Wednesday 25 February 2009

ink marks on a blank page thurs 26thfeb

That I am a full, rusted on Anglophile is of no doubt. I owe this allegiance to many factors, one being that growing up in the era I did we were always asked "when are you going to visit the Mother Country" (meaning England). So it was during this period when TV in OZ was in its infancy the picture one got of life in England was of row after row of dismal terrace houses and grey days followed by more grey days. I did know that this wasn't the whole picture of the UK but most of my contemporaries had that fixed firmly in their minds. Relatives in the UK would send 'snaps' of themselves cavorting on the pebbly beaches or picnicking somewhere and I would dutifully hand them around to much guffaws from my immediate circle at work whilst colleagues who were English migrants would stare wistfully at the scenes and then precede to tell everyone that the tomatoes don't taste the same here in OZ as they did back 'home'.
They don't either, fruit and vegeteables do taste better in Europe ,as the growing conditions are much kinder, ie soil and water etc. Some of the products that we have here in OZ that are on the supermarket shelves in the UK don't seem to be the same either when made up here in our kitchen. Birds custard powder is just one I can think of quickly , in the UK it has a fuller richer taste, always seems different here. Yes indeed I know that this could be just another manifestation of robbi bias, possibly, but the potato difference is just one that is glaring.

When we lived on the farm we knew the president of the Potato board of South Australia quite well and it was I believe in 1991 that we had just come back from a lovely 3month trip to the Old Dart, when we went to our Royal Show here in Adelaide. This is primarily an Agricultural show which is held on a yearly basis where all types of locally grown products are shown to the public. Like all such things all over the world there are rides ,machinery, log chopping and all sorts going on.
For some wild reason that totally slips my mind we found ourselves in the potato growing pavilion deep in conversation with the then president of that society. I remember saying, in my normal non-confrontational and not at all 'picky' manner, "why is it Bill that you only have 3 varieties of spuds here on display, in the UK there are at least 15 or twenty sorts" . I then went on to regale him with a word picture of the last market(UK) we had been to where there was a fruit stall and on one trestle was a large mound of rich brown dirt and behind the dirt was a lady with bright green rubber gloves on pulling fresh Jersey spuds out and weighing them up. "God man we don't need stuff like that here, we have three sorts and that's enough. One for frying, roasting and a general purpose variety which is a cross between the two, then we grow a seperate lot for the chip business."

Now all that might sound a little mundane and icky picky, true it does but then you have to look behind what was said and you then get to the mindset of lots of Australian thinking at that time. We were terribly parochial and set in our ways, couldn't see the wood for the trees, that applied across the board into just about every field of endeavour. Every carpetbagger, snake oil salesman worth his or her salt had come over from the US and seduced us to the detriment of our own culture and growth. Most home-grown Australians don't know that we were amongst the first to have a full length narrative movie made , even before America, or that Australians invented the stump jump plough and a mechanical harvester. The first photo copier and the 'black' box which every aircraft in the world is fitted with. Every rat-bag scheme that had been tried elsewhere in the world and failed was trotted over here by successive Governments and flogged off as the new 'miracle' cure for what ailed the Education/ Health or other process that a particular department had sent folk over to study. By about the very late 1990's we had begun to slowly understand that home based things just might do the job as well as rubbish imported from overseas so we began to 'grow OZ' and be proud of just what we had here. So much so that now on the supermarket shelves we have so many different varieties of spuds it's hard to make a choice. But with the last federal election some new ideas began to creep in, most notably was the Education minister wanting to import the Education model that is used in New York. Our Minister is very much taken with this process and has gone as far to have invited the architect of that scheme to come here and show us how it works. I would respectfully inform her that most Australians do not live in areas that resemble downtown New York city and that just one major concern of Education in this country, that of Aboriginal Australia, is not remotely like New York City in any way shape or form. In all of this I am not advocating a return to an island state mentality but we should be adult enough to use our own expertise to develop an Education model that will fit our schools across the whole of OZ to educate our future children for the 21st century and beyond.

Oh yes Hortense the robbi got well and truly sidetracked there didn't he. Started out to tell the good folk all great things and with the intent of showing just how green and verdant England is, then got stuck into Julia Gillard's grand Education designs.Again you really do not need to sit there with that po face you pull so firmly fixed on your dial. Justified you say, uh okay, this time I grant that it is but next blog I promise that there will be no diverging from the original intent and to that end there will be some green and luxuriant pictures posted on the next blog.
Sorry old girl , no cocolat this week, but come March old bean.....yea har, full on.

Friday 20 February 2009

ink marks on a blank page Sat Feb 21st

Much or little, if you are one of the workaholics that frequent my life, has been happening on the robbi horizon of late, and if that sounds obtuse then of course it is. To regale you good folk with the inner workings of the robbi week would not only be downright boring (to you) but counter-productive (to me). One must have a modicum of secrecy don't you know, as perhaps to the robbi, his life might be racy ,full of fun,upbeat amongst other superlatives but to the well travelled and jaded jet-set as boring and hum-drum as bat poop. I do understand that amongst my reader(s) there are any number of folk who could hold themselves up to be the glitterati. Certainly that is a hope of mine anyway,would hate to think the only folk who read this stuff were plebeian slobs like myself. A moment of high drama just passed through my day, an ant was spied crawling up the side of my LCD (recent purchase) screen thing,which was duly dispatched, the ant actually.

That little episode brings me onto the cusp of an aside,namely. Driving through the back streets of my local suburb to the shopping mall ,that when I am forced through circumstance ,I go. There, on the footpaths, was a collection of old type PC screens. We have all had them and perhaps some of us still use one, they still work and perform the same function that their design was for originally but because of the advent of the LCD type screen they have been deemed obsolete. There on the footpath I counted six screens ,two at one location and the rest singular. Please don't point out that I should be watching where I was driving and not rubbish on the footpath, did and was thanks. My point? I have no idea really, are these screens the dinosaurs of 2009, or is it how we the consumers view our place in society the reason for the throw-away mentality. This part of the robbi world I take a shortcut through is not what is commonly referred to as 'affluent' suburb, rather a little down at heel and worn out, but reasonably neat.
So there it is,my one Saturday morning trip into suburbia becomes an exercise into the mores, whys wherefores, foibles of society 2009 that hasn't even answered why or just why ever not, and surely it is only the business of the throwers of the screens, or what did you do with your old one anyway.

See Hortense, I get myself into so much angst over zip. Life is bigger than that old girl, let me just draw a deep breath to get over said rubbish then get onto something else that I know ought about. Indeed Horty old girl ,once over the barrel m'girl, one never forgets that experience. I refer of course the the machinations of government.
The story that came out yesterday in the morning Murdoch about the dad who was left with three young children(one went to school) who applied for full time benefit so he could look after his kids and was then told he should get a night shift job(he had a trade) so he then could send his one child to school and catch up on sleep when the other two napped. No mention therein about who would look after the children whilst he was away at work. That of course would strengthen his resolve and he would then become a better parent. I wasn't privy to what he told the person but imagine that it wasn't , oh thank you for that.
Like now Hortense, that smart man at Salisbury council (Adelaide)who has designed all those wetlands that trap ,clean, store naturally the storm water run-off and who can sell that water back to the factories in his area cheaper by far than the Government water supply folk, cannot get his ideas accepted by the Government. Although he says that for a quarter the cost over ten years that the Government is spending on a desal plant in one year, he can store more water and supply same to all of Adelaide. The desal plant will cost $89 millions a year to run as well Hortense, wetlands, about $500thou.Apart from the minuscule costs too,wetlands do not use any greenhouse emissions, whereas a Desal plant runs on coal produced electricity. Now old girl if I was a conspiracy theorist then there would be several arguments that could be raised here, one being that the Government would not be able to actually SELL the water to joe public like it can the DESAL water if it came from storm water run-off, which by the way is more than the entire city of Adelaide can use in a year.But then I'm not any sort of theorist at all,what do I know.

What I do know is that we are going to live theatre tonight to see the Kranski sisters et al, but before that Horty we shall wander into cocolat for gelato, does that sound a plan? you betcha it do.

Saturday 7 February 2009

ink marks on a blank page Sun 8th Feb

I am a Thomas Hardy fan, there said it,been practising for hours to write that as if it were dirty washing or stuff so secret no one should know it about me. But I guess lots of you have read Thomas Hardy, no , yes? maybe or not. I see, wont admit to it eh, oh well we haff ways you know.

You all know that I came out of the closet ages ago re my Anglophilia, being a Hardy fan is just a manifestation of that, but in a more subdued way. Sort of clenched teeth, controlled, anal retention without the anal. Hardy was more or less the original script writer for the Bold and the Beautiful, get my drift?. Far from the Madding crowd was I think one of 'THE' novels of the genre and of course so wildly popular that the title has become a staple of the lexicon and is used ad nauseum by such pretentious writers such as yours truly. Everyone knows the plot, even those of us who have never seen an episode of Bold and Beautiful, and if you have to ask what is Bold and etc then we all know that you actually watch or tape episodes when you go away. The heroine has a most B&B name too, Bathsheba Everdene, which could be an anagram for, 'the best heaven, her bed'. A most theatrical name for a person who really is a bit of an actress herself, loves a few histrionics and likes to be pulling the strings. Some folk will say that the Mayor of Casterbridge or Tess were better books and perhaps they are but just contemplate this gem of thought. Far from etc is part of our word culture in itself and that speaks volumes for what is the style of the book, how it grabbed the mind set of generations, how that title described the content of the book,just what the heroine thought so well, that it became a narrative in itself. For Whom the Bell Tolls / Blood on the Sand / Of Mice and Men /The Postman Always Rings Twice. Yes, I do understand that the Scottish poet(Burns) first coined the phrase 'the best laid plans o'mice and men' and Steinbeck based his story around that. If you type the phrase into Google Steinbeck's use of it comes up more times and first, so I naturally chose the most relevant for the times. Oh heck I cannot fib, never could get into Robert Burns so I used the author I preferred, how's that for unfettered bias. C'mon, make your own list of famous novels whose titles have created meaning which is in use many years after the novels themselves were well read. The main theme of these great novels? boy meets girl and after great hardship either wins girl or gets into deep doo doo trying to. Ain't love grand?


I know Hortense, why do I continually rabbit on about stuff that is clearly above me. Well it's like this old dear, I am trying desperately to lift myself above the normality of a typical life of suburban mediocrity. Do I really think anyone actually reads this outpouring of whatever. Well it is like this Horty, I have an ego and also a bruised psyche for years of trying to keep up with you as a person of the gender I admire as being most capable of clear thinking and debate, unfettered by gender based affiliations. That is you don't stalk off to the pub with your mates to talk sport until you all get legless , then ring up the ones at home looking after the kids to come pick you up. Okay, just don't put your head to one side like that, I will get on with some reality.
Here in OZ we have had some horrendous hot weather.In my little state something like an average of 43.2c over 6 days with the temperature going down to 38c for a few days then yesterday rocking back up to 46.7c . In Victoria just across our state border they had 48.6c Saturday, then some halfwit started a fire which has now burnt out at least 5 villages and towns and killed to this point some 60 people. The actual acreage burnt is in the many many thousands of hectares and the number of houses lost is about 150 with stock and wildlife dead or dying in the hundreds of thousand. No one aid or Government body has yet put a dollar figure on the loss but just in human terms it will be incalculable. The senior Senator for the Greens party, a chap by the name of Bob Brown was quoted on radio as stating that this fire was caused by Climate Change, and as the senior Greens senator he will be calling on the Government to step up its Climate Change policy in the wake of this fire. Might I add as fact too that as long as folks bum's point downward the Greens will never be able to form a Government in their own right so therefore they will never have to formulate policy or deal with an emergency of any kind, let alone one of this National magnitude. A good thing as well for they are a bunch of nincompoops.

As a person who was once a farmer and a member of the volunteer fire fighting brigade I respectfully inform Senator Bob Brown that Climate Change had very little, as a matter of fact nothing, to do with the fire at all. SOME BLOODY LUNATIC LIT IT. Calling Climate Change responsible is drawing the bow trifle long good sir, and, a scare tactic of the worst kind.

Yes Hortense it was Sunday and wasn't that gelato at Cocolat just super and just the ticket too after seeing that funny little film Ghost Town with Ricky Gervais. He is hardly George Clooney dear girl but he is funny.