Books, glorious books

 

Just in case you thought that my dash into town was all about fruit and veggies - not to mention chicken tikka masala - , let me remind you that man shall not live by bread alone. My diet includes books, and I've supported our new bookshop, "The Good Reader", by giving my VISA-card a good work-out with these:

Michael Lewis' BOOMerang which is all about the greed of nations and how it came back to bite them; 'Spell It Out', the curious, enthralling, and extraordinary story of English spelling; 101 curious contemplations on modern life under the title 'My Sunday Best', Don Voorhees' 'The Essential Book of Useless Information - The most unimportant things you'll never need to know', and for those really quiet moments, even though I'm not a Catholic, a slim volume by C.S. Lewis.

It's raining and there's nothing better than a rainy day to get started on a book, so don't be surprised if you don't hear from me for a day or two.

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Shop no more!

 

My days of working miracles with a pound of mince and a couple of onions are numbered but I made one last 8-km dash into town to fill the gaping emptiness in the fridge before she-who-must-be-obeyed returns home.

Which reminds me: a Joseph Faller Sr. stabbed his wife Florence 219 times because she stacked the refrigerator full of vegetables, hiding the milk, and he wasn't going to stand for that any more. Stay tuned for more updates from "Riverbend"  ☺

Although I did buy some fruit and veggies which brings me to my next complaint: whose idea was it to shrink-wrap cucumbers? They come already wrapped - it's called skin! And who dreamed up the equally stupid idea of all those tiny labels on fruit? What's the point of it? We've carved a whole big chunk out of the ozone layer, felled hectares of rain forest, and soon won't be able to breathe, and all because someone decided to label each individual piece of fruit.

Anyway, I can stop trying to be friendly or good-looking and return to my usual catatonic stupor because from tomorrow I shall shop no more!

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Grave New World

 

For as long as our politicians believe that 'Yes Minister' is a documentary, you won't have any of the talk or write like Stephen D. King. Instead, they and their handmaid, the media, bombard us with slogans and one-liners which in the end cause us to shrug off the carnage of a bomb blast in Baghdad but make us break out in tearful eulogies, bring in professional grief counsellors, and fill the evening news for weeks when a terminally ill baby is taken off life support.

Meanwhile, a former Australian defence chief fears for the future of his grandchildren and predicts that in our lifetimes our economy will be devastated, our land seized, and our system of government upended, and that it may already be too late to avoid it. North Korea, the South China Sea, a disintegrating Europe - back in 1914 it was a single shot that sparked a global conflict; what will it be this time?

When you watch our so-called 'world leaders' and wonder who's tying their shoelaces for them, you know instinctively that we're doomed and only hanging in there because no alternative political-economic model has been invented yet.

And so, while the world's greatest minds - who, unfortunately, stay away from politics - move the doomsday clock another 30 seconds closer to midnight, we are preoccupied with Paris Hilton's ability to have sex and paint her toenails at the same time.

Apocalypse Now.

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We may be in for a bit of a noisy time

 

The last vacant block in Sproxton Lane - a mere slip of a block at 20 metres wide and 80 metres long (as are all the others) - sold for $750,000. The SOLD sticker is still fresh, but already the surveyors are pegging out the boundaries which can only mean one thing: the noisy construction work is about to start.

All the more reason to be grateful that we're right at the end of the lane with a whole seven acres between us and the rest of the world.

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Love at first sight

 

It was love at first sight when I discovered this retro-look radio at Dick Smith! So many memories for just $49.99! It took me right back to the early 1960s when I'd borrowed an almost identical-looking "Kofferradio" - "Koffer" means suitcase which just about sums up the size and weight of those early transistor radios - from my older sister. It helped me brighten up my evenings in a rented room far away from home and almost made me forget the old lumpy bed and primitive jug-and-bowl wash-stand.

This 'new' retro radio is authentic right down to the dial which shows all the old stations such as Hilversum, Budapest, and Luxemburg. Needless to say, I have it permanently tuned to a music station that plays Golden Oldies all day long!


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The Apostrophiser

 

Right, thats it! Sorry, that's it! I'm going to build myself an eight-foot-long 'apostrophiser' and become a 'grammar vigilante' in Batemans Bay. I mean, why take all that smart-arse knowledge with me to my grave for worms to untangle?

One man's (mans' ? mans?) campaign may be another man's castles in Spain but a quick survey around the Bay tells me that I'll be kept busy for the rest of my life.

Mind you, being the pedant that I am, I won't call myself a 'grammar vigilante' as apostrophes are about punctuation rather than grammar. Maybe I just call myself 'connard'. It sounds so much nicer in French.

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Happy Birthday, John!

 

I hope it was a good year for you! I shall pour myself an extra-large glass of Chateau Cardboard this afternoon and drink to your very good health! Have a good one!

Mine started off badly: I phoned an expensive 1800 "Hear me moan" number and got a recording of a woman nagging her husband for not doing the jobs around the house. I could've got that one for free!

 

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I keep six honest serving-men

Rudyard Kipling's 'The Elephant's Child' from 'Just So Stories'

 

Rudyard Kipling's poem "I keep six honest serving-men" has long been my favourite. So much so that I had a calligrapher inscribe it on a piece of vellum which I framed and hung above my office desk wherever I worked.

So when I became financial controller for a big commodity trader in Saudi Arabia who regularly bought grain in bulk, shipped it to Singapore for bagging, and then sold it in 50kg-bags, it didn't take me long to ask why 20,000 metric tonnes of grain, bought in bulk, should still be only 20,000 metric tonnes after it had been stuffed into 400,000 bags.

How could that be? What about each bag's tare weight of 500 grams? Where had the 200 metric tonnes of grain gone that had been displaced by the weight of the bags? And who had taken them?

                                                             Asking my Arab boss was of little help as he had never heard of tare weight. It took me a whole day - and a lot of TAREing-out of hair while sipping dozens of thimble-sized cups of cardamom-flavoured coffee - to convince him that there was something missing. A whole 200 metric tonnes of grain, in fact, from each shipment!

As it turned out, the Chinese bagging contractor in Singapore had not only been handsomely paid by us for the cost of the bags and the labour and the equipment hire but he had also profiteered from the 200 metric tonnes of grain displaced by the weight of the bags which he quietly sold off on his own account - several times a year and at a time when the grain sold for as much as US$800 a metric tonne!

And there was nothing we could do about it as my Arab boss had allowed him to write his own bagging contract which stated - ever so innocently - that each bulk shipment would be reshipped "gross for nett".

Arabs (and many other people, I am sure) don't like to be outsmarted and they like even less to be found out to have been outsmarted. So, yes, we did engage a new bagging contractor and, yes, this time we did write our own contract terms, but, no, my boss never thanked me for having put a stop to this outrageous rip-off. (I never received a Christmas card from the previous bagging contractor either!)

I reflected on this and many other work experiences as I idly paged through my collection of employers' references. Once so highly treasured, they are now, in my retirement, just so many pieces of paper. The mere tare weight of an engrossing career in commerce.

See related story Look what I found on the Internet.


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A savoury mince weekend

Shopping in the Bay

 

Way back when I lived in Townsville, I'd breathe an audible sigh of relief as I drove home after a long day's sinecure as the accountant for a city firm, and turned onto Cape Pallarenda Road that ran alongside the sparkling blue ocean- see here.

I feel the same sense of relief whenever I leave the Bay and turn onto the Kings Highway and see the Clyde Mountain range looming in the hazy distance. Seven kilometres on, as I turn into Sproxton Lane, my sigh is just as audible as it was way back when.

Batemans Bay holds no attractions for me. It's no longer a small coastal town but a big brash shopping mall, and that's all I go there for. I bought everything I needed to hole up at Riverbend for another peaceful week-end: apples and pears for my two nightly visitors, the possums, sticks of dried liver and raw mince meat for Rover, and bread, milk, cheese, and some more mince meat for my own savoury mince for the weekend.

And, needless to say, I also bought a couple of books: a little charmer of a book, Sydney, by Delia Falconer, and How literature saved my life, by David Shields. As it happens, he's preaching to the converted.

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P.S. Having just reached page 87 in this little gem of a book, Sydney, I'm compelled to quote from it, "At the bend in the old-fashioned ridged escalators of the Menzies Arcade was one object of fascination for me - the dark Jungle Bar with its hanging plastic vines, next door to the Arthur Murray School of Dance - both places struck me as disturbingly libidinous." In my days, the Jungle Bar in Menzies Arcade was the place to meet other Territorians down on leave - and sometimes down on their luck - from New Guinea. Those who found the wilds of Sydney more daunting than the wilds of New Guinea sought solace in each other's company in the Jungle Bar which didn't seem libidinous to me, perhaps because I didn't even know the word at the time. Sadly, the Jungle Bar is now no more nor is the Italian barber shop next door - click here.

 

The whole damn thing

Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Part 6   Part 7   Part 8

 

What if Romeo and Juliet had lived? Soon enough, at the ripe old age of fourteen, they would have been arguing about whose turn it was to take out the garbage.

Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing is about Walter, a depressed American college student, and Lila, a middle-aged spinster who is old enough to be his mother, and their love for each other which is both impossible and possible for the same reason: she's on the verge of dying.

He tries to convince her that life is beautiful. He flings open the window and says, "You see? There's joy in the world." The sun shines into the small hotel room, but only a moment later, workers unload a black coffin from a hearse parked in the street directly below the window.

It's one of those little gems of a movie that makes you want to say, "Holy shit, that was a great little movie - why haven't I heard of it before?" You have now! And unlike me, an avowed Maggie Smith fan who bought it on ebay, you can watch it all on YouTube for free. As they say in bad restaurants, "Enjoy!"

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Electric Universe

 

I wouldn’t want to be around for a complete blackout. Most radios and TVs plug in these days, so it would be difficult to find out whether your kids’ school was still open. Your cell phones might still operate, but with no way of recharging your battery, you’d be pretty careful about using it. Driving the kids to school on the off chance it was open would be too much of a gamble, for gas stations depend on underground storage tanks, and until the blackout ended, stations wouldn’t be able to use their electrically operated pumps to bring up more fuel. You couldn’t stock up on groceries – no credit cards working – nor could you get more cash, for ATMs depend on electrically-run computers too.

Within a week the city would have broken down. Police stations would be isolated with their phones not working, and pretty soon their radio batteries would lose their charge as well; no one could call ambulances, for their radios or phone links would be out too. A few people might try walking to hospitals, but there wouldn’t be much there: no X-rays, no refrigerated vaccines, no refrigerated blood, no ventilation, no lighting.

Going to the airport to try to escape wouldn’t help, for with backup generators not working, the airport’s radars would have shut, nor could planes take off on manual control, for any fuel that remained in underground tanks would be impossible to pump up. Ports would have closed, with no electricity to run the cranes that moved their large containers and no way to check electronic inventories. The military might try to guard fuel convoys, but with their own vehicles running low on fuel, that wouldn’t last long. If the blackout was worldwide, isolation would intensify. The internet and all email would have gone down very quickly; next the phone lines; finally, the last television and radio broadcasts would end.

Starvation would probably begin in the dense cities of Asia, especially with no air conditioning at food warehouses; within a few weeks of a complete blackout almost all the world’s cities and suburbs would be unlivable. There would be fighting, pretty desperate, for food and fuel. With a population of six billion, few people would have a chance of surviving."

Why bother reading fiction? Non-fiction - and popular science - books are so much more exciting. And this small book really packs a punch.

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One of the defining songs of the 60s

 

It was the time of china dogs on the mantelpiece, ducks in flight on the wall, and drip-dry shirts on hangers. And it was the time of the Vietnam War, the anti-war movement, and 'Blowin' in the Wind'.

I hadn't heard of 'Blowin' in the Wind' before coming to Australia in 1965, perhaps because in Germany I could afford neither a gramophone nor a radio. Within six months of coming to Australia I had made up for the lack of both by becoming the proud owner of a radiogram.

Saving money by walking to work instead of taking the bus, I bought every Peter, Paul & Mary record, including this beautiful rendition of "Blowin' in the Wind". For me this will only ever be an English song with English lyrics and I'd rather have molten lava poured down my ears than listen to this German translation:

Wie viele Straßen auf dieser Welt Sind Straßen voll Tränen und Leid? Wie viele Meere auf dieser Welt Sind Meere der Traurigkeit? Wie viele Mütter sind lang schon allein, Und warten und warten noch heut'? Die Antwort, mein Freund, weiß ganz allein der Wind, Die Antwort weiß ganz allein der Wind. Wie viele Menschen sind heut' noch nicht frei, Und würden so gerne es sein? Wie viele Kinder geh'n abends zur Ruh' Und schlafen vor Hunger nicht ein? Wie viele Träume erflehen bei Nacht, Wann wird es für uns anders sein? Die Antwort, mein Freund, weiß ganz allein der Wind, Die Antwort weiß ganz allein der Wind. Wie große Berge von Geld gibt man aus, Für Bomben, Raketen und Tod? Wie große Worte macht heut' mancher Mann, Und lindert damit keine Not? Wie großes Unheil muß erst noch gescheh'n, Damit sich die Menschheit besinnt? Die Antwort, mein Freund, weiß ganz allein der Wind, Die Antwort weiß ganz allein der Wind.

Mind you, if you've watched too much of the Swedish chef in the Muppet Show and are into mock-Swedish, you may enjoy "Och Vinden Ger Svar". "Bork, bork, bork!"

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Turtle Diary

 

This is no "Free Willy" story. The two sea turtles are a metaphor for the story of two lonely Londoners and what can only be described as their midlife slump. Although it is normally better to read the book first, in this case the film so well honours the book that it works either way.

The book's author, Russell Hoban, is a gifted observer of the tiny details that make up our every-day existence. One perfect example is a scene in which one of the protagonists is crossing the street and looks down and sees a manhole cover with the phrase K257 on it. He steps on it and thinks, "All right, go ahead, play Mozart." When he gets home and looks up the Kochel number, he learns that K257 is the Credo Mass in C. "I believe" is what the manhole cover says to him from that day forward.

It's perfect little associations like these that make this book so brilliant, and so touching. If you have ever felt bitter, or lonely, or lost your faith in humanity, read this book or watch the movie. It works either way and you won't regret it.

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I haven't come down in the last shower

 

Home in three days, don't wash!" is the message Napoleon Bonaparte is supposed to have sent to his wife Josephine after the battle of Marengo on 14 June 1800 which was 'une victoire politique' that secured his grip on power in the wake of his coup d’état the previous November.

He came undone fifteen years later at the Battle of Waterloo, but he may have been ahead of us when it came to bathing as recent studies have shown that too much of it can actually do more harm than good.

According to the Genetic Science Centre at the University of Utah (trust those clean-living Mormons), over-cleaning can damage the human microbiome – a collection of bacteria, viruses and other microbes that live in and on our body and are essential to our health.

While the research concludes that our Western overzealous, shampoo-scrubbed lifestyle significantly affects the human microbiome diversity, it could not tell us how often we should actually be showering.

I've decided to stick with the little Corsican's idea and limit my showers to Sundays and Wednesdays. Should you come and visit me on any other day, do yourself a favour and stand upwind from me.

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Three is a Kraut

 

My German friends Helene and Othmar had invited me for a 'Kaffee Klatsch' at the Coffee Club in the Bay, and since it was their shout and I had to pick up a parcel from the post office anyway, I was happy to oblige.

The two Greeks who "invented" the Coffee Club franchise in Brisbane in 1989 must be laughing into their coffee cups every time another sucker buys into one of their coffee shops. After all, how could their business model of serving up cups of coffee at inflated prices justify a half-million-dollar entry price? (not to mention the ongoing marketing and franchise fees and percentage-of-turnover "kickbacks" to the "inventors")

I'd much rather copy the Treehouse Cafe's business model or corner the whole market by giving away FREE cups of coffee. I could to do that for several years and still be ahead of those guys who bought a Coffee Club franchise for the price of a city house (or two in the country).

But that's not what I discussed with Helene and Othmar who always insist that we talk in the language from "dem Land der Dichter und Denker" which I can still do easily but no longer willingly. I mean, if language could elicit psychoanalysis, German would have to be a top candidate. Some of the words are so long, they ought to be spoken with intermissions for refreshments (I know, Mark Twain once wrote something like that but he's been out of copyright for a long time).

Over two cups of black coffee and a hot chocolate - we never order latte which is nothing but a brewed beverage made by adding five dollars to a cup of coffee - we succeeded to sort out all the world's ills from the sacking of Rome by the Huns to Donald Trump's latest tweet.

By lunchtime I was back again at "Riverbend" and miles away from the Krauts, and they from me. And no one had mentioned the war.

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This French faux pas Trumps it all

 

Donald Trump's limited vocabulary, mangled syntax and idiosyncratic behaviour mark him as a man of limited intellect. However, confronted with glamorous women he’s in his comfort zone and knows exactly what to do.

Meeting the 64-year-old wife of the 39-year-old French President for the first time in Paris, Trump kissed Brigitte Macron on both cheeks, then grabbed her hand and blurted out “You’re in such good shape ... beautiful”. Then, turning to her presidential husband, he reiterated “She’s in such good physical shape”, as if discussing a prize heifer.

English is one of those languages where what's left unsaid counts for as much as what's been said, and one could almost hear the silent "but" or "considering", as in "... considering that she's 25 years older than you".

The age difference between the Trumps is just one year less that of the Macrons, and it's a pity that the French president didn't turn to Melania and say to her, "You're surprisingly beautiful, considering that you're married to this overweight slob with the social graces of a caveman".

But then Emmanuel Macron is the democratically elected president of a country steeped in culture, whereas Trump is the stand-in clown for a yet to be properly elected president of a nation that gained its place in the world simply by being the last man standing after World War II.

(It then turned its dollar into the bitcoin of the 20th century by printing an endless supply of it and swapping it for all the riches of the world - but that's a story for another day).

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Morning Meditation

 

I grew up at a time when there were jobs for the girls and jobs for the boys - there are still jobs for the boys today, especially in politics, but you know what I mean, don't you? - and it would've been unheard of for a man to QWERTY his way across a keyboard.

That was before Germaine Greer and personal computers which turned all of us into typists, if not feminists. If Germaine was the voice of the second-wave feminists, let me be the voice of the third as I've realised that sticking your hands into a kitchen sink full of hot, soapy water on a cold morning is not only beneficial to your hands but also to your mind.

The work in hand, pun intended, is not challenging and requires no concentration, and so allows your mind to drift and ponder and - well, let's use the dreaded word - meditate but before you think of hooded monks, gregorian chants or the Beatles, think of an old geezer standing by the kitchen sink wondering how to get through yet another long day.

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Those were testing times

The dictation text as read out to me from a newspaper cutting of the day

 

On the 17th of May 1971 I sat for a dictation test before the Justice of the Peace in Kieta on the island of Bougainville. The successful completion of this test was one of the many requirements before being granted Australian citizenship.

I am led to believe that this is no longer a requirement. Indeed, your eligibility may even increase if you are totally illiterate, not just in English but even in your own native language, and if you hail from a country so benighted that your chances of ever becoming a productive member of our modern society are less than zero.

And so, instead of providing you with an adequate standard of living in your own country through our foreign aid program, we will be happy to empty on you a cornucopia of all the wonders of modern living which are even beyond the means of many of our own citizens. And should your lifelong dependency on our welfare state compel you to rape and pillage, there are numerous government-funded agencies to guide you through your various traumas and persecution complexes. Even if your anti-social and indeed criminal behaviour continues and the Immigration Department decides to deport you, we will pay your legal fees to fight us all the way to the High Court until the end of your days. If you hire some clever lawyers with whom to share the booty, you may even be able to claim a large compensation pay-out for wrongful treatment.
(It makes growing old that much easier, knowing that we won't be here to reap the bitter harvest, don't you think? Après nous, le déluge!)

But back to saner times before political correctness and an ever-growing list of human rights demands (what about the rights of those who pay for it all?) swamped all common sense and when the likes of me were supposed to know how to spell 'Askin' without ever having met the man:

 

Dictation Test for Naturalization; Applicant Manfred P Goerman; Date May 17, 1971

 

As for all those other things mentioned in the dictation, the deficits, the reductions in capital spending, budget gaps, and increases in taxes and charges, I think it was the French who first uttered the famous phrase "the more things change, the more they stay the same" (which sounds much better in its French "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose", said nasally through a stuffed nose on a cold Sunday morning).

 

Please note: failing this test will not lead to instant deportation; instead, you may be eligible for various government grants set up to fight illiteracy or just plain stupidity

 

Click on the above image, press play to listen to one of the many recorded passages and type down the words exactly as you hear them. Unlike me when sitting this test more than forty-five years ago, you have the advantage of being able to pause and replay it.

Go on, do the test as if your whole future depended on it. Mine did!

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