Call me the Mozart of the Insurance Industry

 

Taken when our office staff visited the company's head office in Hamburg - see here.
Click on image to enlarge

 

A former colleague sent me this group photo of the staff of the Braunschweig branch of the Hamburg-Bremer Feuer-Versicherungs-Gesellschaft where I served my articled years. The photo was taken in 1963. I was a non-conformist even then as evidenced by my crossed legs. Or was it a full bladder?

I had just finished my articles but at 17 was still younger by at least a year than anyone else who was just starting theirs. That's what happens when your parents are poor and don't waste time with higher education.

I'll never forget a fellow-articled clerk, Lothar, whose parents were rich which had allowed him to obtain his "Abitur". He hated me since he finished his articles the same year as me but five years older than me, a mere Volksschüler. Call me the Mozart of the Insurance Industry!

(Another fellow-articled clerk who also graduated with me and had also been a five-year-older "Abiturient", Detlef Trute, didn't hate me but only himself because all that extra education hadn't stopped him from having an affair with an already qualified lady-insurance assessor whom he got pregnant, saddling him with wife and kid before he had even started his career. Strange how all those memories come back after sixty years.)

Of course, you recognise me in the photo above, don't you? I'm the one with the undernourished, unmarried, and "uneducated" look about him (a tip: I am NOT the one with the handbag!)

 

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Do we need immigrants to wipe our bums at 90 ?

 

 

A friend in the (c)old country emailed me recently, "Deutschland hat sich in den letzten zehn Jahren so sehr verändert, wie ich es niemals geglaubt hätte! In Bremen leben mittlerweile fast 50 Prozent Ausländer (und es sind keine Luxemburger oder Australier!) Man wähnt sich teilweise eher in Afghanistan als in Deutschland. Ich bin wahrhaftig kein Rassist, aber das fühlt sich irgendwie bedrohlich an."

I felt so bloody angry, I couldn't even be bothered with a polished translation, but went straight to GOOGLE Translation - click here.

And this stupid South Australian lefty Premier tells us we need more immigrants to wipe our bums at 90 ! Maybe he's right! Maybe we'll be so bloody scared to walk our own streets that we're all shitting ourselves!

I certainly wouldn't want my bum wiped by these two:

 

 

We need a cap on immigration; we need a stop to multi-culturalism; and I am saying this as a migrant who came from a non-English-speaking country, who integrated and assimilated, and today is proud to be an Australian. No if's, no but's, no hedging of bets, no dual citizenship.

As the Liberal Party rightly says, "Immigration numbers have been too high. Immigration standards have been too low. Both must change. The Liberals will put Australian values at the centre of immigration policy. If someone doesn’t subscribe to our core beliefs – the door will be shut. If someone wants to import the hatreds and violence of other places onto our soil – the door will be shut." Let's have the courage to speak out!

 

Tell Labor to wipe their own bums ! Vote Liberal !

 

Sometimes only a Muppet like me can make sense of things ...

 

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What a thoughtful gift!

 

Got a book? Get a GIMBLE!

 

Padma has just returned from a mail-collecting and shop-'til-you-drop trip to the Bay. Before I could get crook at her for having spent so much money on her "SUKIN - Purely Ageless" cosmetics — "But they were all on special"; "yes, COLES 'specials'" I replied — she handed me a large white envelope with unfamiliar handwriting.

I pulled it open and out slid a "Gimble" for easy 'hands-free' reading. In the excitement, I almost overlooked the enclosed poem which reads:

 

Bookworms I know read all of the pages And in some cases become wild old sages But reading, like ageing, will take its toll Even though it may be good for the soul Those page-turning fingers become less nimble And that's when it comes, that need for a Gimble

 

Wow! From chartered accountant to poet laureate! And they said you'd never be good at poetry because you're dyslexic. You've proved them wrong, haven't you, since so far you've made three jugs and one vase.

Thank you for such a thoughtful gift! Also from Padma whom you saved from a dressing-down for all that money she spent on those cosmetics.

 

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I hope it's going to be a long rainy day

 

 

I know I've already given you your daily dose by telling you about my leaky boat being ceaselessly borne back into the past, but that was before I stepped outside to smell the air. You see, it rained last night and everything looks fresh and green. And that smell in the air! (or petrichor, as my friend Des would call it) It makes you forget all about the other miseries in the world.

It takes me right back to a time more than half a century ago, before life had knocked the stuffing out of me, and before I had begun to feel all cynical and grumpy about everything. Of course, this magical moment won't last and soon the rest of the world will wake up too.

This magical moment, this gentle phasing out of the night and start to a new day, when I brew my first cup of tea - ginger with a touch of vanilla - and watch the porridge bubble on the stove, is my favourite time of day. Add the smell of petrichor — THAT word again! I can smell the scent of rain just by saying the word 'pet - ri - chor' — takes me back to many other rainy nights, and it reminds me of Eddie Rabbit and Singapore. (Strange how music reminds me of places: there's Miriam Makeba and South Africa; there's Lobo and Burma; there's is ... but I'm digressing!)

 

 

I first heard Eddie Rabbitt during my "Singaporean days" when I used to stay at the Raffles and supervise grain transhipments at Sembawang for my Saudi boss. Until that time I had been listening to the pop music of the eighteenth century - you know, Mozart's "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" and all that - but Singapore was awash with the sound of Eddie Rabbitt at the time and he had become something of an earworm.

I don't know what happened to Eddie Rabbitt since then but the music of Mozart is still around. And so is my love for rainy nights, but even more so for rainy days because rainy days give me an excuse not to sit on my ride-on and cut the constantly-growing grass but instead sit in my library and read a book. I hope it's going to be a long rainy day.

 

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"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

 

 

I have often wondered why it is that some slight and unremarkable memories remain strongly embedded in our waking consciousness while others apparently more memorable are quickly buried, if not forgotten. Yet they both come to us unbidden from time to time in our dreams, or are perhaps more often prompted by the discovery of a faded photograph, or a chance meeting with a long-forgotten acquaintance.

While we may think we possess memory, albeit one that fails as we get older, it is perhaps more accurate to say that memory possesses us, and we're constantly beaten, like "boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

 

Read the book online at www.archive.org

 

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" is the last line in "The Great Gatsby", a brilliant evocation of the Roaring Twenties and a satire of a postwar America obsessed with wealth and status, which is often called the "Great American Novel".

These are also Nick Carraway’s last words in the movie as he reflects on how we are all manacled to our past, captive to our own unreliable witness to past events. "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." I think my boat is beginning to leak!

 

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