Don't judge a book by its movie

 

An inspector arrives in a village to investigate the apparent suicide of a man who is found hanging from a windmill during a Michaelmas celebration. While he investigates what he suspects is actually a murder, nine other murders are committed and a barn catches fire.

Eventually even the inspector works out that the only person left in the village is the murderer. His assistant, who is even stupider, is amazed.

I have better things to do than watch Inspector Barnaby as he struts his stuff in "Midsomer Murders", and so I left Padma to her TV series while I read "Caddie" which I had picked up at the Vinnies op-shop, not because I didn't already have it but because I didn't have yet in this particularly attractive binding by "The Collector's Library of Australia's Great Books".

"Caddie", which is in the same pantheon as "We of the Never Never" and "The Harp in the South", is the fictionally embellished autobiography of Catherine "Caddie" Edmonds, who worked as a barmaid in Sydney during the Great Depression. Published anonymously in 1953 under Edmonds' nickname, which was coined by a lover who likened her to "the sleek body and class of his Cadillac motorcar", it was made into a feature film in 1976 which, for once, I had watched before I ever read the book.

And, for once, you would be right to judge a book by its movie because both are equally entertaining. Oh, and I did half-listen to tonight's "Midsomer Murders" which made mention of the Japanese art of kintsugi. I had to look it up - or google for it, to use today's verbed-up brand name; you may wish to do the same - and found it to be a lovely metaphor for healing and recovery from adversity and indeed for life itself. Thank you, Inspector Barnaby, I've learned a new word tonight!

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The best kind of neighbour

 

A very early and very cold morning at "Riverbend". I'd just opened the vent on the fire which is happily burning away again together with the porridge which is happily cooking away, and then I saw him - a new neighbour on the river!

I saw him anchoring there late yesterday, but I never thought he would stay through the night. Short of freezing to death, it must've been a very cold night for whoever it is that sought solitude on the river. He's the best kind of neighbour to have: here today and gone tomorrow!

We'll also be here this morning but gone to the Bay before lunchtime. Besides having our Thai lunch - with Padma having her usual 'Drunken Noodles' and I something unpronounable with prawns in it - I have a long shopping list and a list of other things I need to do in Bay; in fact, I now have so many lists, I make a list of all the lists I have so I won't forget.

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No rest for the wicked

 

Another funeral to go to tomorrow but I've decided that from now on, with or without COVID, the only funeral I'll be going to will be my own. In the meantime, the work goes on ...

I've been busy cutting 195x20mm planks into smaller bits for my book-shelves in the "Red House", and then giving them a coat of white paint.

I also looked at vertical venetian blinds on the web and was blown away by the price difference between online shopping and buying the same blinds from a brick-and-mortar shop in town - who, incidentally, don't make those venetian blinds themselves either but order them online. So forget about those obligation-free measures and quotes and do it your-self: it's easy to do as - pardon the pun - even a blind man could do it!

Of course, the blinds are for the "Red House" which faces the blindingly westerly sun and needs blinds in the afternoon. Armed with the advice to "measure twice and order once" and a measuring tape - which, with the flick of a switch, recoils back all by itself which makes you think you're going to lose a finger each time it comes flying back, but they're the sorts of risks you're prepared to take as a home handyman - I came up with 2350mm high and 2160mm wide and an online price of $238.

 

 

Tomorrow is luncheon at our favourite Thai restaurant again, and I've also got a shopping list as long as my arm for BUNNINGS. And that will be it for another busy week at "Riverbend". You're welcome to visit me in my workshop but read the   WARNING    sign in the window first! 😀

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Is BHP heading for $60?

Listen to the interview here

 

Was this a Freudian slip or did Peter Switzer just mention a $60-price for BHP shares? Listen to this interesting conversation in which he asks the questions, "Is the party over? Is it time to dump BHP, Rio and Fortescue?"

This morning RIO announced a dividend of $7.60 a share. BHP, priced at about 40% of RIO's shares, should therefore declare about $3-a-share in dividends next Tuesday, 3 August. Happy days are here again!

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The companion volume to "Mein Kampf"

 

I Alone Can Fix It" portrays a man who put himself before his country. It is packed with hair-raising revelations about the 45th president’s mishandling of everything from the coronavirus pandemic (he has no regrets) to racial justice protests (his only regret is not unleashing the active-duty military), but it made the most headlines with its account of America’s flirtation with fascism.

The key figure was Gen Mark Milley who, as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, had the monumentally important job of keeping the military out of politics. He compared Trump’s rhetoric to Adolf Hitler’s during his rise to power in Germany. "This is a Reichstag moment," he told aides, referring to the 1933 fire at the German parliament which the Nazis used as a pretext to consolidate power. "The gospel of the Führer."

Journalists are usually discouraged from making such comparisons. And yet here was America’s highest-ranking military officer doing just that. But even before 2020, Trump had long been compared to autocrats around the world because of his mass rallies, willingness to promote false propaganda, harsh crackdowns on political protesters, contempt for media freedom, scapegoating of minorities, admiration for other strongmen and penchant for hiring family members and putting his name on buildings.

I've ordered my copy of "I Alone Can Fix It". It'll look great on the bookshelf as a companion volume on the far right of "Mein Kampf"!

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P.S. Listen to ABC Radio National's interview with the author here.

 

With Sydney in lockdown for another four weeks, here's your chance! Make the most of it!

For the first sound-film version, dating back to 1933, of this Spanish classic, click here

 

At around a thousand pages, the greatest challenge of Miguel de Cervantes' book "Don Quixote" is its length. There's a reason why people always refer to Don Quixote's fights with windmills when they talk about this book. It's because this fight happens somewhere around page 50, and few people have the stamina to tackle the remaining 950 pages.

Which is a shame because the book is full of symbolism. The windmills, for instance, stand for stultified human institutions that need attacking, or ancient traditions that must be questioned, or totalitatrian governments requiring renewal by revolution, or bureaucracy being attacked by individual demands. The triumph was a triumph of daring, not necessarily of succeeding! Was this the reason why we read "Don Quixote", albeit an abridged version, at the "Volksschule" in Germany?

 

 

Of course, you can also listen to the audiobook - click here - for which I have found you the matching translation by John Ormsby so that you can read as you listen - click here. Twenty-one hours of listening and reading pleasure awaits you! You're in lockdown! Make the most of it!

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These days we can't be too careful!

 

The days are getting longer and warmer, and our visitors are becoming more frequent and - God help us should anything ever happen! - also more litigious. These days we can't be too careful, and so we've put up a warning sign by our jetty.

Work on the "Red House" - or "Casa Rossa", if you're a Hermann Hesse fan - is progressing well, both inside and out - see photos.

In fact, it's been progressing so well, I decided to take a few days off and read "A Pound of Paper - Confessions of a Book Addict". I had already read it online but, as any book addict knows, there's nothing like the real thing. I ordered it on ebay, and it arrived from the U.K. yesterday.

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It's time to complete your Census

 

Mary and Joseph had to travel ninety miles to the city of Joseph's ancestors, south along the flatlands of the Jordan River, then west over the hills surrounding Jerusalem, and on into Bethlehem, and all by donkey.

Today's Census Household Form was delivered by a nice man in a four-wheel drive, to be completed on Census night, Tuesday, 10 August 2021. But why wait until then as we're here every night anyway, and so we settled down to reach a con-sensus on some 65 questions.

Answering them should've been a breeze but Question 7: Is the person: ☐ Male, ☐ Female, ☐ Non-binary sex gave us pause for thought.

Question 10: What is the person's current marital status? ☐ Never Married, ☐ Widowed, ☐ Divorced, ☐ Separated but not divorced, ☐ Married had left out the box I was looking for: ☐ Precarious.

Question 20: Does the person use a language other than English at home? listed Mandarin, Arabic, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Italian, Greek, but to answer this question truthfully for Person 2 (which is Padma), they had left out ☐ Rubbish to match ☐ Precarious.

Question 23: What is the person's religion? For the first time, in this census, ☐ No religion sits right at the top of ten possible responses. In the 2011 census 64,390 Australians marked ☑ Other (please specify) Jedi as their religion, up from 58,053 in 2006. This put the number of Jedi just behind Sikhs and above Seventh Day Adventists.

The Jedi phenomenon began in 2001 when an email campaign mistakenly claimed the government would have to recognise it as an official religion if 8000 people selected it in the census.

Ms Sturgess, president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, is leading a campaign for people not to treat the census as a joke. This is because if people fill in the ☐ Other (please specify) box in the religion section of the census with an answer such as Jedi they are counted as "not defined" rather than "no religion". Ms Sturgess said this skews the census results by making Australia appear more religious than it is.

Against Question 55: In the last week did the person spend time doing unpaid domestic work for their household?, I proudly ticked ☑ No, did not do any unpaid domestic work in the last week.

And that's it for another Census day! Oh, and I did give them permission to make publicly available my answers after 99 years. I thought it was important that people in 2120 should know that a hundred years earlier a male chauvinist pig was still alive and well in this Big Brown Land.

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P.S. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has confirmed that people in Sydney will be able to fill out both the 2021 and 2026 Census, given that it's pretty obvious where they will be in five years' time. "Just pop down your current home address on both forms," a spokesperson for the ABS said. She said there were additional questions to consider for the 2026 form, for people in both Melbourne and Sydney. "For Melbourne we've got an extra question asking you to rank your top 50 short, sharp lockdowns. This will be crucial in planning future lockdowns. If you’re in Sydney, please answer the most pressing question for 2026 which is whether BUNNINGS is an essential service or not." Western Australians have asked whether they can also fill out the 2026 form, pointing out that nobody will be leaving WA until at least 2035.

P.P.S. Back in the 60s it was the male as "head of the household" who had to fill out the Census form. In our house it still is!

And here's a clip which I've added just to remind myself of what Australians sounded (and looked) like back then:

For more video clips from the 1966 Census, click here.

 

G-man Jerry Cotton

For the few of you who can't read German - and if not, why not? -
the title of this issue is "A Bullet before Breakfast - a crime story with explosive punch"

 

You should've been a Buddhist monk; they don't change their robes either", exclaimed Padma, commenting on my having sat by the fireplace for three days running, reading books while wearing the same shirt and pullover and the same pair of oil- and paint-stained workpants.

And, just to emphasis the point she was trying to make ever so subtly, she added, "Why do you think Buddhist whorshippers keep a respectful distance from them at all times? It's not out of respect, you know!" When I read I enter a world devoid of soap, razor blades, and a fresh pair of socks. I live in the moment which may be as long as 500 pages.

I don't know when the presence of the printed matter, the power of words, the urge to read entered my life, but it was as soon as I had acquired the ability to read which was sometime before I started school. There are a few modern words which reflect the notion that knowledge, literate knowledge, is a form of magic. Our word grammar, for instance, shares the same root as glamour, both derived from an early word that means magic. And isn't it magic that by means of a mere twenty-six symbols, our alphabet from A to Z, we can express all manners of feelings, our most complex thoughts, all our knowledge?

I was never one who read under the bedcovers by flashlight, or who had the book snatched from his hands at the dinner table, but I've always loved to read. Quite soon I was no longer satisfied with "The Bremen Town Musicians" but still too young to understand, and unable to afford, books by Heinrich Böll (The Train Was on Time) or Günter Grass (The Tin Drum) or Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western front).

Instead - and before I was old enough to join the communal library - I frequented a small "book exchange" where for a "Groschen" I could buy dog-eared copies of "G-man Jerry Cotton", a long series of trashy pulp magazine-type crime novels which even when new, sold for a mere 60 Pfennigs at any one of the hundreds of kiosks that stocked them.

 

"Mord in Chinatown - Another Cotton story that packs a punch"
For more titles, click here

 

I had forgotten about G-man Jerry Cotton - and had never known that "G-Man" stood for "Government man" or FBI agent - when, decades ago, I came down from Port Moresby to Cairns where I found in a sidestreet just off the Esplanade a second-hand shop which stocked a whole big bundle of G-man Jerry Cotton magazines, all in German and all covered in dust. I would've bought the lot for sentimental reasons but I was on my way to my next employment on Thursday Island and travelling light.

Fast forward several more decades and I've just discovered that those bits of printed matter, which were the first rung on the ladder to my becoming a bibliophile, were made into movies in German at about the same time as I was watching "Homicide" in Barton House in Canberra.

 

 

Yes, they were pulp but for me they first created that exotic space of reading where the mind is enflamed and the body in repose. G-Man Jerry Cotton will always remind me where I was and who I was when I read them: a little boy in Germany intoxicated by the printed word.

Now it's time for me to get out of that exotic space and enter the cold space of the bathroom for a shower and a shave and a change of new clothes before Padma keeps an even more respectful distance from me.

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Not happy, Jan!

 

We've just received our new telephone directory for 2021/22 which combines both the whitepages and yellowpages. It's less than half the previous edition. Has there been an exodus of people from the area? Or have they all switched over to mobile phones?

The difference is in the Yellow Pages which shrank from their previous 300 to a mere 159 pages. Those fingers that did the walking certainly stopped paying out to Sensis, the company which owns the Yellow Pages, those 'rivers of gold' that kept it awash in money when every business that wanted to stay in business had to be in Australia's Yellow Pages.

Times have changed. The fingers that did the walking now click on the mouse. I can just hear someone in Sensis screaming, Not happy, Jan!"

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P.S. I've added a comma between 'happy' and 'Jan'. My life is a constant battle between wanting to correct grammar and wanting to have friends. Sadly, the days of people using proper English are went.

 

It's better than television

 

In 2013 a Norwegian television company broadcast a crackling fire for 12 hours. The head of programming at the station called it "slow but noble television". In these busy times it's quite easy to see the appeal of this and I sit quite often in front of the fire with nothing more than the dancing flames for entertainment.

Of course, these days even the simplest things are being scientifically researched - click here - and the health benefits of gazing into an open flame are no exception. Dr Christopher Lynn, a psychological and medical anthropologist, carried out tests on hundreds of volunteers for the research to see how they would respond to virtual fires. "Hearth and campfires are widely held to influence a relaxation effect. Although the importance of controlled fires in human evolution is indisputable, the relaxation aspect had remained uninvestigated", he told a newspaper at the time. "Fires are multisensory experiences that have numerous unexplored dimensions when considering human evolution."

"Watching a naked flame connects us with nature, which reduces stress, helping us to feel more relaxed and calm ... The heat from the flame also increases blood flow, providing anti-inflammatory effects and generally contributes to a feeling of warmth and comfort, both physically and emotionally. Its hypnotic effects also mean that it’s the perfect way to stimulate deeper relaxation through meditation."

It's early Friday morning. I've just wheeled in the empty garbage bin, fed the possum in his possum penthouse, gave the wild ducks by the pond their chook pellets, and opened up the vents on the fireplace to rekindle the dormant fire, and now, bowl of porridge in hand, I'm ready for another 'multisensory experience'. It's better than television.

There is more to life than making it go faster. Join me by clicking here - but don't get back to me until you've watched it right to the end! 😀

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The yellow-lighted bookshop

Read it online at www.archive.org

 

Much of my excitement at being in a bookstore comes from the place itself, the understanding that I can stay here for as long as need be. The unspoken rules we've developed for the bookstore are quite different from the rules that govern other retail enterprises. While the bookstore is most often privately held, it honors a public claim on its time and space. It is not a big-box store where one buys closets of toilet paper or enough Tabasco sauce for the apocalypse; nor is it a tony boutique that sells prestige in the shape of sequined dresses or rare gems; and it's no convenience store either, raided for a six-pack, cigarettes, and a Nutty Buddy on the way home from a hard day at work. The cash register's chime does not define how long we can linger. A bookstore is for hanging out. Often for hours."

I had already started to read this beautiful book online at archive.org but you know me, don't you? - unless I can hold it in my hand and turn its pages, it's not really a book. So I ordered it on ebay from someone in Rozelle in Sydney and it arrived today. It's in almost brandnew condition complete with a €15.00 price sticker on the back and a bookmark inside from the "Curious Fox English Bookshop, Flughafen-straße 22, Berlin".

Of course, I immediately emailed curiousfox.de to let them know that their book has completed its long journey from Berlin in Germany to its new home with a (ex-)German in Australia. It's what booklovers do! *)

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*) And Orla Baumgarten and her partner Dave Gordon from Curious Fox Books did reply, "Lieber Peter, Danke für Ihre Nachricht! Australien! Was für eine Reise! Es freut uns sehr dass das Buch einen weiteren Leser gefunden hat. Lewis Buzbee war bei uns in der Buchhandlung vor ein paar Jahren als er in Berlin zu Besuch war. Wir hatten ein sehr interessantes Gespräch über Bücher bevor er sich als Buzbee vorgestellt hat. Eine sehr nette und interessante Person! Ganz liebe Grüße aus Berlin! Orla."  It's what booklovers do!

P.S. The author, Lewis Buzbee, named the book after a letter that Vincent van Gogh (who had worked as a bookseller) wrote to his brother not long before he died, "I think that I still have it in my heart someday to paint a bookshop with the front yellow and pink in the evening ... like a light in the midst of the darkness."

 

We're all in the minefield now

 

I spent the morning ploughing through piles of emails offering to improve traffic to my websites, enlarge my penis, and lend me money. Then there was someone with the memorable name of Uvuvwevwevwe Onyetenyevwe Ugwemuhwem Osas wanting to cut me in on his multi-million-dollar inheritance. What a kind man! I think he was from Nigeria but I could be wrong!

The last email was not from Nigeria but from Nelligen just across the river to tell us that another one of Nelligen's dwindling born-and-bred community had passed away. She'd gone to pick up her grandson from school when she fainted and died peacefully right there and then.

When I retired to live at "Riverbend", death was something with which I was relatively unfamiliar, other than the loss of my own mother and father and, just a few years earlier, the loss of my closest friend.

Life in a small village, though, throws you into contact with people of all ages and backgrounds in a way that is easy to avoid in a city. Back then people would often comment that I appeared 'very young for someone retired', and perhaps I was (I was 55 when I retired).

It's been a long time since I last heard that said, and the number of funerals I attend increases year by year. As a neighbour recently told me, "We're all in the minefield now."

Well, this is it from me for today. I'm off into the minefield!

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You Can't See Round Corners

 

We already know, thanks to Jon Cleary's famous novel, that we can't see round corners to find out what's going on with the bridge construction just a mile away upriver from us, but we can easily gauge it by the arrival of the various barges passing "Riverbend".

This is not a Spielberg production but my very first attempt at taking a video with my recently acquired CANON Powershot SX430 IS Digital Camera - click here - on a cold morning without a tripod and gloves on.

Stay tuned while I see round the "Riverbend" to see what comes next!

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"Ich denke oft an Piroschka"

Click on "Watch on YouTube"
(if the full movie is unavailable in your benighted country, try a short trailer here)

 

I know it's crazy but we binge-watched INNOCENT on iview until 2 o'clock in the morning. It was such an interesting whodunnit - does anyone still use this term? - that we just had to finish the whole series in one sitting. Of course, I was late getting up this morning.

Or at least the ducks thought so, who, not finding me at the pond at the usual 5 o'clock, had completely surrounded the house, and so I 'ducked' out to give them their three scoops of chook pellets which so far has not yet succeeded in turning them all into productive egg-laying chickens.

It's now just after 7 o'clock and I'm keeping my eyes on the stove where the porridge is bubbling away. Add a spoonful of honey and a handful of raisin and breakfast is ready, and I will be too, to face the world again.

I checked prices in New York and the Dow Jones is up a healthy 550 points and, after yesterday's fall by 2.74%, BHP is also up by 2.06%. This must be algorithmic-driven trading or deliberate manipulation to drive the small retail investors into selling out, as no company of the size and calibre of BHP could possibly change its value by that much overnight. Anyway, with the Australian dollar down to a new low of US$0.73317 - which should translate into even bigger dividends as BHP's earnings are in US dollars - I should see BHP's local share price return to above $50.*

The lockdowns in Melbourne and Sydney and even regional centres is continuing. It's rumoured that even our postman is now working from home: he reads all our letters and rings us if it's anything important. What's also important is that the Eddie and Moses Obeid/Ian Macdonald-trio will soon be in lockdown, or rather lockup, for many years to come for having broken several commandments. To misuse an Einstein quote: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human greed!"

I keep two lists, an ever-expanding list of things I kick myself for not having done, and an equally fast-growing list of what to buy next from BUNNINGS. I can't do much about the former, but the latter will require another trip into town before the week is out, or maybe even today while Padma is at the weekly Bitch & Stitch meeting in the local church.

So why the non sequitur "Ich denke oft an Piroschka", I hear you ask? Well, all that binge-watching we've done in recent weeks puts into sharp contrast my early pre-television childhood when going to the cinema for a matinee screening of such "Heimatfilme" as "Heidi" or "The Trapp Family" was a special event anticipated - and "Groschen" for "Groschen" saved up for - weeks ahead and remembered weeks and months later. Being the youngest, I always had to tag along with my older sisters Bärbel and Monika who chose the movie which, predictably, was never "Tarzan" or "Buffalo Bill" but movies like "Ich denke oft an Piroschka".

And I still do!

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P.S. * Following the release of BHP's operational results on Tuesday, Goldman Sachs updated its forecast to "40% increase in EBITDA (60-70% margins) and 55% increase in FCF in FY22 (equating to c. 15% FCF yield), driven by our positive view on iron ore, met coal, copper and oil prices. We forecast a dividend yield of 11-12% in FY22 & FY23. We forecast a final dividend of US$1.88/share (85% payout) in August" - click here.

 

There's life after the LIFEHOUSE

 

Cancer. It’s a diagnosis that we all dread to hear. But with advances in technology and medicine, more and more people are living better and longer with that dreadful disease.

Last night's ABC TV's Catalyst program followed patients experiencing this new kind of cancer care at the Chris O'Brien Lifehouse where, three years ago, I myself underwent robotic neck and throat surgery under the capable hands of Jonathan Clark and his amazing surgical assistant Cate Froggatt (both of whom you can see in this video clip), and another six weeks of daily radiation administered by Chris Milross's friendly team.

 

Three years ago, just minutes before being wheeled in for the seven-hour surgery ...

... and half-way through my intensive radiation, helped along by Nick and Christine

 

Three years later, I'm here to tell the tale and to sing the praise of the Lifehouse and once again thank my personal heroes, Prof. Clark and Prof. Milross, with whom I have my next appointment in mid-August.

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