Child of the Tides…….

I have often wondered how I have become a solitary person in my old age, happy in my own company. But, as I think about my early life, say between the ages of 9 and 12, I recall that my family lived in a little backwater suburb of Brisbane, called Shorncliffe. It really was the end of the line.

However, its main charm was Moreton Bay, with Moreton Island strung out in the background of the bay.  When I first stood at the top of the cliff, over the road from the shabby, wooden house my parents had just rented, I couldn’t believe my eyes. My only view of water in my entire young life had ever been the muddy Brisbane River. I had never seen the sea.

Just across the road from our house and down the face of the cliff  was a little track leading down to the ocean.  Not the hurling, curling surf of the Gold Coast, but sandbanks, which stretched for miles when the tide was out. A sea of shimmering blue satin when the tide was in.

My life was, for ever after, ruled by the tides. Who cared about school.  Just a little break of 4 or 5 hours to learn your  ABC’s and then I rushed home to the Bay, and went crabbing, fishing, beach combing , and swimming. These were the happiest days of my life. It didn’t matter if the tide was in or out, rough or calm, there I was, alone

.  

So now, when the going gets rough, my mind takes me back to stand in the warm salt waters of the sand pools and look into the eyes of the sea anemones, clinging onto rocks, or catch a glare from an annoyed prawn, waving its whiskers, at my presumptuous invasion of its territory.

Those were the days, my friends…..

Thought for today....

We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies.     -- Shirley Abbott

I used to be afraid of spiders and sharks......

As a Queenslander, these were quite legitimate fears. Now my worries are of my

bank account or credit card being ripped off. But no worries. Insecticide and swimming pool solve the spider and shark issues.

With all this bank hacking stuff going on every day, I have given some deep and meaningful thought to how I can best protect myself from the robber barons.   So, a while back , I approached my bank for a pre-paid credit card . This is one where you put your money into your bank account  first and then shop on line. I found it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be to get one.  I don’t think the banks are very anxious to give you this kind of card, much preferring, no doubt, for you to have a card you pay interest on and the retailers get slammed  too.  Double whammy, great for the banks!!! This, of courses, pushes up the prices on everything you purchase.   For me, a pre-paid credit card has calmed the anxiety of buying from unknown sites.

However, there are another couple of issues I have with credit cards. The first one is that shiny icon now on your credit cards. Just flash it into the face of the card reader, and, hey presto, the transaction is completed. No pin number or ID required. Just go for it. Lots of fun could be had with your lost or stolen card.  My bank allows no other option, I just have to take what I am generously given, in an effort to push myself into debt. Kind to a fault, these banks!!

And, then, there are the delights of the Debit Card. What a masterful stroke of evil genius.  You blithely give out your debit card number and details and, if the person is dishonest, you have just given them access to all the money you have  in the bank account tied to the debit card. And guess what? Goodbye money.

So, my thought for the day is, don’t trust anybody where your money is concerned.

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend…..sings cheeky Marilyn Monroe

No, not so.  Her  teeth were her best friend.

 Having your teeth intact and healthy will stand you in good stead all of your life.   I have just visited my dentist again, yesterday, and painful and expensive as it was, and an hour’s worth of sitting on the chair, I never begrudge either the time or the money it costs me.  I am grateful that, by having taken quite good care of my teeth all my life, and been lucky, I am not among  the ranks of us oldies, who have false teeth.  I saw first hand the discomfort  with false teeth that many members of my family endured.

As witness, one day, to the strange view some people have of looking  after their teeth properly , here is what happened to me in the lift at the dentist.  A young woman came out of the surgery, got into the lift and spoke to me, complaining about how much the dentist had charged her. As I looked at her, young and well groomed , wearing lovely shoes,  I wondered how much having her expensive hairstyle had cost. Probably half the amount she had just paid her dentist.

So people, get your priorities right. Teeth first, hair and shoes second!!!!

Daylight saving…who needs it?

Confusion has struck once again in my life. The clocks went forward this morning. Summer is almost here!!!   I don’t know, as I am getting older, I am finding it harder and harder to adjust my circadian rhythms to and fro. 

So, new scheme.  I am going to set all my clocks, except one, forward one hour but live in yesterday’s time for the next 3 days. Each morning, I am going to move my “special” clock forward by 20 minutes, until I have incorporated this double shuffle and unwarranted messing around with time and see if that can realign my stars, so to speak. 

The Inland Revenue  is giving you a bonus……….

Here’s a scam you might not have experienced yet.

A couple of days ago, my phone rang. When the person asked for me, I replied, as I always do,  with  “who is calling?” The reply was the Inland Revenue Department!!!  Enough to give anyone a bad case of shock and horror.

But, wait, there’s more. The good news was that he told me I had been granted a bonus of $6,300.00 along with 500 other lucky Kiwis, because I had been such a good citizen for some years. He informed me that every so often the New Zealand government gives away these bonuses to deserving, upright citizens like me, who had paid all their bills on time, and had no criminal convictions!!!!  Yeah, right.

Now, I am the Queen of Funny Phone Calls. I deal with them in a variety of ways for a bit of a laugh on a dull day. .  Did I miss a beat? Hell no.  I just thanked him profusely and asked him what I had to do to get the money. So he said he just needed me to take down a few notes…..but I said I would do that a bit later, and enquired his phone number, name, department etc, which he gave me and I said I would call him back. And as I was still on the original call with him, I asked him what information he would need to pay me, like bank account details, and he said he didn’t need any, as they already had everything on my file!  I politely said “goodbye” then hung up.

And so, I decided to give Inland Revenue a call and let them in on this new scam, and  they were already getting calls about this.

So this is a new one, but tricky. Watch out for it. 

 Is 80 the new 14?……..

Are the years from 60 to 90 just  this?  We now live so long that we need re-educating on just what's happening to us.  Instead of finding a life partner, we lose one. Instead of our bodies maturing, they are deteriorating, instead of looking for our career paths, we are looking desperately for something to occupy ourselves.  At least if we recognise this, we can take some action, formulate some plan.

When you are young you think you are going to live forever, but as you descend into old age, you get into the "Waiting for God "mode, you face your mortality and may become frightened by it. 

However, on a cheerier note is all of the life experiences you have had, good, bad or ugly. Never mind, at least you were here for the fun.

So the message for today is…..Enjoy the moment!!!!

 

Be like a Boy Scout, and be prepared…..

A few days ago, I mentioned in a post the TVNZ story of an elderly gentleman, who had the unfortunate experience of being discharged from Wellington Hospital, after an emergency admission, wearing only his shortie pyjamas, had no money with him, and was told to take a bus home.  Even on a good day, I would find it a bit daunting trying to persuade a bus driver to give me a free trip home.  

Now, Wellington, while a very pleasant city in Summer, a  tropical paradise it ain’t.
Right now, it is Spring, and when the winds are not howling up from the Antarctic, the rain is pouring down, with the odd small earthquake thrown in to add a little spice to life.  

So, here is a word of advice on being prepared for unexpected trips like this.  My hospital visits became almost a shuttle service by ambulance a couple of years ago.   I am now a seasoned traveller and I always have a small bag packed, just in case.  In it, I put things like toiletries, comb and small mirror, etc and a set of clothes to wear home, as well as night attire and slippers or shoes.  I have a small radio and earphones, cellphone  and a few dollars  Then, when the unexpected need arises, the ambulance crew just picks up the bag and it goes with me in the ambulance.  I also have a file with a list of my doctors, current medications, medical notes, family contacts etc, which makes admission to the hospital go a lot faster. The reason I take a change of clothes is that I usually arrive in hospital in my pyjamas and need clothes to go home in.


Do this, and on that unexpected day, you’ve got it covered.  

Mind your own business---
it's not your problem and it's not your fault. Don't let feelings of guilt ruin your day….

If  you are lucky enough to live with your family and still have friends and associates,  it’s likely that, at some point of time, you will get to learn of a variety of  problems in their lives.

It is very easy to take these problems on board into your own sheltered existence, after all, what do you have to worry about?  Declining mobility?  Health fade?  No sleep?

All small stitches indeed in the broad tapestry of life’s carpet .

So, when I find myself being invited into other people’s lives to share their troubles, I have three rules that I follow:

Mind Your Own Business

It’s not your problem

It’s not your fault.

But, if you are asked for advice, then take your chances and give it.  Do whatever you can do to help, but do not, and I repeat, do not,  take other people’s problems onto your shoulders.  If you, like me, have lived through a lifetime of trials and tribulations of your own, it is time to find peace of mind, and hold onto it. 

Regard other people’s problems as a cannon ball they are trying to pass to you, and step aside. 

Thought for the day....

“I am not an originator but a transmitter.”
― Confucius

The Golden Casket….

Last night I was watching an item on TVNZ News, about an elderly man being unceremoniously discharged from the Wellington Hospital. The nurse told him to take public transport back to  Palmerston North where he lived, quite a distance from Wellington,  and the fact that the man had arrived in the Emergency Room of the Wellington hospital wearing only his pyjamas, and had no money with him to pay for  a bus, evoked little sympathy from hospital staff.   Eventually, the problem came to a head and was resolved,  and the man was flown by Air Ambulance back to his home.  During the flight, he suffered another attack of his heart problem and was re-hospitalised in Palmerston North for four days.

The reason I am writing this post is that I would like to make a suggestion to Mr. John Key, Prime Minister of New Zealand. This outlines one of the most successful hospital fund raising events in the last two centuries……

The Golden Casket, ever heard of this?

You would have, if you were from Queensland back in the day.  This was the lottery run by the Queensland Government, since 1916. It has made a hugely positive  effect on  the Queensland economy, public health system and  community.

The very first Golden Casket Lottery was run in 1916, and was called that because the jackpot prize of Five Thousand Pounds was actually in a small jewellery box called a casket. And, as cash prizes were prohibited by law, would you believe, there was  five thousand pounds worth  of solid gold. Yes, you read right, solid gold, not cash,  actually in the box presented to the winner.

My suggestion to Mr Key is that we could have a special Hospital Lottery run once a week, with all proceeds going the hospital and health systems. There could still be a “Wheel of Fortune”, with some hospital taking off a large prize each week, as well as benefiting from the rest of the profits. No dilution of these funds should be allowed. Let all the other good works funded from the lotteries continue from the main source.  I am willing to bet that most Kiwis would gladly buy a five dollar lotto ticket each week for something that could have a profound influence on our health system.

So, how about it, Mr Key.  Worth a thought?

 “We don’t need no education” sings the group, Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall

Okay, and that is pretty well what you are getting under today’s education system.

A few years ago, I discovered that my eight year old, bright, intelligent and willing young granddaughter couldn’t count or do arithmetic.  She had had around three years of “primary education” and couldn’t add, subtract, or divide. And as for the Times Table, forget it. 

Now, I have had no formal training in teaching, so I went back to the basics of my own education.  In the olden days, we  were taught reading, handwriting, and arithmetic, a touch of geography thrown in if you were lucky, and a bit of history, which was totally incomprehensible to me. I attended a very small State school in Queensland, and as my education came to an abrupt end at around fourteen, that was it. However, I can still recite the Times Table, I can outwit my grandchildren at “mental arithmetic” and I have read widely all my life. As for the handwriting, well, I am sure a chicken could do better!!!  

At this tiny school, beginners were issued with a “slate” and a “slate pencil”. The slate was just that, a square piece of thin stone, around the same size as your iPad, and the pencil could have passed for a stylus today. Talk about pre-Babylonian!!!! This was what you learned to write with and do “sums” on for the first couple of years. And of course, your eraser was a wet “slate cloth”. Later on, we were promoted to pencil and paper.  However. I might add, that the Queensland education system was widely recognised as the best in Australia.

So, back to basics. Where did I start with my granddaughter’s problem.  I bought myself a series of teaching books readily available at the bookstore, and went right back into the first stages of the learning of mathematics. And I do mean the beginning. After that, we spent one hour a day for a year on this project. She learned the Times Tables by rote, and today can certainly hold her own in the other math fields, and gets top marks in Maths and Science.

Message for today. Don’t trust the education system to “educate” your children. If you aren’t satisfied with their results, get yourself a few books on the subject, and have a crack at helping your children yourself.  And keep it simple, remember …..reading writing, and arithmetic. 

My world through the looking glass……

 I have noticed lately that, the more I use my i-Pad,  the more I feel as though  I am looking through the screen into an entirely different world.   In fact, I now think that this little machine is my virtual best friend, but like Alice in Wonderland, I had better be careful that I don’t fall down the
rabbit hole !!!

 You might well ask just what is it I do that makes me open the curtains and take a good look at what is going on around me.  Well, the BBC World Service  is my favourite radio channel, and from there I get all sorts of information about what’s going in the world.  Its very easy to sit here, in little old New Zealand, clean, green and in the most part, quiet, but out there I can see it’s a rough and ready existence in the world for many of us oldies.

 Being old can be tiresome.  How can you make your aging body do what it’s told?  Find your mind slipping too?  It's time to take control and make decisions on brain training.  I wish I could say that I have a physical exercise programme too, but I just count walking around the house as my daily workout.  I also chase the dogs, have an occasional game of ball with my grandchildren, and water the plants.  Sounds strenuous, doesn’t it? 

 And talking about kids, my grandson asked me an interesting question. He asked me if my body had shrunk so much that my skin didn’t fit it any more!!!  Now, that’s a thought for us wrinklies.

 One of the most useful sections of my i-Pad is the Notes.  I use this as a thought catcher. As my mind runs a bit like a roadhouse rat, thoughts come charging through one ear and out the other, so I quickly tap them into Notes, where I allocate the important stuff with a triple AAA rating.  These are the things I try to do first, once they are identified as being important.  Many people just trundle through their day, and never take a moment to recognise the most important thing that needs to be done.

 If you just do that one task, then you are 95% ahead of the game.

What about a credit system, like Barter Card, for instance, for people who do voluntary work?

There is a ton of untapped talent out there. People of all ages can find themselves under-utilised, from young school leavers, unemployed people, “baby boomers”, and the elderly.     Why not harness this treasury of untapped talent and get all hands back on deck, doing something, and giving back to the community. A system like this should not be allowed to affect the Government benefit they are paid.  There are tens of thousands of hours of study and practical working experience just being thrown onto the rubbish dump of “old age”. Wake up!!!

There was a recent story on TVNZ, about a shortage of long haul truck drivers here in New Zealand. One truck fleet owner was reported as scouring the retirement homes to look for people who could drive these big trucks. Okay, this wasn’t voluntary work, and the people who took him up on his offers would no doubt have their pensions reduced by the government.  Why can’t people over the age, say, of 70, who keep on working, keep their pensions and their wages?  They will pay taxes on both and so contribute to the overall benefit of the community.   I am sure there are many professional people out there thrown into the limbo of wasted time and lost talent. I knew an accountant who was so desperate at the retirement blight on his life, that he re-opened his practice, just to get some relief and human contact going.

And how about the retired health professionals, like doctors, nurses, other trained and qualified health professionals, not to mention teachers., who all cost millions to educate. There are a myriad of people out there who could do a few hours a week.

So how about it, Prime Minister John Keys. Election issue next 2016? 

Pandora and all that jazz………

 There is a saying that music is good for the soul. But I have never been a person involved much with music. 

However, now I am starting to see the benefits of listening to a variety of music genres (as they say on iTunes). I am finding that listening to meditation music as soon as I get up is as good as a tranquilliser. It gives my mind a calm platform to launch itself from  into the day. If I don't take this action first thing, my thoughts and memories start to take a dark turn. I wish I knew why unpleasant memories are so ready to appear and why the good ones have to be knowingly excavated. 

 And, so to my favourite app on the internet, Pandora.  No, this isn't an advertisement for Pandora, but a small gesture of appreciation for all the pleasure I get from listening to this site.

 And, to make it even more enjoyable, it's free, not too many ads, and they only put in the odd breaks asking if you are still listening.  Of course, they would like you to upgrade for a fee, but I will just take it like it comes.

It is such a simple site, and you can go to iTunes and get a free app.  The selection of music is up to you.  I go for gentle meditation in the mornings while I carry out my mindless and endless, it seems, self maintenance tasks.

 Later in the day, after I claw myself back into consciousness from my afternoon Nanna Nap, I put on a selection of rock and roll, with the Rolling Stones, and others, of course.  I just love Mick Jagger, he’s nearly as old as me! I can’t imagine him having a Nanna Nap.   And Boogie Woogie, can you remember that, too?   I am so old that I can recall doing the Jitter Bug, ever heard of that?
It’s dance craze from the olden days, circa mid 20^th century.  


So that's my pick of the day. Good on you, Pandora.  Go!!!

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

Benjamin Franklin

I never knew I was poor……

Funny, that.  As a small child, and far into my teenage years, I never understood poverty nor ever felt poor. I am beginning to wonder if I ever heard the word spoken.  In fact, I always felt rich. We certainly were really poor, years of The Great Depression (no, not the one recently)  sank Australia into the mire of workless and moneyless desperation  and life was lived from hand to mouth.  We only had a house by managing to avoid the landlord when he came for his rent.  I seem to remember moving quite often. Our clothes were basic and we only had some because our late mother, Connie, could sew.  Shoes came and went, most often we went barefoot. After all, this was Queensland wasn’t it? The credo then, as it probably is today, was to “toughen up”.

On looking back, I know my feeling of being a person of high breeding and wealth, even though I was penniless, came from my grandmother, Mabel Carlton Craven.  Although reduced to  extreme poverty herself, through no fault of her own, she was thoroughly indoctrinated by her family,  with the knowledge that she was the niece of the Earl of Craven, the owner of estates and money, in the far away fairytale land of England.  All of the things she told me were true, although I didn’t understand that she was brainwashing me, but now as I look back, I certainly appreciate her efforts in the face of what could have been a total destruction of my psyche.  Unfortunately, because we had very little money all through my young life, I never had anyone to guide me on the road to wealth. I always had the instincts but, without solid knowledge and direction, I came very close to never lifting out.

So my message today.... Take a little time to explain to your children how money operates. Teach them about profit and loss. How the banks handle their money and how they can get swindled.  Encourage them to become entrepreneurs. Give them Napoleon Hill’s book “Think and Grow Rich” to read, and also “the Richest Man in Babylon”.  Might do you some good too.

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
― Confucius

You can never be too thin, too rich, or have too many computers…..

 I don’t think Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, would have approved of this version of her favourite saying.  But, as I am never going to become too thin or too rich, I will have to make do with the last one, and I’ll say it again –you can never have too many computers.

 I don’t know when I came into this state of mind regarding techno-tat, but as newer and newer gadgets come pouring out into the market place, “must have” has become firmly installed in our language.

Not just kids, either.  I hoped that, after many years spent in the School of Hard Knocks, I would have some immunity to this all-out advertising drive to hook our brains up to our computers.  But, lo and behold, who is that standing in the store gazing enviously at the latest cell phone, the thinnest tablet and counting her money?  Yup, its me.    Well, at least I have the good manners to do the number crunching at home.

 From being a “no computer oldie”. I now find that I have surrounded myself with a desktop,
an iPad ,an iPod and an iPhone.  I already have a perfectly good old cell phone, an earlier Nokia , which in fact is smaller than the new phones and works perfectly well.  However, you never know.  My fame as a blogger might spread and I will start to get text messages, maybe from aliens from outer space!!

 And while I am talking about texting, did you know that, what you think of as this
new-fangled, newly discovered, pursuit, is in fact a swept-up version of  the cables being transmitted more than a century ago!!  I think this was an Edison invention. Clever man.   In the olden days, telegrams (have you even heard of these?) and news stories etc were transmitted by teleprinter, a machine which used a paper tape fed through the transmitter and broadcast  to the receiving machines around the world.  Have you seen the “ticker tape” parades in America, well, this is the kind of tape being used long ago. It punched holes through the paper tape, looking much like Braille, and of course, some smart alecks among us could even sight read these messages. Not me, however. The tapes could then be fed back through another machine, which decoded the messages into print.  In order to save time and money, the abbreviations of words were widely used.

When I worked in the newsroom at the ABC Sydney, I can remember working with wax cylinders on which I recorded  the BBC News, which was then transcribed to an antique Underwood manual typewriter,(the kind you see in museums these days), and read over the national radio station. Talk about high quality, high tech, news gathering.

So there!!!! 

Is that my treasure they are throwing out?….



 I awoke to the sound of the shed door clanging.  "What is going on,?" I asked myself. When I had plucked up enough energy to actually look out of my door, I saw my daughter and

son-in-law pulling out an endless array of “treasure”, stuff that nobody really wanted but was too good to throw away.  Then the kids joined in, with cries of delight over long forgotten books and toys.  There is something very therapeutic about having a shed cleaning day, even if you don’t actually throw anything away.



 After a while I couldn't resist joining in the fun and games, and, lo and behold, found some of my things I had thoughtfully mothballed for a rainy day.  An old chair, a dehumidifier that I was never going to use again, kitchen gadgets that had outlived their usefulness.



A long memory allows me to recall the hard times, when you never threw anything away.   Refrigerators lasted thirty years at least, your stove likewise.  I even still have my original National microwave, now nearly 40 years old, and it works far better than the revamped models, which last around five years, if you are lucky.



Having moved three times since I turned seventy, I had thrown away quite a lot of stuff so my treasure hoard wasn’t much. In fact, I couldn’t find anything that warranted being allocated to the “keep heap.  None the less, the “keep heap” was continuing to turn from a hill into a mountain, as the family foraged.



As I write, a few things have been given away, some dumped, and a little saved thriftily.  In the end, the shed was cleared out enough so another pile of stuff could be laid to rest there.



The moral of this post is that when you are oldish, you need less, not more. Unclutter your living space, leaving only the things that you like or use, and if you do buy something new, make sure you throw something out.   Even if it's only your husband! 

Set your  daily course on Auto Pilot……



 I have found that allocating my time into what I call Automatic Pilot Time Structure is a good way to get myself going in the morning.  If my mind is a bit cloudy some days , I just slip into the self maintenance routine, which gets me out of bed, dressed and ready to go.



 I used to begrudge the self maintenance time, I always got stuck into whatever work I was doing, but now I realise that self-maintenance is a very important part of an older person’s life.  After all, you wouldn’t expect your vintage car to run if you didn’t look after it lovingly, wash and polish it, and tune the engine.  So now I allow the hours from six to nine each morning  to be consumed by small tasks, like feeding the animals, having breakfast, etc and I consider each one of these small tasks to be a useful and valid activity. I also regard the time I spend walking around the house as my exercise programme. After all, I don’t really have the physical energy to undertake any strenuous activity like going for a walk.  That’s my excuse, anyway. 
Not an exciting life, I must admit, but still, as the BeeGees famous song says



I'm Stayin' Alive!!!!

Why Time Management is important when you’re old……..



Sometimes people ask me what I do all day.  They don’t see me in action so, in their mind’s eye, I am just sitting around doing nothing.



 Well, for me anyway, this couldn’t be further from the truth.  When I was in business, years ago, I had to be self motivated, as I worked alone most of the time.  And now that I am in my eighties , you might wonder when ‘older’ became ‘very old’.  I certainly do.



 And what does Time Management mean to some of us oldies?   You have a reason to get out of bed every morning, after you have loosely planned the first six hours or so of your day. After a lifetime of having to be somewhere on time or do something every day, having no time structure is what really does you in when you retire.  You are floating around at a loose end with the prospect looming of having nothing to do all day, so I make  the hours from nine to twelve my “mental workout time”.  I work on the computer, send some emails, do some writing, play Lumosity brain games, have numerous cups of tea and make a few phone calls.  Then its lunch, and nap time.  After I wake up, I am not much good for anything.

And so I drift off into the "Dead Dog Afternoon”syndrome.  I can’t motivate myself to do anything. Oh well, I am working on it.

Thought Capture.

I find that one of the most useful sections of my i-Pad is the Notes.  I use this as a thought catcher. As my mind runs a bit like a roadhouse rat, thoughts come charging through one ear and out the other, so I quickly tap them into Notes, where I allocate the important stuff with a triple AAA rating.  These are the things I try to do first, once they are identified.  Many people just trundle through their day, and never take a moment to recognise or carry out the AAA task that needs to be done.


If you just complete that one task, then you are 95% ahead of the game.

If you make a mistake and do not correct it, this is called a mistake.”
― Confucius

Fed up with bottles you can’t open?

Try this simple solution. Buy yourself a sturdy metal nutcracker – no, not a hammer.  I have had one for years and I can even open the tiny bottles which eye drops are dispensed in. I don’t know who designs this packaging, but, if you need eye drops, you probably can’t see all that well, and, as if trying to unravel the first layer of plastic protection isn’t enough, then comes the wrestling with the cap.

Come on, fellas, give a thought to those of us who have weak eyes and even weaker hands. You will be old one day!!!!

The age of innocence lost, and airport security……..

I was watching a documentary last night about airport security.  I am glad in one way that I did all of my travelling twenty years ago when jumping on a jet meant just that.  A short waltz through the luggage scanner,and,  hey presto. You could just go to the waiting area and board your flight.  Looking at the programme last night I wondered if the authorities can possibly find any more indignities to heap on the heads of the passengers.

And this programme about airport security triggered a memory from sixty years ago, when I was a child of about ten, and I remembered  how trusting the Americans were way back then.

My grandparents lived in a Brisbane suburb called Bulimba, in a house just across  the  road from the Brisbane River.  Around 1943. after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour, the Americans officially joined in  World War Two.  They had a lot of their fleet based in the pacific theatre of war where they were engaged in the battle of the Coral Sea, off the North Queensland coast.

Brisbane was the port of refitting, rest and regrouping, and, from time to time,  I would look across the river and see that the odd battleship or gunboat had dropped anchor  and was tied up at the big wharves on the opposite  side  of the river.

As part of what would have been an early  version of "winning the hearts and minds of the population", the Americans would hold open days on which anyone who wanted to could go aboard any of the ships which were in port.  Long queues of people would form as everyone was anxious to see the fleet that had come to save us.  And save us they did.  The Australian government, in its infinite wisdom, had decided not to defend Queensland above "the Brisbane Line", and the rest of Queensland was going to be abandoned to the Japanese invaders.

Anyway, as I was staying so close to these ships, I went aboard many of them and even got to go down into a submarine one day.  What a magnificent adventure for a ten year old .

To this day, in those of us who are still alive and can remember, there is a deep and abiding affection for the brave Americans who won this important battle and literally saved us from a horrible fate.  Just near our house, there was an unofficial graveyard where the remains of the planes, lost in battle and salvaged for scrap, were dumped, awaiting recycling.  Their shattered remains were piled up, torn and broken,  the nose cones still brightly painted with the names the brave pilots had given to their planes.  

Thought Bubble…….

The colour of radio stations.

As a very young person I lived in Queensland. I seem to recall that, in Brisbane, we only received four radio stations, 4BC, 4BH, 4QR and one other whose number escapes me.  Well, to cut a long story short, I always associated the radio stations 4BC and 4BH with colours. 4BC was blue and 4BH brown. Years later, when I casually mentioned this to a friend, he was astounded and thought I was  crazy.  Maybe I was. I never thought there was anything strange in this notion of colours applying to radio stations. Then some years ago, I saw a television programme which said that there were people like me all over the world, who associated words with colours. I only ever associated two.  Do you know any people who have this ability? 

Have I got green fingers or am I from Mars......

 I have decided to become a mini gardener. When I look at my unused deck, I am starting to visualise turning it into a green-house. 

 Okay, at the moment it is open on three sides but, with the clear over-roof, quite a lot of sunshine gets through.  And, somehow I do seem to have green fingers, or is this a trick of the light?

 Anyway, to cut to the chase, the few plants I do have seem to survive for quite a while with just a bit of water and kind thoughts. So, ever on the lookout for something to expand my horizons, I am going to start with the herbs we use a lot in our household, they seem very hardy. 

 Also, we eat a lot of salad greens, and once again, if you can protect them from the snails and other pesky critters, they make quite a good addition to the family menu. 

 Of course, if my husband, Vern, who was old school Italian,was still alive, he would quickly convert the marauding snails into a snail farm.  When we lived in our old house, he used to gather the snails from the garden and start the process of preparing them for the table.  Actually, they looked quite tasty when he was finished cooking them, as he was a very good cook. But I couldn't even bring myself to taste one.  So, the snails here are quite safe.


 Enough of day dreaming.  I am now going start drawing up a plan for the mini garden, and once underway, I will post some pictures.

Badge of Honour

Talk about out of the mouths of babes….one day recently, my young grandson said to me “ Granna, your skin doesn’t fit you any more. Is that why you are so wrinkly?”  What could I say.  So my advice to myself and all of you other persons of maturing years out there, don’t fret about having wrinkles and just view them as a badge of honour.  You are still here, so you are winning the battle.

Live in the here and now

When you are young you think you are going to live forever, but as you descend into old age, and you get into the "Waiting for God "mode, you face your mortality and become frightened by it……

or not. I suppose it depends if you have religious beliefs.

For myself, I have come to realise that life only consists of the second we stand in. As mortals, we make up this concept of time future, we can’t change time past and don’t appreciate time present. Big mistake. As all living creatures on the earth do, we live in the same moment and you are who you are at that moment.  So the message is……
that old classic “seize the moment” and it says it all.  One moment, one second, one minute, one hour or one day, take it and enjoy. It might be all you are ever going to get!!!!

Don’t waste your time on recriminations and bad memories. Be happy.

We all have two lives. The second one begins when you realize you only have one.”
― Confucius

Don’t take blind leaps into the unknown……

I was doing my computer housekeeping this morning, and while I was clearing some of the many emails which always seem to back up on me,  I also had a look into my filing system, which is chaotic.  I found that I had started to write children’s stories some time ago, a pursuit which I had long forgotten about.  Anyway, to cut to the chase, the following is a story I wrote for my granddaughter as a school project. I don’t know what marks I got.  Read this and I hope you have a laugh!!!

THE MONKEY AND THE FROG

Once upon a time there were two creatures who were supposed to be friends. The monkey was very friendly but the frog was very pompous and was always bragging about how far he could jump.

One day, the monkey got fed up with the frog always talking about how good he was at jumping, and he decided to teach him a lesson.

So he said to the frog “I am going to challenge you to a leaping competition. I will jump over this little puddle and we will see if you can do it too.”

“No problem,” said the frog, “anything you can do, I can do better!!!”

And so the monkey took a big jump right over the puddle. “Your turn”, he said to the frog.

The frog puffed himself up and jumped right over the puddle. “There you are, see” he scoffed.

The monkey said “ Ok,  here we go again. I will leap over this bigger puddle” and, with that, he ran and jumped right over the water.

The frog took one look , did a giant leap and landed safely. 

Now, the monkey said to the frog” Well, you are very good at this, aren’t you? “

“I sure am, I am a much better jumper than you will ever be”, the frog boasted.

The monkey now took a scarf from around his neck and said “ Well, how about doing a jump with a blindfold on? I bet you can’t do that!!”

“I most certainly can”, laughed the frog, “ here, let me go first”

And so the monkey tied the blindfold around the frog’s eyes and led him to a much bigger pool.

“Go on, jump now” said the monkey.

The frog took a huge run forward and leapt high into the sky, but, as he couldn’t see the pool, he didn’t know that the monkey had tricked him. He fell into the pool with a giant splash, and , unfortunately,  there was a monstrous crocodile waiting for him with his jaws wide open and the last thing the frog heard was “SNAP”

And so the moral of the story is:

DON’T TAKE BLIND LEAPS INTO THE UNKNOWN

Are you a sun worshipper?

I used to be, back in the day when the golden glow of a glorious Australian suntan was a beauty to behold.  Never mind that you were gently roasted, toasted and fried, and returned home from the beach scorched.  Now, many years later, I am reaping the rewards of my misspent youth. Today was another day of reckoning with my skin specialist, who blasted my face and body with what always feels like a flame thrower. So the moral of the story…..cover up and wear a hat in the sun.  You don’t want your skin to wear out before you do!!

“The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.”
― Confucius