As Tears Go By

 

It is the evening of the day / I sit and watch the children play
Smiling faces I can see / But not for me
I sit and watch / As tears go by

My riches can't buy everything / I want to hear the children sing
All I hear is the sound / Of rain falling on the ground
I sit and watch / As tears go by

It is the evening of the day / I sit and watch the children play
Doing things I used to do / They think are new
I sit and watch / As tears go by

 

My life seems compartmentalised by music: there was Nana Mouskouri in Greece, Eddie Rabbit in Singapore; Lobo in Burma, Neil Diamond in New Guinea, the Seekers in Australia, and Marianne Faithfull in what was then South-West Africa and is now Namibia.

My flatmate Karl-Heinz Herzberg, another young German who like me worked for starvation wages for the German company Metje & Ziegler in Lüderitz, played her record "As Tears Go By" endlessly night after night.

 

Yours truly on the left

 

Drinks helped to cope with the view from the window to the harbour ...

 

 

... while listening to the howling winds coming out of the desert.

 

<

 

Endlessly playing "As Tears Go By" seemed to have helped Karl-Heinz to get through those long nights, as he's still there in what is now Namibia, unlike me who left after only six months, but the memory of Karl-Heinz who was a good friend despite his very limited taste in music, lives on.

All this came back to me when I read that "Pop star Marianne Faithfull has died peacefully in the company of her family in London, aged 78".

It's now the evening of our lives, Karl-Heinz, and I don't know if you're still spending your nights playing "As Tears Go By" as the desert winds howl outside, but I am sure you'll be playing it one last time tonight.

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The month that was

 

Greenland as imagined by Trump

 

Erik the Red, a Norwegian Viking, named Greenland over 1,000 years ago to make it sound like a great place to live in, as he wanted to attract settlers. It seems to have finally worked, as Trump, arguably the most unsuitable leader of any major western country in living memory, wants to buy it or bully Denmark to give it to him.

According to Trump, "essentially it's a large real estate deal", as US presidents have bought land before. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson bought huge tracts of land from France for $15m in the Louisiana Purchase. In 1867, Andrew Johnson paid $7.2m for Alaska from Russia. Territory has also been purchased from Denmark. In 1917 Woodrow Wilson bought the Danish West Indies for $25m, renaming them the US Virgin Islands.

I haven't been to Greenland but I guess it's as dull a place as it was a thousand years ago, but with the thawing of the ice it will certainly play a more significant role in the Northwest Passage and with the plethora of strategic minerals and oil reserves thought to be hidden under its ice.

 

 

As for Trump wanting to retake the Panama Canal from Panama, his timing may be a little out as the canal is said to be running dry. Not so the Gulf of Mexico which he wants to rename the Gulf of America.

What's in a name? Despite the Arabs having for decades called the Persian Gulf the Arabian Gulf, it hasn't really caught on, although Trump may be helped by Google Maps who will do his bidding and call it the Gulf of America. Why not compromise and call it the West Cuban Sea?

As for some of the other stuff Trump has been rolling out, I'm all for putting all that weird gender stuff back into the padded cell from which it escaped all those many years ago. There are only two genders, male and female, instead of women with penises and men with "husbands". If homosexuality were, as claimed, genetic rather than just a mental aberration, it would, by definition, have died out a long time ago.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."

So let's hang on to some of the good stuff, and disregard most of the foolishness, and muddle through the next four years as best we can.

 

 

On this happy note, let's listen to the voice of reason, Richard Dawkins, whose voice I could listen to and whose books I could read all day long.

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A beautiful true story about lovers of books

 

 

Helene Hanff's book, the epistolary "84 Charing Cross Road" was first published in 1970. It chronicles Helene Hanff's twenty years of correspondence with Frank Doel, the chief buyer for Marks & Co, a London bookshop.

 

Read the book online at archive.org
(for my Chinese friend in Merimbula, here is the Chinese edition)

 

She first contacted the shop in 1949 and it fell to Frank Doel to fulfil her requests. In time, a long-distance friendship developed between the two and between Helene Hanff and other staff members as well, with an exchange of Christmas packages, birthday gifts and food parcels to help with the post-World War II food shortages in Britain.

Their letters included discussions about topics as diverse as the sermons of John Donne, how to make Yorkshire Pudding, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the coronation of Elizabeth II. Helene Hanff postponed visiting her English friends until too late; Frank Doel died in December 1968 from peritonitis from a burst appendix, and the bookshop eventually closed in December 1970.

Helene Hanff did finally visit Charing Cross Road and the empty shop in the summer of 1971, a trip recorded in her 1973 book "The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street".

 

Unfortunately, the English edition is not available for online reading,
but I'm sure you don't mind reading the French edition

 

The book "84 Charing Cross Road" was made into a beautiful movie in 1987, in which Hanff was played by Anne Bancroft, while Anthony Hopkins took the part of Frank Doel. I watched this popular movie a dozen times; what I had never seen was this earlier 1975 adaptation for British television, starring the long-forgotten Anne Jackson and Frank Finlay. I found a full-length copy of it while idly browsing YouTube after having raided the fridge for some crackers and Camembert on a sleepless night. If you want to join me, click on Watch on YouTube.

 

Click on Watch on YouTube

 

It's not an 'exciting' book in the usual John Grisham or John le Carré kind of way, which makes it a beautiful audiobook to fall asleep by - with a mouthful of crackers and Camembert - but beware, the following recording ends at 2:02:30, after which it repeats previous sections.

 

 

And here's a live book reading at the University Book Store in Seattle:

 

 

While I don't necessarily share Helene Hanff's antiquarian taste in books - of the many books she ordered from Marks & Co, I confess I only read "The Wind in the Willows" - I do share her passion for books. They are the only enduring reality I can be certain of till the day I die.

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Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep

 

 

He was a little boy at the time the "Great War", who then lived through the miseries of the Treaty of Versailles as a teenager; whose promising career as a "Volkswirt" was cut short by the next war, from which he then came back as a physically disabled and emotionally dead man.

This man was my father who was born on the 9th of December 1907 and who died on this day in 1984. I attended the funeral of this man whom I only ever knew as an emotionally dead man who never showed any sign of affection towards me. Once a year I would run home from school, excited to show him my top marks, and was met with his blank stare.

I built myself a new life in Australia, after which I revisited home and was greeted with an indifference as if I'd just been down to the corner store to buy him the one bottle of beer he held on to for the whole day as he sat, always in his dressing gown, by the window and unseeingly watched the world pass him by. He was the stranger that was my father.

I lived and worked in Athens in Greece in 1983 and flew to Germany to sit with him for a week but he no longer recognised me. I flew back a few months later to attend the funeral but I couldn't weep. I was as emotionally dead as he had been, and yet, as his coffin slowly moved towards the curtain, I shuddered with defiant disbelief that this was the end of his long and painful life.

Even if we understand that dying is but a token of our existential luckiness, even if we understand that we are borrowed stardust, bound to be returned to the universe that made it — a universe itself slouching toward nothingness as its stars are slowly burning out their energy to leave a cold austere darkness of pure spacetime - that we are "3,147,740,103,497,276,498,750,208,327 atoms, and consist of 63.7 percent oxygen, 21.0 percent carbon, 10.1 percent hydrogen, 2.6 percent nitrogen, 1.4 percent calcium, 1.1 percent phosphorous, plus a smattering of the ninety-odd other chemical elements created in stars", it is still hard to understand that in our cremation, "water evaporates; carbon and nitrogen combine with oxygen to make gaseous carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, which floats skyward and mingles with the air, and most of our calcium and phosphorous bakes into a reddish brown residue which scatters in soil and in wind." ["Mr g" by Alan Lightman]

As Alan Lightman continues to write: "Released from their temporary confinement, the atoms slowly spread out and diffuse through the atmosphere. In sixty days' time, they could be found in every handful of air on the planet. In one hundred days, some of the atoms, the vaporous water, had condensed into liquid and returned to the surface as rain, to be drunk and ingested by animals and plants. Some of the atoms were absorbed by light-utilising organisms and transformed into tissues and tubules and leaves. Some were breathed in by oxygen creatures, incorporated into organs and bone.

Pregnant women ate animals and plants made of the atoms. A year later, babies contained some of the atoms... Several years after the death, millions of children contained some of the atoms. And their children would contain some of the atoms as well. Their minds contained part of the mind.

Will these millions of children, for generations upon future generations, know that some of their atoms cycled through this person? It is not likely. Will they feel what that person felt, will their memories have flickering strokes of that person's memories? No, it is not possible. But it will let them have their own brief glimpse of the Void, just at the moment as they pass from living to dead, from animate to inanimate, from consciousness to that which has no consciousness. For a moment, they will understand infinity.

And the individual atoms, cycled through the body and then cycled through wind and water and soil, cycled through generations and generations of living creatures and minds, will repeat and connect and make a whole out of parts. Although without memory, they make a memory. Although impermanent, they make a permanence. Although scattered, they make a totality."

Animated by electrical impulses and temporal interactions of matter, our finite minds cannot grasp any of this. Perhaps this poem helps:

 

VATI born 9.12.1907 - died 31.1.1984     Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep. I am in a thousand winds that blow, I am the softly falling snow. I am the gentle showers of rain, I am the fields of ripening grain. I am in the morning hush, I am in the graceful rush Of beautiful birds in circling flight, I am the starshine of the night. I am in the flowers that bloom, I am in a quiet room. I am in the birds that sing, I am in each lovely thing. Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there. I did not die.

 

 

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Welcome to River Run ... again!

3 Sproxton Lane, Nelligen

 

Those tooth extractions last week seem to have left some broken fragments inside my gum, and so I went back to the dentist today for some warranty work. "All our warranty work is without anaesthetics", he insisted. To avoid any more physical pain, I had to sign up for more financial one and was left wondering which is worse.

Dale from the Batemans Bay Soldiers' Club also called in with some sort of teething problems. I fancy the club has more than just teething problems if the car's signage is right and there's only ONE soldier left in the club. I felt compelled to report them to the Apostrophe Protection Society, of which I have been a card-carrying member for many years.

 

 

On the way back home, I noticed that Number 3 Sproxton Lane is for sale - again! According to the agent's hyperbole, this "is a riverside lifestyle like no other, this is more than a property; it's a lifestyle. Whether you envision hosting guests, earning income, or simply revelling in riverside serenity, this sanctuary promises endless possibilities. Don't let this rare opportunity sail away." [Click here]

 

 

It had sold only a little over a year ago for two million dollars, after which the new owners did some very extensive renovations to the old building facing the street, and concreted much of the previously lush gardens. Now it'll go under the hammer at auction on the 1st of March.

It's anyone's guess if they get their money back as the market has cooled off a bit, especially for properties in the higher price range, of which there are two examples below. I know which one is the better deal!

 

405/1 Herarde Street, Batemans Bay, NSW 2536

35-39 Sproxton Lane, Nelligen, NSW 2536

 

 

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Postscript 13/2/2025: They've just disclosed their price expectations of $1,650,000 to $1,750,000. That's a quarter-million less than what they paid just a year ago which sounds pretty desperate. What's going on?

Postsscript 21/2/2025: It sold for $1,750,000!

 

A parallel life

 

It is thirteen years ago almost to the day, when I received this email from someone who had lived an almost parallel life to mine, which prompted me to jot down the events that led to my going to Honiara in the Solomon Islands in February 1973 and my subsequent departure at the end of that same year:

 

Hello Peter Let me introduce myself: my name is Robyn Johnstone and I am a very happy 63 year old. I feel comfortable addressing you as Peter as I am of the same vintage and I think we have lots of memories in common. How do I know this - because I have been reading your web page which I discovered last night during my Random Research. I start reading on something that is of interest and the links take me on a wonderful journey. Last night I was seeking another copy of ‘Faraway’ as I gave my copy away to another old Solomon Island expat. From that point I reached ‘your footnote’ to “And thereby hangs yet another tale”. It was wonderful reading and I then went on reading other parts of your personal website. It was a joy to read. My reason for reading about Pigeon Island is for me it was an ‘opportunity foregone’ [sic]. In about 1990 or 1991 I was asked by a friend (Ron Cross) who was promoting remote island tourism if I could house-sit for the owners who needed to go for a 6-week break to England. As I had 2 small children and a husband who worked for SIEA (an enterprise you are familiar with) I declined. Like so many other decisions in life it was a path not taken and still interesting to me 20 years later. It was very interesting to read your life’s travels and view your pictures. It so reminded that once (10 years ago) an acquaintance at a party said, “I guess no one is really interested in your stories as they have never been to the places you have so why don’t you write them all down at least for your own memory sake.” I have yet to follow this advice but after reading your web page I might now be inspired. Unlike you I was accompanying my husband who got the jobs on Pacific Islands so I had plenty of time to make friends and go to social gatherings while he worked. He was Deputy General Manager at SIEA (your BSIEA). We lived on Lengakiki Ridge in a house owned by SIEA with fabulous views of Iron Bottom Sound (there is a picture of this house on my Facebook). By the time he worked there, SIEA had bought up 40 houses for staff. Briefly we were there 1988-1993. The house as photographed by Robyn Johnstone. I lived in the same house in 1973. Now you know why I love your web page and so admire what you have contributed to my reading pleasure. Just like you I now read all the books that relate to the places we have lived. I am a great Somerset Maugham fan and I read Lucy Irvine and passed on the book Faraway to heaps of contacts. I feel I know you from reading so much of your life on the web. Congratulations on your fabulously interesting offerings. I am on Facebook with lots of Solomon Island connections (you might know some). Hope you enjoyed my little input and thank you for all the information and photos you provided for the pleasure and memory prompts for myself and others. Regards to your wife Padma and yourself Robyn Johnstone

 

What a parallel life: not only do Robyn and her husband now live in Townsville which had been my home in 1982, but she and her husband had also lived and worked in Samoa where I had worked in 1978, and in the Middle East where I had worked in 1982, and in Honiara where I had been the commercial manager of the same Electricity Authority for which her husband had been the Deputy General Manager many years later, and where they had lived in the very same house in which I had lived in 1973. You couldn't get more parallel than that!

Having assisted in the successful start-up of Camp Catering Services' operations on Bougainville in 1972, the company lured me to Sydney to become the group's Financial Controller. I hired a friend and fellow-accountant to take over from me and headed for Sydney - and disaster! Sydney was the pits! And it was agony to watch the financial achievements of the company's 'Jewel in the Crown' on Bougainville being frittered away in endless head office waste and infighting.

I quit after only five months. The managing director, Nelson Hardy, immediately offered me my old position back on Bougainville, but how could I do my friend out of a job? Instead, I found my own way back to the islands by successfully applying for the position of 'Secretary' (Commercial Manager) with the British Solomon Islands Electricity Authority (BSIEA) in Honiara, the capital of the then British Solomon Islands Protectorate.

I took over from another expat who for years had collected sizeable allowances for a non-existent wife and several children in Australia. When it seemed he was going to be found out, they all suddenly died in a car crash! Not that he shed a tear as such was the shortage of expat manpower that he was immediately re-employed by another business in town.

My new boss, the meek-and-mild General Manager of the Authority, a British civil servant 'Yes, Minister' type, wanted to get through his contract with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of benefits for himself and his cohorts of other expat time-servers whereas I was young and ambitious and wanted change. I hadn't read about Kipling's six honest serving-men yet but already couldn't help myself questioning the what and where and when and how and why and by whom when looking at some of the hide-bound Authority's procedures.

The warehouse at the old Honiara powerhouse (next to Blums' Hotel) documented the issue of every single bolt and nut and washer, worth no more than a few cents each, on triplicate requisitions. These were then priced, multiplied, totalled and entered on ledger cards TWICE, first on the respective stock card and then on the job card. As this work was deemed to be beyond the mental capacity of a 'Native', a highly-paid expat woman had made a career out of it. When I suggested that such minor material issues should be left unrecorded and instead a small lumpsum added to every capital job to account for such incidental issues, I was in her opinion hastening the decline of the British Empire! That she was the wife of a British police officer who had faithfully served the dying Empire, from one independence-gaining African colony to another, and now hung on to his last posting for dear life, was of course sheer coincidence. It was all jobs for the boys - and their wives!

The Authority employed a dozen Gilbert Islander meter-readers who lolled about the office for most of the time waiting for the end of the month when they were let loose like a swarm of angry bees to race through the streets and up and down the hills of Honiara to read the whole town's electricity meters all at once. They would then return to head office with their readings and, with the help of a calculator, deduct last month's reading from this month's, multiply the result by the kilowatt unit rate, and transcribe it all onto invoices which were then folded, put into envelopes, and mailed out.

After having watched this in utter amazement for the first month, I suggested that the town area should be broken up in sectors and that meters should be read throughout the month, each sector at the same time each month. I also suggested that, with each kilowatt hour costing just a few cents, consumption should be charged in multiples of TEN kilowatts so that meter-readers could drop the last digit on their readings to make the recording of this month's and the deducting of the previous month's reading easier. Finally, I drew up a simple ready reckoner of charges in multiples of ten kilowatts for the meter-readers' use. They would take it with them on their rounds together with each householder's invoice on which the previous month's reading (without the last digit) had already been carried forward. As they read the meter, they would enter the new reading (without the last digit), deduct the previous month's reading, look up the charge on the ready reckoner, and enter the dollar amount on the invoice. The original invoice would then be left in the householder's mailbox and the carbon copy (yes, they had already progressed to NCR-type precarbonised invoice paper) returned to the office.

All hell broke loose! This would never do! Surely, those 'black savages' couldn't do a white man's job? I had rocked the British expats' lifeboat, HMS Sinecure, and it was all hands on deck to repel the usurper from the Colonies!

Well, it took me longer to convince the Protectorate's Auditor-General, who had been roped in to stop me from committing these follies, than to train the meter-readers who welcomed the changes with full throttles as they zoomed all over town, proud of their new importance. To paraphrase Lawrence of Arabia, "It is better that they do a thing imperfectly than for you to do it perfectly: for it is their country, their work, and your time is limited".

 

Wednesday nights was Chess Night on the terrace of the Mendana Hotel

there was always a big do on of a Saturday night at the Guadalcanal Club
(commonly referred to as G-Club)

My house on Lengakiki Ridge overlooking Honiara and the sea

 

I lived a gracious life in a big house on Lengakiki Ridge overlooking Honiara and the ocean beyond, all the way to Savo Island and Tulagi. I was member of the Point Cruz Yacht Club and every day by 4.30 sharp the offshore breeze would fill the sails of my CORSAIR dinghy. Wednesday nights was Chess Night on the terrace of the Mendana Hotel and there was always a big do on of a Saturday night at the Guadalcanal Club (commonly referred to as G-Club).

 

Entrance to the Governor's Residence

 

New arrivals in the Protectorate were supposed to leave their card with the aide-de-camp to His Excellency the British Governor. In due course, a gold-embossed invitation would be hand-delivered to summon them to morning tea on the lawns of the Governor's Residence.

Some of those 'Empire-builders' actually did walk with their noses in the air. They may have suffered from a rare medical condition that necessitated keeping their nostrils uplifted - if so I'm sorry for them - but the impression they gave me was that of the snooty Englishman abroad.

I was bored by the ease and comfort and meaninglessness of it all. Those were my restless years and I still had places to go - more than thirty, as it turned out - so, unable to tuck another cucumber sandwich under the cummerbund, this subject left Her Brittanic Majesty's Protectorate to return to reality (spelled PNG, then Burma, Iran, again PNG, Thursday Island, Samoa, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Greece, etc etc).

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Have I got a treat for you!

 

0:05 Raw Material 8:58 Mayhew 18:13 German Harry 28:10 The Happy Man 38:26 The Dream 50:25 In a Strange Land 1:01:37 The Luncheon 1:12:40 Salvatore 1:24:55 Home 1:36:58 Mr. Know-All 1:53:23 The Escape 2:03:30 A Friend in Need 2:15:11 The Portrait of a Gentleman 2:31:10 The End of the Flight (move the red dot to the desired timestamp)

 

 

I have rarely kept a diary, usually only during some short troubled times to offload my troubled thoughts. For the rest of the time, I rushed through life without reflecting on the people I had met, or the experiences I had had, or the few epiphanies I had gained.

What I did keep are some of the books I read then. Their bookseller marks on the inside page or price sticker still visible on the backcover remind me of where I was or even who I was when I bought those books.

My collection of Somerset Maugham's short stories are such reminder. I bought the first few during short visits to Singapore when I lived and worked in Burma where foreign-language books were almost impossible to buy, and I remember reading them while sitting on the porch of my colonial house, in sight and within earshot of the tinkling bells of the Shwedagon Pagoda, with LOBO playing on the cassette player nearby.

 

00:01 The Ant and the Grasshopper 11:01 French Joe 23:35 The Man with the Scar 32:59 The Poet 46:04 Louise 01:03:13 The Closed Shop 01:25:54 The Promise 01:43:04 A String of Beads 01:57:08 The Bum 02:18:17 Straight Flush 02:33:43 The Verger 02:52:58 The Wash Tub 03:11:44 The Social Sense 03:31:32 The Four Dutchmen (move the red dot to the desired timestamp)

 

The next lot of Somerset Maugham's short stories I acquired at various airport bookshops as I flew in and out of Saudi Arabia, where I read them to distract myself from the monotony of living under strict Sharia law and working in a chaotic office in which I was the only European. By then I had already "graduated" to Eddie Rabbit and a huge range of other pirated music cassettes, all freely available in Jeddah's soukh.

I no longer drown out the desert wind blowing outside with the songs of Eddie Rabbit, but every so often I still reach out to my collection of Somerset Maugham's short stories to return to those long-gone days.

What a surprise to find some of them as audiobooks on YouTube, beautifully read by Charlton Griffin, a voiceover actor and narrator.

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Call me Arthur Hoggett!

 

 

With my shingles a thing of the past, my self-imposed quarantine from my twice-weekly visit to the pool is coming to an end, and I look forward to not only refresh my body but also my mind as I always find plenty to talk about with my fellow-"aquanauts".

I wonder if a certain Yorkshireman is still there, who unflatteringly said that I reminded him of someone in the movie "Babe". At the time, all I could remember from that movie was the pig, so I asked him, "What, I remind you of Babe the Pig?" "I was thinking of its owner", he replied.

 

Farmer Arthur Hoggett in the movie "Babe"

 

When I got home, I immediately looked up "Babe" on YouTube, and there was farmer Arthur Hoggett with his oh so uncanny likeness of my father.

 

My father's photograph sometime in his early fifties

 

I read somewhere that as you get older there comes a time when you look in the mirror and see your father's face. Call me Arthur Hoggett!

 

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The true horror of existence

 

Read the book here

 

The true horror of existence is not the fear of death, but the fear of life. It is the fear of waking up each day to face the same struggles, the same disappointments, the same pain. It is the fear that nothing will ever change, that you are trapped in a cycle of suffering that you cannot escape. And in that fear, there is a desperation, a longing for something, anything, to break the monotony, to bring meaning to the endless repetition of days." Albert Camus "The Fall"

An old friend of mine from my New Guinea days who has never read Camus, who had a wife and kids once, and who was an accountant no less until he fell onto hard times, has been moving from one town to another, and from one bedsitter to another, always signing short six-month leases before moving on again. Perhaps like Jean-Baptiste Clamence in "The Fall", he, too, is longing for something, anything, to break the monotony, to bring meaning to the endless repetition of days.

(Substitute "country" for "town" and "company housing" for "bedsitter" and "six-month employment contracts" for "six-month leases", and you have quite a fitting decription of my own life between 1965 and 1985.)

I would've loved sending him a copy of "The Fall" but I don't have his address, and his mobile phone gives me the message "“The number you have dialled has been disconnected or is no longer in service". Perhaps his struggles are over and he no longer has to fear waking up each day.

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How Much Land Does a Man Need?

 

Read the book here

 

Whoever it was that came up with the idea of the quarter-acre block knew what he was talking about. I mean, a quarter of an acre is just large enough to keep the neighbours at arm's length, and small enough not to run out of breath mowing it.

So what made me buy these seven acres at "Riverbend" which have led me to spend so much money but, more importantly, so much energy on maintaining it. I had already bought a 750-square metre suburban block across the river on which I was planning to build a house more than adequate for my modest needs, when "Riverbend" came up for sale.

Yes, I made them an offer which was at the limit of what I could afford, without ever expecting they would accept it. When, to my greatest surprise, they accepted, I was honour-bound to proceed. And yet, I had one last chance of a reprieve when the agent, who had been equally surprised at my having snatched such a bargain, offered to take the property off my hands by paying me ten percent more than I had paid for it three months earlier. I guess I should've accepted his offer.

More than thirty years later, I could've driven my ride-on mower right around Australia for all the miles I clocked up on it, just sitting there, mowing grass and mowing grass and mowing grass ... How much land does a man need? Which is what a neighbour up the road asked during one of those "meeting of the minds" moments that made me look up and ask, "You, too?" His question prompted me to read Leo Tolstoy's short story again, which ends with these memorable lines: "His servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for Pahom to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed."

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It was smiles all 'round

 

Grace Tame, an advocate for sexual assault survivors, originally caught the attention of the country back in 2022 when she was photographed giving then Prime Minister Scott Morrison a very cold side eye.

Over the weekend Tame attended a morning tea event for former winners and finalists of the Australian Of The Year Awards at The Lodge.

However, when she fronted up to the media she revealed a shirt with the slogan “FUCK MURDOCH” boldly displayed across the front. Instead of putting this foul-mouthed Un-Australian of the Year firmly in her place, the Prime Minister and his fiancée only managed to smile lamely.

 

 

I have it on good authority that he has since sought some medical help; however, he's still baulking at undergoing a complete brain transplant.

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