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.