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They've made a hell of a mess of "Riverbend"'s nature strip which I've been tending so lovingly for years. "They" are the contractors who are bringing the sewerage connection to "Riverbend" and its neighbours up the lane and in the village.
Being at the end of the lane, "my" nature strip is also graced with a "flushing box" (located below the temporarily placed witches hat) ...
... which will be needed as I can't image all that unmentionable "stuff" to pass through a pipe a mere 30mm in diameter without some regular "stuff-up". I'd better instal a telephone inside my toilet so I can phone Council before I sit down after I had an Indian curry the night before!
Just looking through that mere 30mm pipe, I feel constipated already!
Of course, you have at least heard of "The Name of the Rose", Umberto Eco's 1980 debut novel of a historical murder mystery set in an Italian monastery in the year 1327. The same Umberto Eco who owned 50,000 books - he died in 2016 - and said this about home libraries:
"It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones.
There are things in life that we need to always have plenty of supplies, even if we will only use a small portion.
If, for example, we consider books as medicine, we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the 'medicine closet' and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That's why you should always have a nutrition choice!
Those who buy only one book, read only that one and then get rid of it. They simply apply the consumer mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, a good. Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity."
Watching this trailer of the movie starring Sean Connery may make you want to read the book online at click www.archive.org. If you prefer the "hands-on" experience, then come inside my "medicine closet" library.
The childhood years are the best years of your life ..." Whoever said that didn't grow up in post-war Germany where the war had humpty-dumptied all our bombed-out and starving childhoods, never to be put back together again.
I never had a childhood. For me it was nothing more than a starting point from which I have never stopped running. Of course, I went through the usual stages: imp, rascal, scalawag, whippersnapper, but despite having had what would now be called a deprived childhood, I stopped well short of becoming a full-blown sociopath as I never felt the urge to smash windows or bash up old ladies to steal their hand-bags. Simply growing up fast seemed to be the best revenge.
Mind you, I wonder if any childhood is ever really happy. Just as well, perhaps. To be blissfully happy so young would leave one seeking to recapture the unobtainable. To my mind, people who don't live at least a little bit in fear, have nothing left to live for.
Good or bad, we can't leave the past in the past because the past is who we are. Anyway, what else is there to talk about while standing in line at Dan Murphy's? Childhood trauma seems the natural choice since it’s the reason why most of us stand in line there to begin with.
Until we have nothing left to remember, nothing left to regret, with our whole life laid out in front of us, and our whole life left behind us.
Kenneth Cook wrote twenty books, but his reputation still rests on"Wake in Fright", his first published novel. On its strength he could give up his work as a rural journalist, reporting on everything from Country Women’s Association meetings to sheep sales, and devote himself to fiction full-time. He died in 1987.
If he’s remembered at all today it is because of that book, a bleak, frankly horrific depiction of the rampant, unthinking savagery of the white man let loose in the outback, a book that turns the traditional Australian bush tale on its head. In 1968 it came out as a movie, directed by the Canadian director Ted Kotcheff, a film so violent it was almost too difficult to watch.
Ken was a member of a passing generation of writers. He prized above all the narrative art, the ability to turn out a story and turn it out well. He was contemptuous of language deployed for its own sake, the language of, say, Patrick White, whose influence on younger writers was at its peak at the time.
Typically, "Wake in Fright" never made him much. After its publication he kept afloat by repeatedly selling the film rights until the book found the producer who actually went ahead with the film. But he said he was diddled grandly by another Australian writer — Morris West — who refused to write an endorsement for the cover of the American edition but then took up the film option and reaped the profits for himself.
This film was lost for almost 40 years. Then, in 2002, a negative was found in a shipping container in Pittsburgh labelled "For Destruction". It was painstakingly restored frame by frame and re-released in 2009.
For those of you who haven't seen the movie yet, here's a trailer:
Brutal, uncompromising and stunning, "Wake in Fright" tells the story of a young teacher, John Grant, who arrives in a rough outback mining town planning to stay overnight before catching the plane to Sydney. But, on this one hot night in Bundanyabba, Grant decides to go into a smoky, crowded pub.
One night stretches to five, in which he discovers gambling, ruins himself financially and plunges headlong toward his own destruction. When the alcohol-induced mist lifts, the educated John Grant is no more. Instead there is a self-loathing man in a desolate wasteland, dirty, red-eyed, sitting against a tree and looking at a rifle with one bullet left.
There is no Australian film quite like "Wake in Fright".
That is a silly question when there are so many good books around. I've just finished another Nick Bryant book, "When America Stopped Being Great - A History of the Present".
The above YouTube clip gives a good introduction, even though I always cringe when they do that "we acknowledge the elders past, present, and emerging" thing. I'd much prefer my version: "We acknowledge and pay our respects to the British and European elders past, present, and emerging, who introduced civil society and prosperity to this country".
A similar question was raised in televised 'The Newsroom' series, when Will McAvoy is asked by a college student "What makes America the greatest country in the world?" Adopting at first the politically correct route, he then gives the honest answer which sums it up pretty well.
And, of course, they still want to rule the world, don't they?
"... The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous
presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance." [Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark]
Unfortunately, they also breed and they vote - and all too often in that order! Methinks their quarter of an hour of fame is just about gone!
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.
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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