wait and they play,
Till the Rainbow Bridge they cross over one day.
No more do they suffer in pain or in sadness,
For here they are whole, their lives filled with gladness.
Their limbs are restored, their health renewed,
Their bodies have healed with strength imbued.
They romp through the grass, and sniff at the air,
All ears prick forward, eyes dart front and back,
Then all of a sudden, one breaks from the pack,
For just at that instant, their eyes have met:
Together again, both person and pet.
So they run to each other, these friends from long past,
The time of their parting is over at last.
The sadness they felt while they were apart,
Has turned into joy once more in each heart.
They embrace with a love that will last forever,
And then side by side, they cross over ... together.
On this day last year we said good-bye to our wonderful friend Malty.
Rest in Peace, our loyal friend. You will forever be in our hearts.
Having got Spaghetti Bolognaise down to a fine art, yesterday's mention of Savoury Mince made my mouth water so much that I couldn't wait to get into the Bay today to buy a half-kilo of mince and cook up a storm.
After checking it out on YouTube, I couldn't believe how easy it is to make which left me wondering why I hadn't already tried it a long time ago. It turned out a real treat and is now part of my weekly menu.
What with savoury mince, spaghetti bolognaise, ALDI's green chicken curry TV dinner, fried eggs and baked beans on toast, the occasional cheese-and-onion sandwich, and a plentiful supply of the old Chateau Cardboard, I think I can hold out indefinitely. Anyone listening?
Those who follow my blog will know my opinion of real estate agents: 'useless' is perhaps the least offensive term. Why would you pay someone thousands of dollars for doing no more than drive someone out to your place for a look-see?
A taxi-driver would do it for a lot less. In fact, some agents are ex-taxi-drivers and a lot of other ex-es besides, but never ex-cellent!
After all, what do they do other than list your property on the internet and then wait to drive someone out to it? I can do that better myself!
A lot of others seem to have come to the same conclusion, judging by the growing number of do-it-yourself real estate internet portals:
These DIY-merketers have become so numerous they themselves are now fighting for market share, with one offering me a listing at a hugely discounted fee and another at no cost at all.
Of course, selling directly through the internet is the way of the future, and at least one local agent seems to have realised this by offering the same sort of do-it-yourself package: click here.
Good on ya, Beaches & Bush Properties. Welcome to the future in real estate sales and thank you for no longer beating around the bush!
These days, my idea of 'roughing it' is when I have to have an extension cord for my electric blanket which is still a Linda, despite their former slogan "sleep wonderfully warm with Linda" having been killed off by the Thought Police.
Before the Thought Police began to strut their stuff, even Sydney buses would exhort us to "hide the sausage tonight" and have bangers and mash for dinner, washed down, of course, with the kind of beer that "helped ugly people have sex since 1862".
Not too much beer for me these days as I now prefer classical music to sex - and even there I don't go to a concert from one year to the next.
Anyway, little Rover knows I've already switched on the electric blanket and now looks at me as if to say, "Come on, it's time to hit the cot".
And he's right, of course, because it's already dark outside and cold. I just wished it was a little bit colder so that I could really appreciate Linda but I think I will anyway. Come on, Rover! Bedtime!
Why is it that these days every phone call I make to old friends ends up sounding like a Monty Python sketch? Who would've thought forty years ago we'd all be sitting here talking like that?
While war never came to Australia, rationing went on for quite a while after the war had ended. Weekly rations were limited to 900 grams of meat, 225 grams of butter, 450 grams of sugar, and 90 grams of tea.
What luxury! In post-war Germany there was nothing to ration! I grew up on bread and dripping, treacle, oatmeal, the occasional savoury mince (which I still love today), and a surfeit of potatoes.
The rest of my growing-up I did in Australia - on mixed grill, silverside and lamb chops at Canberra's Barton House. There the only rationing was the portion control exercised by the fat Yugoslav cook who always took just one pitying look at me before adding another lamb chop.
I still have the occasional cup of cold tea today without milk or sugar; in fact, without tea itself! It's called Perrier! Try telling that to the young people of today!
Ian Paterson, AASA, ACIS, AAIM, grand-daddy of all accountants, used to say, "If the debits don't equal the credits - make 'em!"
The accountant of a large business had the same daily routine: on arriving at work, he would unlock the bottom drawer of his desk, peer at something inside, then close and lock the drawer. He had been doing this for thirty years.
The entire staff was intrigued but no-one was game to ask him what was in the drawer. Finally the time came for him to retire. There was a farewell party with speeches and a presentation. As soon as he had left the building, some of the staff rushed into his office, unlocked the bottom drawer and peered inside. Taped to the bottom of the drawer was a sheet of paper. It read, "Debit on the left, credit on the right". This joke isn't funny with Arabs - well, nothing is - whose debits and credits are vice versa.
I wonder if this joke made the rounds of accountants who in 1994 had gathered in the small Italian town of San Sepulcro to celebrate the publication five hundred years earlier of the first book on double-entry accounting by the Italian monk Luca Pacioli (pronounced pot-CHEE-oh-lee), who was born there circa 1445.
While Pacioli is often called the "Father of Accounting", he did not invent the system. Instead, he simply described a method used by merchants in Venice during the Italian Renaissance period. His system included most of the accounting routines as we know them today. For example, he described the use journals and ledgers, and he warned that "a person should not go to sleep at night until the debits equalled the credits!" His ledger included assets (including receivables and inventories), liabilities, capital, income, and expense accounts. He demonstrated year-end closing entries and proposed that a trial balance be used to prove a balanced ledger. Also, his treatise alludes to a wide range of topics from accounting ethics to cost accounting -- see translation by J.B. Geijsbeek, Ancient Double-Entry Bookkeeping).
Practising Pacioli's teachings afforded me a comfortable living, and although my personal life was not always perfectly balanced, I never went to sleep at night until all the debits had equalled the credits (or, to get an early night, by posting the difference to a suspense account, as my friend Ganesh Sharma Krishna in Singapore shrewdly observed).
Michelangelo began painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in 1508. In 1510, he took a year-long break, before completing his famous work in 1512.
What a rushed job! I started painting the ceiling in the kitchen in late 2014 and, like Michelangelo, I took a break to wipe sweat and paint from my eyes, but, unlike Michelangelo, I never got started again.
Now that the incomplete job is already into its third year, I might as well "do a Michelangelo" and leave its completion until next year.
I know the wife doesn't like surprises, so I don't want to upset her with a completely painted kitchen ceiling when she returns in five weeks.
Michelangelo is said to have been lying on his back doing the job. I've been lying on my back and not doing the job. How cool is that?
A couple of days ago, I conducted an online survey among my friends which, unlike this study, was not taxpayer-funded.
I posited the following: "After two months of continuous batching, I've come to regard the daily washing-up in the kitchen as quite relaxing and meditative. All that whooshing-about in those warm soap suds is a welcome antidote to all the bad news in the world", and asked, "Any comments from you that would be fit to print?"
Shown below are the replies which are fit to print, however, without naming names in order to protect them (mainly from their wives):
From one of the longest-serving 'inmates': "I am not batching but have a label on my forehead that says dishwasher! Not meditative at all; I think punitive is more apt."
And this one is from a Steptoe & Sonaficionado: "I still prefer the bath. It must be a bit cramped your way; still, each to his own."
Here's the reply from someone who'd give you his full medical history, starting from the time they cut his umbilical cord, if you asked him "how are you?": "You need practice; one paper plate kept in the deep freeze; when finished, rinse and put back in the deep freeze; should last a week before replacing. Scrape scraps onto newspaper you're reading while eating; then roll up and in the rubbish; only need to wash knife, fork and spoon."
In marked contract, someone else simply replied, "Deep!", without even knowing the size of our kitchen sink.
And the final reply came from someone lying on the floor repairing a leaking dishwasher. Alas, his words, while memorable, are unprintable.
To add your late entry, email me at riverbendnelligen{AT]mail.com.
A gondolier who made headlines a decade ago for being the first woman to enter the male-dominated cadre of Venice's 'gondolieri' has announced s/he is transgender.
Alex Hai made the revelation last Wednesday on Facebook and in a lengthy interview on Radiolab.
In the Facebook post, Hai said he had mastered rowing "while in the body of a woman". But he said he was not a woman and "it is inaccurate to refer to me as 'she' or 'Alexandra' for any reason".
Mind you, I couldn't care less whether s/he calls him/herself Alex or Alexandra. So while s/he's trying to figure out which toilet to use, I much rather watch once more Luchino Visconti's "Death in Venice".
If you want to read Thomas Mann's novella of the same name, click here. Reading this short novella (love that tautology!) shouldn't take you much longer than it takes them to add another letter to "LGBTI".
You will know by now that I hardly ever miss a chance to make a literary allusion, and what better chance is there than to allude to Agatha Christie's masterpiece. Which sprang to my mind when I came back from the Bay yesterday and saw a big fat SOLD sticker across the "For Sale" sign at # 31 Sproxton Lane, a 1719.9m2 block of vacant waterfront land that sold just now for $750,000.
It was the last piece of real estate for sale in the lane other than "Riverbend". So what price for twenty times the land size plus a huge two-storey house, library, cottage, workshop, horse shed, clubhouse by the pond, and all the fencing and landscaping done? Oh, and I almost forget the twenty-five benches!
Colleen had promised to send a photo of their monthly 'coffee klatsch' but reneged at the last moment, citing her unbecoming hairstyle. We therefore apologise for only being able to show you on this blog an artist's impression of her actual appearance
We don't just treasure our memories; we are our memories. And yet, memory is less like a collection of photographs than it is like a collection of impressionist paintings rendered by an artist who's taken considerable licence with his subject.
I can only imagine how much licence was taken when John Burke, ANZ Bank's Chairman of the Bored, met with his personal assistant Colleen Moran (née Murray) over a cup of latte yesterday for their monthly 'Laugh-In' - "Say good night, John" - "Good night, John!" - to talk about 'the good ol' days' working with the ANZ Bank and living at Barton House, some of which I shared from 1965 to 1967 and again in 1969.
I wrote elsewhere about my years with the ANZ Bank - click here - and living at Barton House - click here - which shaped my future like no other period in my life, and I will always be grateful to the late Mr Robert Reid, the then manager of the ANZ Bank in Canberra, who hired me as a youngster, fresh off the boat from Europe, and gave me the chance of a new start in a new country.
While Mr Reid made the initial decision to hire me, it was John Burke as my immediate boss who had to make it work by putting up with my 'German-ness', both in accent and attitude, although he never took himself too seriously to make me feel that he was the boss. In fact, while I was just a lowly ledger examiner and trainee teller, John was a consummate teller - a teller of jokes, that is.
For us Germans jokes are no laughing matter. Maybe it's because we lack the flexibility of the English language whose vocabulary and grammar allow for endlessly amusing confusions of meanings, or because we killed all the funny people, but we simply fail to understand the rhetorical trifecta of irony, overstatement and understatement, of which John was - and still is - a past master. He just had to mention the war or say in a Monty Python-kind of voice "I haff a funny joke for jew and jew vill laugh" for my head to go down into the O/D-card bin to suppress a convulsive giggle.
Yours truly outside the ANZ Bank Kingston A.C.T. in 1969
Back in those days I knew nothing, so John taught me all about the importance of the comma ("eats roots and leaves") and how to know when "you're in love". He also introduced me to psychoanalysis ("I talk to the trees, that's why they put me away") and politics (he wanted me to join some sort of party as a country member) and let me in on a banking secret ("once you withdraw, you lose all your interest"). John was a fun-sort of a boss. He got things done not by cracking a whip but by cracking a joke! Under his tutelage, my compulsory two years in Australia simply flew by.
I still knew a good German joke - just the one but I won't repeat it here because I know you won't find it funny - and could compound nouns with the best of them, but slowly the voices in my head began to speak in English and I learnt that "I'm sorry but all the banknotes are the same size" wasn't the correct answer to a customer asking for larger ones.
Remember when the Seekers came to Canberra in 1966 for the filming of their television program "The Seekers Down Under"? Those were the days of driving without seatbelts and listening to lyrics which were intelligible and intelligent. 'A World Of Our Own' indeed! I still have all their records, including their later "I am Australian" which ought to be our anthem
As for Colleen, my one mental picture of her is wearing her dark-blue bank uniform on a frosty Canberra morning with contrasting fluffy white finger-gloves which she now denies she ever owned. Who said that memory is what we thought we'd forgotten? Colleen was part of the soap opera that was Barton House while I was a 'New Australian', still struggling with a new language. And while others had girlfriends, I hadn't even had the experience yet of failing to get a girlfriend.
Have a listen to the Bitter Lemons singing "Canberra Blues" in the Albert Hall in 1965. The late Paul Lyneham - who would become a well-known political journo later - was their lead vocal. And take a good look at the self-conscious dancers on the floor, so typical of the time. As for myself,
you'd have had to beat me unconscious to be dragged off to a dance like that.
At the time, everyone over the age of thirty looked middle-aged, and everyone over fifty looked absolutely antique (Mr Tillett did!) but here we are, fifty years later, belonging to the same category of the non-young, and turning our pasts into anecdotes which is one way of not losing the plot when you get old. I always thought growing old would take longer than this.
They say that old bankers never die, they just lose interest. Colleen and John, I hope you never lose your interest in those 'good ol' days' and treasure them as much as I do. I may even come to one of your meetings and help you reopen some long-forgotten neural pathways; after all, "ve haff vays of making jew talk".
At least for the moment, the carnival is not over yet!!!
A man who smashed up make-up counters with a baseball bat inside a southwest Sydney shopping centre has been taken to hospital for a mental health assessment. Did his wife max out their credit card on new eye liners?
"The Sun" reports that the residents who lost their homes in the Grenfell Tower will be permanently housed in Kensington High Street in a £2 billion ($A3.3 billion) development with flats - with one, two or three bedrooms - that will be fully furnished. It gives the term 'social housing' a completely new meaning.
As barking mad as it may sound, a Dr Mark Reeve told ABC Radio Adelaide's Afternoons program that brushing your dog's teeth regularly could help you save a fortune in vet bills. Just don't use your own toothbrush.
Balinese authorities confirm the hole used by four inmates, including an Australian, to escape from Kerobokan jail could have been dug from either inside or outside the facility. Why? Was there a third option?
People living in regional Australia not only use social media more than those living in cities, but also encounter greater bullying and harassment, a new report has found. Why? Don't regional computers have a DELETE button?
A study suggests that Australians should show 'cultural sensitivity' towards migrant men who physically abuse their wife and children. Going one step further, a court put a teenager who had immigrated to Australia from Afghanistan on two years probation with no conviction after he had pleaded guilty to a series of sex attacks on a Surfers Paradise beach. The judge accepted that seeing girls in bikinis is different to the environment in which he grew up.
Boris Becker has been declared bankrupt by a British court after the former tennis player failed to pay a long-standing debt. His lawyer said Becker was “not a sophisticated individual when it comes to finances,” and that bankruptcy was likely to have an adverse effect on Becker’s image. “He should have thought about that a long time ago,” the registrar said.
And Sydney commuters take advantage of an Opal charge-card loophole by travelling to and from Sydney Airport for a mere $3.38: the system allows them to tap off with a negative balance and then throw the card away without having to pay the full fare of $18.62. Pure genius!
Our politicians, having woken up from their usual slumber and discovered to their dismay that there are some undeserving ordinary citizens who have saved enough in their self-managed superannuation funds to equal or even exceed these fat-cats' non-contributory parliamentary super pay-outs, acted with uncommon speed to put a limit on those funds.
Anything in excess of this newly-imposed and quite arbitrary limit needs to be taken back out of the superfunds by 30th June or else be taxed at a higher rate as well as attract nasty fines.
Well, thanks to the calamitous state of the world and ever-nosediving commodity prices, the share market (and BHP) has been in a downward trend since late January. Yesterday's sharp drop really put the knife into it, which saves me from doing any transferring-out to comply with our politicians' fit-of-jealousy threshold. Thanks for small mercies!
'There's a smell in here that will outlast religion.' 'There's another classic example of someone having a two inch arsehole and us having installed only one inch piping.' [advice on getting married] 'Cut out the middle man; find someone you hate and buy them a house.' 'There's the urinal, and being a male, you have a prong on you that points forward, so I don't understand how they get it on their feet. They must point it down.' 'I'd love to be able to say "I plumb toilets" and have someone say "Now that is something I've always wanted to do"'.
Some time ago the wife left me in no doubt that "Dust!" was not the correct answer; however, there was plenty on it after two telly-free months when I finally switched it on last night to watch David Stratton's "Stories of Australian Cinema".
Lovers of Australian movies will adore this documentary series with its glimpses of the most moving moments, the most unforgettable scenes and the ones that caused us pain. The series also revisits some of those times when a line of dialogue was so often repeated that it eventually entered the lexicon. Think of 'You're terrible Muriel' and 'Tell him he's dreaming' and 'There’s a smell in here that will outlast religion'. Even 'How’s the serenity?' has now entered the real estate ads.
Ich wanderte im Jahre 1965 vom (k)alten Deutschland nach Australien aus. In Erinnerung an das alte Sprichwort "Gott hüte mich vor Sturm und Wind und Deutschen die im Ausland sind" wurde ich in 1971 im Dschungel von Neu-Guinea australischer Staatsbürger. Das kostete mich nur einen Umlaut und das zweite n im Nachnamen - von -mann auf -man.
Australien gab mir eine zweite Sprache und eine zweite Chance und es war auch der Anfang und das Ende: nach fünfzig Arbeiten in fünfzehn Ländern - "Die ganze Welt mein Arbeitsfeld" - lebe ich jetzt im Ruhestand in Australien an der schönen Südküste von Neusüdwales.
Ich verbringe meine Tage mit dem Lesen von Büchern, segle mein Boot den Fluss hinunter, beschäftige mich mit Holzarbeit, oder mache Pläne für eine neue Reise. Falls Du mir schreiben willst, sende mir eine Email an riverbendnelligen [AT] mail.com, und ich schreibe zurück.
Falls Du anrufen möchtest, meine Nummer ist XLIV LXXVIII X LXXXI.
Notice to North American readers:
This blog is written in the version of English that is standard here. So recognise is spelled recognise and not recognize etc. I recognise that some North American readers may find this upsetting, and while I sympathise with them, I sympathise even more with my countrymen who taught me how to spell. However, as an apology, here are a bunch of Zs for you to put where needed.
Zzzzzz
Disclaimer
This blog has no particular axe to grind, apart from that of having no particular axe to grind. It is written by a bloke who was born in Germany at the end of the war (that is, for younger readers, the Second World War, the one the Americans think they won single-handedly). He left for Australia when most Germans had not yet visited any foreign countries, except to invade them. He lived and worked all over the world, and even managed a couple of visits back to the (c)old country whose inhabitants he found very efficient, especially when it came to totting up what he had consumed from the hotels' minibars. In retirement, he lives (again) in Australia, but is yet to grow up anywhere.
He reserves the right to revise his views at any time. He might even indulge in the freedom of contradicting himself. He has done so in the past and will most certainly do so in the future. He is not persuading you or anyone else to believe anything that is reported on or linked to from this site, but encourages you to use all available resources to form your own opinions about important things that affect all our lives and to express them in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Everything on this website, including any material that third parties may consider to be their copyright, has been used on the basis of “fair dealing” for the purposes of research and study, and criticism and review. Any party who feels that their copyright has been infringed should contact me with details of the copyright material and proof of their ownership and I will remove it.
And finally, don't bother trying to read between the lines. There are no lines - only snapshots, most out of focus.
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Yours truly outside the ANZ Bank Kingston A.C.T. in 1969
