Ink marks on a blank page .Thursday Oct 30th

Been a while since I have sullied these hallowed pages. Not for want of trying or even lack of subject matter, it is just that I have had a pressing and torrid time doing a project for a loved someone.though 'tis never hard to find something to wax lyrical on in these odd times is it not? There have been folk who do say I could talk underwater with a mouth full of marbles, true, not that I have but let's say at times I am want to maybe just give it a shot.

Been packing for a quick trip to Sydney on the weekend, sort of part business and a really swish dinner to go for and as luck would have it I don't have to pay so that part is all good.The rest will be too, I just know it will be. Life is odd like that, things do work themselves out don't they.There you are frothing at the mouth, can't find that nice tie or a shirt that goes with the new coat and all of a sudden you are all packed and actually ready to go, wonders will never cease.

Don't know how many of you have been to Sydney but it really isn't my kind of place, funny too as it is one of THE beautiful cities of the world and I am one of these blokes what does like a bit o' beauty. Odd too that I feel more at home in London than I do in Sydney, perhaps that's the wannabe in me, bragging about the exotic places I have been to and lived in. But to me London has that homey feel, whereas Sydney is such a roaring fast place and the folk there are just at it all day every day.The harbour buzzes night and day, cars and trucks fly around and no-one seems to worry about the speed limit.Just seems like a don't care sort of place to me ,brash and in the face with high flyers doing the loop de loop buying and selling and the ladies all out seeing who can pay the most for a cup of coffee.

Don't get me wrong having a place like Sydney only two hours away by jet is an okay thing to have, but hey, nice to contemplate a visit but it is nice to know that Sydney is 'up there' and an affordable cup of coffee and a nice lunch that doesn't cost a weeks salary is here.

Yes Hortense I do know that the world doesn't revolve around gelato at Cocolat, and yes this is a sort of backwater, but gee it is a pleasant little backwater at that.
I should stop waxing on and talk about other stuff?.Hortense I am a wimpy old bloke with absolutely no status what so ever, what would I know.But I do know that woman in the US has a big mouth, and yes Horty the grand ole party did splash out a lot on clothes for her too. Yes I know she is just your everyday hockey mom, and yes I still haven't quite worked out what the heck that is supposed to connote.I think it means she is just very average, and yes Horty she is that and all in spades.I should stick to eating Gelati? lead me there Horty , lead me there.

ink marks on a blank page sunday Oct 19th

Beautiful sort of warm cloudless spring day today but we did want to see the new Cohen Bros film, (burn after reading)what better way to spend a lazy couple of hours.The Cohen's have a unique way of filming, all their work bears very large question marks and one is left asking why this, why that.All good and they seem to work well with actors like Clooney, Malkovich et al. This was violent and seemingly there didn't seem much point to the extreme violence except in the final scene you understood why the violence was there. Robert Altman used similar techniques in that he tied in narrative and characters that at first glance seemed un-related but all made sense as a whole story and related to the main thread.


Good film is a wonderful device for painting a kaleidoscope that creates a frame so that us poor mortals can put into visuals the dreams and ideology of more talented folk. Even 'B' movies have a message, in the main good always triumphs over evil and the hero rides off into the sunset with the catch of the day.

Today being sunny and bright we did a circuit of the street market ,bought some hand made shower caps for our grand-daughters, then made our way to one of my favourite stores on Rundle St.East, Cocolat. This is a place that sells, Gelato(hand made) good espresso, snacks and the staff are pleasant .The reason it is called Cocolat. ALL the snacks and lunches have a chocolate base or theme. Nope, I don't usually snack there but the Gelati is the best I have ever tasted anywhere, and then some. They also do a large range of fat free sorbet which really are to die for.The deal is for $6-50 you get a large , and it is, tub of four flavours of gelati or sorbet and they don't use a scoop either. The stuff is ladled out with a large flat shovel so you get HEAPS, yummo!!!

Okay Hortense I know I could get fat but I did go for a 5km bike ride after dinner.Oh of course I could fit dinner in, the Gelato was lunch. Film? you mean that the Cohen's should make a film about Lehman bros and the fellow who has a name like a four letter word, oh, it is a four letter word. Just your little joke Hortense I know, but it was topical. So the team at Lehman's are all heading to a Grand Jury Horty? will it make a difference to those poor suckers that have lost a house and or their jobs? I don't think so but hey, what would I know. Best I stick with Gelati.

ink marks on a blank page -Tues Oct 14th

We all live in a....you could say that, but in retrospect I never knew what they meant, nor really was I supposed to perhaps. It was the best of times and then some wasn't it, for those of you who were there, as I was . And really I was there, actually staring at them and standing crushed in a crowd of about 200 thousand people, or so it seemed. 'They', the Beatles, had landed at our airport in then very provincial Adelaide and from the air terminal to the city is about 6kms, the crowd was five deep all the way into the city so there cannot have been more than three teenagers at school across the entire city.

At the time I worked for the daily broadsheet (Adelaide Advertiser) and I told my boss that I really should be at the Town Hall to see what the fuss was all about as the mayor was holding a civic reception for them (sans Ringo)."Robbi,what a load of crap, if you think that these idjits are going to be anything and you go to write them up, consider yourself sacked!"

Needless to say ,I went,saw and was conquered but not sacked.All that started or really re-started the revolution I think,the Beatles and their music just had that impetus that motivated a country (England) to get out there and just do their collective thing. People from all walks of life started doing anything that seemed 'out there' and new.The whole country got working in all sorts of weird little ways, craft ,art,fashion and once again that little sceptered isle was the centre of the universe.

The folks on the other side of the pond did get a little jealous of the olde (ups)tart suddenly coming alive , and tried all fair and sometimes foul means to quash the Brit invasion. here in OZ we had our own little mini thing going on with groups like the easybeats (friday on my mind), and do yourself a favour ,go dig that track out, still worth a listen. Then our film industry had a revival as well,running off the coat tails of the English thing no doubt. For me just out of Uni by then married and at that time and right in the middle of 'that war' I started working for Big Blue(IBM).

I had been reading Sci-Fi for years and thought that computing was going to be the new 'black', the next REALLY big thing. Australia was sooooo slow in taking up the challenge though, people here just did not want to know about computing and as a result IBM Australia had a mind set that was locked into the basement when it came down to getting their users to accept new technology. IBM at that time as well had a corporate structure that was heavily immersed in what can the firm do for me and how best can one achieve stardom by doing nothing. If a manager stuffed up he/she was moved sideways into 'special projects' there to be forgotten until senility or death, whatever came first.

Sour grapes you say, possibly, but I resigned before the juice turned to vinegar anyway. In chasing my dream to work for a company like IBM I had learnt a very valuable lesson early on in life, that it isn't really what one does but how you do it that counts. I had joined that company because to me it was the pinnacle of success in what it did and stood for, paid jolly well too ,about twice what anyone else did and the pension scheme was awesome. I digress,but had I researched the company first before accepting the position then perhaps I would not have been so eager.

My experience with 'Big Blue' must have stood me in good stead because the next two positions that I took lasted most of my working life and in those places there was not one day when I had to force myself to go to work.There was a time towards the end of my career at the first (real) job when things started to get tough. We had been taken over some ten years prior and all of a sudden a much larger company decided to include us in their balance sheet. I was at the time reasonably senior and there was such a jockeying for positions I thought that with my finances okay it would be prudent of me to take my sanity and I could retire.

Yes Hortense I'm finally talking about something I know lots about, oh it's boring? Darn, well Horty old girl you have heard it all before, oh yes Horty many times.Why don't I talk about the things I know nothing about as I always do? Right then I will, and here in the local Murdoch is a prime example. The sage folk all over the western world are falling over themselves to prop up their banking systems, all a bit late Hortense dont ya know. The bankers will never let Goverments take over the running of banks,what would some guru in Government who has years of running a Government finance department and has several degrees in economics and who has successfully kept a Government and a country afloat for years know. Surely a 25year old with an MBA from some obscure mid-west American college could do it better, especially if he/she were paid obscene bonuses to take massive risks with other folks money so that their 55yr old bosses would get even bigger bonuses ? Yes Hortense I really do not know a thing about high finance ,best I get back to something I really know about, life.

ink marks on a blank page - Friday Oct 10

Here in OZ there is a saying-TGIF - which I think is also in other western countries similar to mine.Translated of course it means Thank God It's Friday. As I am no longer working in a paid capacity and have not done so for I think three years, so sue me for not counting, then I should no longer use that acronym. However, it remains more firmly entrenched in my mindset than it ever did. Whilst at my daily work I was never an adherent to that TGIF culture as my job required me to be available at the ring of a phone and also I actually loved what I did. Not that I hated leaving each day or was first out of the unit, nope none of the above, but I was just very glad to actually like what I did and who I worked with and for.

Getting back to TGIF, and it is a mindset that has crept into the OZ workplace over years where I think people feel obligated to say and live by that credo whether or not they actually believe it. Here we have the very best of working conditions anywhere. For instance, long service leave and very generous sick leave (which accrues) , also 5 weeks paid annual holidays and on top of that 17.5% loading on the holiday pay. Pay rates are pretty good by international standards and as are conditions of employment.As well this is a great country to live in. But I would say that wouldn't I?

We do suffer from the tyranny of distance from where the centre of the universe is but that also keeps us out of a bit of trouble both political and on the rabble rousing front, although we have some homegrown idjits for that. Yes we do also import some of the worst excesses of US (culture?) product as well , hopefully some good sense and quiet heads prevail to keep us more aligned with our British heritage and I try my very best to do that by visiting the old dart frequently.

Life changes so very rapidly now, all good too I might add, change mostly for the better most times as well. Just this little exercise is a case in point and long I have been an advocate for the 'peoplising' of the web. Even this monetary crisis that has grabbed the world so quickly I think has some positives. That it gets world leaders together and working in concert might just be a good thing, perhaps a little more positive than Bono being on the short list for a Nobel Peace prize.

Yes Hortense, just what would I know. Oh but that is a moot point as although I am not Methuselah I have been around for a while and been there and done a bit, just like you Hortense.
Not quite as lucratively as that fellow from Lehman bros. but I dare say with a little more care for my fellow man. Obscene is possibly a word one could use, not as eloquent in the matter as some four letter ones I dare say but printable on the pages of a family blog. Something about Karma did I hear you mutter? And okay Hortense I will get back to talking about things I really do know, like the price of a Lehman brother perhaps?

ink marks on a blank page - Tuesday Oct 7

Some days I'm not really sure about life. Obtuse? yes I know but that word describes my being at this very moment. Quandries are at every footfall and I know wild beasts lurk in every hedge, fraught is a miasma that pervades my all.

Could this be love? I know that feeling an observer might proffer,well may you ask, and nay I shall say for a deep and true love conquered me many years ago.Oh yes of course I have loved since, I am one of those unfortunates born under the sign of Pisces, we love madly all the time and at the drop of a hat. But no this is a malaise of a different kind and one that the curing of eludes me for the time.

This awkward sort of in-between and half out place I am in at this very moment has to do with understanding human behaviour and the reasons why happenings happen. What have I done you say? That is the root problem, I have not really much of an idea, the problem just arose out of nothing and I have no idea how to right what obviously is a wrong.

That really is underlined by the fact that I am male, we males do not know how to communicate to each other and obviously then onwards to the other side. Women have an easier path in that regard than us poor chaps, they have some radar and an innate knowledge of how to ferret and winkle out subtle bits of information from each other to then go on and 'know'.

Life here will go on, I shall be none the wiser but this condition is not life threatening. A trifle odd to worry about something that is in actual fact not in my real physical world, but there again y'see I am Piscean, that is a thing we do.

Yes Hortense perhaps I am on shaky ground, but the alternative is to talk about things I really know even less about. What things are those? Well for instance that woman striding up to the microphone at the airport where all those well meaning folk were holding up McCain placards. She leapt into condemning that lovely fellow and told everyone he had been best buddies with that dreadful Ayers chappie who bombed like the fourth July but on a weekly basis. Really Hortense what was she saying, he was only 8 yrs old for heavens sake,better she should concentrate on who sacked what State trooper in Alaska . You know the fellow that divorced the Governor's sister.
Yes Hortense what would I know, I leave you with this delightful cartoon from our weekend Murdoch, that tells a great story,what do you think?

ink marks on a blank page Friday October 3

Hasn't the week just sped by, talk about the week that was ,or wasn't in my case.Who knows what a week will bring, well I guess those that make a living reading the future would do. That could be a touch boring though ,I mean to know what was going to happen. if I did ,know that is, then why would I even bother to say hello when I saw you. The reponse would be the same, you'd sort of stop, look at me with a quizzical look.

"Who is this fellow, do I know him", you would be asking, to yourself of course. You would hardly ask me, well I mean you don't know me do you, yet. But then because I knew what the future(ours) is going to be I would answer you back, before you got to the question actually 'cos that is how pre-cognition works,because I have seen the future, so therefore know what you are going to say before you say it. So anyway to save you any further embarrassment I have decide to spend the next few days in bed as I did not want to confuse you by having you greet me as if you didn't know me, which of course you do, because I have seen it all unfolding with my third eye.

No Hortense i am not confused, and yes I do understand that some might think the men in white coats are coming, not true. No, you can't ask me just how I know, suffice to say that I do.
I should have used my gift to make money on the stock market by short selling? Don't be daft, that might cause a panic sell off and people would lose their shirts. But then I would be able to buy back the stocks that were sold short and make heaps when they went back up again and I could do it all on borrowed money and not use a cent of my own. How and where would I do that Hortense ?, On Wall St..Isn't that how they got in such a mess in the first place? it is isn't it. I'm not sure that doing something like that would be ethical Hortense, oh it is and all the bankers at the brokerage houses did it, well good luck to them I say but I want to sleep at night.
No Hortense I know they don't, THEY are up all night short selling the stocks to make more money.

Yes indeed Hortense I do know that I wasn't going to talk about things that I know nothing about but you will forgive me this once , pretty please?

That woman was on TV with the Biden chappie. Rivetting TV it was as well Hortense, you remember that relative of hers , the one used to be a Monty Python, Michael Palin. He had a lovely little song he sang, I think he wrote it about her, reminds me very much of her it does. Remember, " I'm a lumberjack and I'm ok, I sleep all night and chop wood all day" Goodness gracious I can see her now all done up in a red check shirt, she do look the part do she not?

I will leave you Hortense with a sweet view or three of the pizza's I made this week. Next time Hortense , I promise.

ink marks on a blank page -Thursday October 2

Deary me,dreary me? well a tad late for this one.Blame the son, his birthday and I had to cook.Did okay though they all ate up big and even took a whole pizza away with them for dinner Friday. Not that I cook very much or have an extended repertoire like new wave men are supposed to have. Really though I'm not in that new wave time frame, sort of receded or tide gone out wave,being the age I am. Don't feel or even look like my grandfather did at his age or should say the age I am now(66). Those chaps (and women) had lived through two world wars and all that goes with the times following on.



Just think on this . Most folk (UK) during the second war had rationing to cope with and bombs falling down around them and the threat of invasion for years. Where we lived there was intermittent electricity and not much water from the taps. At age three months I was of course oblivious to all of that but our mother wasn't. She had to leave her secretarial work and trundle off to a munitions factory to make ordinance. Grandfather /Grandmother coped remarkably well with us until I was out in the snow once and contracted pneumonia which then turned into diphtheria. Eventually we had to pack up and shift off to a warmer climate and that is how I finished up in a small Australian country town that was as dry and dusty as our old village was wet and snowy.



Indeed Hortense they were trying times as you well know, oh yes I well remember ration books too. Hortense i have been meaning to ask you for such along time, but during the war you never seemed to run out of stockings or chocolates did you ? Oh dear Hortense no I was not referring to the close proximity of that air base at all, now would I?

Some managed better than others ,that's all.



Just like now dear, you know what with the credit thing in Wall street. Tush,I wasn't going to talk about things I know nothing about,would I now? Only seems a little odd to me that the sales of Ferrai haven't slowed down at all there and so many folk in the US have lost their homes. Goes to show though, in the land of the free and plenty, some have some don't.

ink marks on a blank page -Wedneday 1st of October

Another month just trundled by, did you hear it? Guess I must have been asleep as last time I looked up it was still July and the airbus 380 was just touching down. Nice plane but we sat on the tarmac at Heathrow for a couple of hours whilst the techs fixed summat that had come loose.
Never a great start to a long haul flight, but once in the air the darn thing just oozes class and is so quiet and smooth.

Flying isn't my love, travel is yes , just love it but the getting there at times takes the fun out of the first few days wherever you land I think.My big hate is jet lag as I tend to act even stranger than I am normally.Not a drinker these days as I haven't touched a drop for 34 years, and yes Hortense I am counting, it's what us alcoholics do, we brag about when was the last drink.
Jet lag brings back that out of control thing that is really hard to stop, you know you shouldn't but you do anyway.Does for me anyway, and no Hortense that isn't why the lady shouted at me,I certainly didn't touch her at all, you know how crowded it is on the Metro.

Do you like the way I snuck the word Metro in? That's to let you know I have been to Paris, subtle sort of point scoring thing that I do sometimes.
Yes Hortense I know it was way back in '97, yes yes, but we had left for Barcelona when SHE had that accident the poor love. See I did it again, now you all know I have been to Barcelona. Just sort of slipped out that did, I wasn't going to mention that at all, well not yet anyway.

But Paris really is the BIG thing y'know, and talk about innocents abroad, we walked from the Opera to where we had the apartment in Monmartre on a hot Paris day , was a Wednesday as I recall. Perhaps that's why I'm writing about Paris now, a deja vu thing, y'know sort of Wednesday "Heck I must be in Paris, it was Wednesday when we got there wasn't it"
There were lots and lots of people roaming the streets and every lane / alley/street we down seemed to have hordes of folk all going the other way. Finally we staggered up to the apartment block, flopped/ went into the vestibule. The concierge leapt up asked names and the normal things then looked about,"Pardon m'sieu, your taxi? and the rest of your luggage? I explained that we had walked, that seemed to render him speechless for a few seconds,"Oh m'sieu, mmmmm, Australie?"

From then on we were always introduced to the residents as the Australians who "Walked from l'opera", but with a slight inclination of his head and a sort of pointed finger at the ear as well.
Yes Hortense I do know that means he thought we were crackers.

Talking about crackers, what about Congress eh? Didn't folk use to say that if a butterfly flapped its wings in the jungles of Brazil the rain would tip down in London, or summat like that. Gee, just think of what the flap is like on Wall st. and what the ramifications of that will be.
Yes Hortense I did promise to only talk about things I know about,sorrrreeee,maybe next time then.