Category: Review

In a word: well

At first, you would think this word has something to do with your health.

You’d be right.  “Are you well?” or “Are you well enough?”

Of course, it can cause some confusion, because how do you measure degrees of wellness.

Reasonably well, very well, not well, or just well.  Not a good descriptive word for the state of your health, maybe.

How about what if the team played well.  Not health this time, but a standard.

There’s ordinary, mediocre, as a team, brilliantly, and then there’s well.

It seems it can be used to describe an outcome.

Well, well.

Hang on, that’s something else again.

What about, then, we use the word to describe a hole in the ground with water at the bottom.

Or not if it is a drought.

A lot of people get water from a well, in fact in the olden days that was a common sight in a village.

What about those environment destroyers, oilmen.  They have oil wells, don’t they?

And when I went to school, there were ink wells on every desk.

Messy too, because I was once the ink monitor.

But if the well’s dried up?

It becomes a metaphor for a whole new bunch of stuff.

OR what about a stairwell?

And at the complexity of it all, for such a small word, tears well up in my eyes.

Looking for news that doesn’t include Trump or COVID

So, what else is happening out there in the world. It’s very hard to find anything of newsworthy note other than the now what seems to be a farcical US election, or COVID 19, which continues on its merry way killing almost a million people worldwide.

What’s in the New York Times, allegedly one of the purveyors of fake news, a small headline appears, 356 elephants dropped dead in Botswana. For those who don’t know where Botswana is, it’s in Africa. Algae infected waterholes or people poisoning them are two possible reasons for the calamity in a country that has largely succeeded in conservation of the animals.

And a very interesting piece about sled dogs and planning for the unknown. I have to say, after I read it, we should all be looking for a sled dog as our guide through life, because they know more about what’s going on around them, especially in the remote parts of Alaska, than any of us humans. While I’m not packing my bags and immediately heading for Alaska, it’s made it to my bucket list.

Over at CNN another conspirator in the fake news brigade it took a long hard look to find anything other than a report that Qantas in Australia is selling off old Boeing 747 carts full of goodies (wine, pyjamas, throw rugs, and other items offered on flights) to the public. They sold out quickly.

Of course that’s not the only item Qantas is in the news for., In these COVID times when traversing state borders is a trial in itself, Qantas is offering flights to nowhere. & hours of flying over some of the sights Australia is famous for, beaches, reefs, and very, very large rocks. The first of these also sold out very quickly. There may well be a lot more of these nowhere flights as Qantas has lots of planes sitting on the ground doing nothing.

As for news that really isn’t news, a South Korea official was shot dead after crossing the border, proving once again, North Korea is the last place you would want to go.

And for information that you desperately needed, how to grow tomatos in the desert, and in particular, the Arabian desert.

There was a small piece on the fires in California, but I suspect since these have been linked to Climate Change, a subject that isn’t getting much of an airing, it doesn’t rate as newsworthy over Trump and COVID 19, other than in the latter’s case, it is all but gone.

Someone else’s words, not mine.

In a word: Toe

A toe is one of five at the end of your foot, and from time to time you wriggle.  It’s also one of the first things to go when you get frostbite.

And when was the last time you stubbed your toe?  It hurts!

It can also mean something at the tip or point, such as the toe of a country like Italy, or England.

What does it mean when someone treads on your toes?   You upset or annoy them.

What if you go toe to toe with someone?  Two people having a ‘robust discussion’.

What about that boss that keeps you on your toes, especially when he’s looking over your shoulder!

And what about a toe-poke, a hard kick of the football with your toe?

Of course, it’s not to be confused with the word tow, which basically means to pull something behind you.

Like a tow truck, pulling a broken down, or smashed up, vehicle.

But, do you toe the line, or tow the line?  Or both at different times?

It seems that to toe the line means to do as you are told, or conform to a standard.

Sadly, that doesn’t describe me!

In a word: Lie

Here’s another of those small words that have so many different meanings that it can boggle the mind.

The most obvious, is telling a lie, in other words trying fervently to avoid getting the blame, admit that we are anything but ordinary, or that we are larger than life.

I’m none of the above.

Then it’s where a golf ball lands, and is quite often, for me, at the bottom of a lake, or in the middle of a sand trap. That statement, play it where it lies takes on a whole new meaning when playing with friends who hate to lose.

Then, if I’ve got a headache, which is what this is giving me trying to catch up with all the meanings, I have to lie down. Usually that’s in a prone position, though I’m sure there are people who would argue otherwise.

You can lie in state, after you’re dead, but that ain’t going to happen to me. And the way Prince Harry’s going, I don’t think it’ll happen to him either.

The mountain lies in that direction, said the elf pointing towards the sea. Elves are meant to be confusing. But inevitably something will lie in a particular direction.

Perhaps the elf will lie about the lie of the land?

A book will lie on the table, or a sill, or a shelf, or just about anywhere.

And just to add to the confusion, your future will lie before you. Figure that one out!

This is not to be confused with lye, a strongly alkaline solution, especially of potassium hydroxide, used for washing or cleansing.

Is this more TV gold?

I have been watching television for a long, long time, and a lot of it has come from either the US or from Britain.

I have Cable TV by satellite, an interesting contradiction in terms, and it has a channel that shows all of these old series, such as,

The Prisoner, a rather fascinating series that starred Patrick McGoohan about a man who became a number. Of course week after week we puzzled over who he was, and came to the conclusion he was an ex spy put out to pasture. Each week he’d try to escape, each week a big white ball would appear on the scene. And what was his number? 7 I think.

Years later I saw Patrick McGoohan in an episode of Columbo, so he must have been popular in the US.

The Avengers, which was my all time favourite because of Emma Peel. Yes, huge crush I’m afraid. But, then, I think Diana Rigg had a lot more men with crushes. Nobody really cared about the others, one of which was Patrick McNee, but I couldn’t tell you who his character was, or who Emma’s partner in the show was.

The New Avengers was not a patch on the original, but I did watch a few episodes because of Purdy, who, of course was Joanna Lumley, equally as intriguing as Emma Peel.

The Saint, only because I liked reading the book versions of the stories by Leslie Charteris, and that my mother liked Roger Moore so we got to see it. That came from when Moore was in Ivanhoe, a real knight rather than a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Roger Moore of course turned up later among other roles, as James Bond. Probably not the best contender for the role.

Upstairs, Downstairs, a forerunner to Downtown Abbey, the first introduction to the lost class system that gradually disappeared from the 1900’s onwards.

Rumpole of the Bailey, which starred an Australian actor, Leo McKern, who was a delightful claret drinking barrister that never had ambitions of being a judge, and hinged his success on the infamous Penge Bungalow Murders trial. I like reading the books too.

Are You Being Served, with John Inman, and others that made this show a riot of a comedy. We saw John Inman much later in a stage play in Melbourne, and when two people turned up late and interrupted the performance, Inman recited all the lines of all the roles up to that point so they wouldn’t be left in the dark about what was going on,

It was one of those rare performance’s when you just had to be there to believe it.

More on other series later.

The new ‘COVID 19 Normal’

I’ve just spent the last half hour writing a rant. I’m relatively sure no one wants to know about what’s irritating me right now, so I’ve closed off that post and sent it to the draft bin.

One day, when I’m not so angry, I might being it out again and temper the language. I’m sure there have been days when you’ve been so annoyed at the stupidity of people that you too would want to vent your anger.

Neither the time or the place.

The point is, I have an awful feeling the world is going to hell. It never used to be like this. Life was normal once. You know, we were all battling along the majority of us hovering just above or just below the poverty line, but mostly above.

The Government sailed along making stupid decisions like it always does, increasing our incredulity in either the government or the opposition, because it seemed to me all they did was blame each other when something went wrong.

Coronavirus withstanding, the status quo is almost the same as before it hit, only there are a lot more people hovering below the poverty line, and as governments, reportedly looking after their people in a crisis, start throwing money around like it’s water.

I can’t complain, they threw some water at me and I drank it. I’m still alive becaise of the decisions the current ruling party has made over the course of the pandemic in this country, so I can’t complain. That is left to the opposition party who, for the first few months were silent, but now, have decided to question everything the government has done, or criticiser it for what it hasn;t done.

To me, no one is perfect, and it is a pandemic and none of us alive (except for a very few who wethered the Spanish Flu pandemnic) have any iidea what it’s like to live in such times. We are weathering it, we have lost relatively few people in the fisrt wave, and a lot more in the second.

That the second wave could have been prevented is moot. It happened. We have learned from it. I hope. Foolish mistakes are always accompanied by catastrophic results, and in the eventual wash up someone will be blamed. We live in a world where blame is essential to make ourselves feel better. I’m bot sure anyone will feel better about anything this time.

But, we’re not out of the woods. There is still a whole lot of scope for us to catestrophically fail again, because this virus is insidious, and a killer, and not just to those we know it will kill. We don;t know enough about it yet to know whether any vaccine will give lasting protection, or just a few weeks, like it seems to this who have had it and recovered.

They can get it again. Given the damage it does to some of the survivors, it’s like if it didn’t kill you the first time, maybe it will the second time around. Who’s compiling the results so far from those who’ve survived, or from those who have died? What underlying causes are the worst, who should be protected, and are vaccines being tested on vulnerable groups?

What will happen to those who are given a so-called vaccine in six, twelve or eighteen months time? How long have we been testing the current batch of vaccines, a month, two at most?

I worry that being in that vulnerable group, irrespective of vaccines tested or untested, that I’m between a rock and a hard place. Whoever came up with this coronavirus, whether manmade or from wildlife, certainly knew their stuff, because it seems to be it’s incurable, like the common cold, only with a lot more deadly effect.

I had a cold, I thought it was the virus, but no, it was just a cold. It was bad and I’m still recovering from the effects. Colds, as we all know, can kill. So can influenza. Neither of these have been eradicated, but can be vaccinated against, but you can still get it. This is the nature of such viruses.

So, we now live in a new world, a COVID 19 world where we are going to have to change everything we do, and apply a new level of care, and, unfortunately, suspicion, because the moment there’s a chink in the armour, the results will be catastrophic.

They’re are beginning to call it a ‘COVID 19 normal’ down here.

Limited or no overseas travel, limited interstate travel, a new level of public hygiene, with new laws and regulations? Pre COVIS we thought we were free, but that was just an illusion. Now, we’re still free, but the lines between right and wrong, once blurred are very, very clear.

Will this, eventually, be the fate of the whole world?

There’s more time for TV

Being confined to home because of COVID not only gives me, and a lot of others more time to write, it also enables us to explore a few more leisure options to fill in the time.

After all, we can hardly just keep writing endlessly.

Well, perhaps some of us could.

At first I decided I would do some virtual travelling, you know, go to places I would never go in person, like South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, South America, you know the sort of places I mean, the ones where you can’t get travel insurance cover, or not without mortgaging your home.

That lasted about a day. Seeing the pyramids online was not the same as being there, getting the sand blown in your face, or the tour bus being hijacked, and you spend the next three months in a dark, hot, hell hole while the kidnappers negotiate with governments that refuse to negotiate with terrorists.

So far, I’m not filling in my time very well.

There’s weeds to be pulled, lawns to be cut, shrubs and trees to be pruned, painting to be done, you know, all of those chores that you put off until tomorrow, knowing tomorrow will never come.

Don’t ask me to explain that.

So, we’re left with television.

Firstly there was a series called Yellowstone, a western in a modern setting, three series worth. Yes, we watched all of them, no, didn’t like the swearing, or Beth Dutton, Rip was channelling the Duke, and Keven Kostner, well his stint in Dances with Wolves stood him in good stead.

Geez though, how much trouble can one ranch attract? Indians, speculators, developers, and an international airport? To be honest, at times it spiralled out of control, but for sheer entertainment value, it was slightly better than I thought it might be. As for Jamie, how could one person be so complicated?

Then there was another series, Away. OK, this was about as far fetched as a premise could get, and the characters, as diverse, and sometimes as obtuse as any I’ve seen thrown together for over eight months. Thank god we didn’t have to suffer eight months of it.

IT was good, I guess, with people being the way they are, and I’d espected in the confines of that small space for so long, they might have killed each other off one at a time, like in Lord of the Flies, but no such luck.

My favourite? The Russian. He might have been blind but he was interesting. Just would have liked a few subtitles for us non Ghana, Chinese, Russian, Indian people.

As for White House Farm, I’m still trying to work out who killed them all, because if definitely wasn’t the daughter. It had to be the indifferent son, or at his behest. Full marks to the dogged detective, who, the last time I saw him, he was a rather improbable Hercules. Funny how your impression of a performance goes back to one you’ve seen him before.

Which is another of our viewing interests, watching a show and trying to work out where we’ve seen the actors before. Some are familiar, and seem to be in everything, others rarely seen, or remembered. I hope this is not a sign of their acting talent, or more to the point, lack of it.

At the moment we are in the middle of Young Wallender. For those who may have seen Branagh in the Wallender series would remember this as being the most stultifying of series, filmed bleakly in a bleak country with bleak characters, and bleak crimes.

Fortunately the Young Wallender series is not as bleak, but it has dark undertones. Some might call this gritty. There;s four more to go so it can only get better.

Like jumping off a ten storey building, it’s so far so good…

There are so many things I haven’t done

Does it really matter, you ask?

Perhaps not, but now seems to be an appropriate time, past the age of 65, to take stock.

We have achieved a lot in the last 15 or so years once the children had grown up and could look after themselves.

Unlike a lot of more modern couples who are doing the traveling in their 20’s and 30’s then having children, we chose to do it the other way around.

To me, it seemed easier to deal with teenagers when we were in our 40’s rather than our 60’s.  With the benefit of hindsight, I can truthfully say we were right.

We were older and wiser when we traveled and more aware of the dangers around us, sometimes overlooked or ignored by a youthful devil may care attitude.

But, in saying that ….

No, I don’t think I’ll be getting to see Mt Kilimanjaro, observing the wild animals in the Serengeti, climbing Mt Everest, or seeing the ancient pyramids.

Which is a sad state of affairs given the world has changed so much in recent years and has pretty much ruled out going to a lot of places, and in particular, the middle east, and because of COVID 19, just about everywhere else.

But, if it is ever possible before I die, I still want to go to the Greek Islands, and, Santorini is at the top of my travel bucket list.

We’ve been to London.  We’ve been to Paris and Euro Disney.  We’ve been to Rome and seen the ancient ruins.  We’ve been to Vienna, Schonbrunn Palace, and, particularly for us, a visit to Swarovski crystal world, near Innsbruck, we’ve been to Salzburg, and been on the Sound of Music tour.

We’ve been to Florence and loved it, we’ve been to Venice and loved that too, and we’ve spent a few days in the heart of Tuscany, and want to go back for longer, much longer.

In fact, that’s the second item on the travel bucket list.

We’ve also been to Singapore and Hong Kong, at first out of necessity as an airline stopover, but then we went back to see the city and tourist, and non-tourist attractions.

I will not forget staying at the Hong Kong Conrad hotel as a Diamond Hhonors member.  Oh, the memories.

We’ve also stayed on the French Riviera, in a timeshare apartment in Antibes where every morning when out back you had a view of the shimmering Mediterranean if the sun was out.

Nice, Cannes, Monte Carlo, the billionaire’s yachts in Antibes harbor, Monte Carlo and ‘that’ casino, taking the same drive along the coast as Grace Kelly did in To Catch a Thief, and feeling like James Bond arriving for a new adventure, minus the half-million-dollar sports car.

But, now, crashing back to earth with a very hard thump ….

Travel in the future is looking difficult for both of us, not only financially but from a health aspect.  We are both not as sprightly as we used to be.

Yet given the restraints and if it is at all possible, aside from the Greek Islands and Tuscany, the next items on the list are:

Germany, visiting both Berlin, from a cold war aspect, the Brandenburg gate springs to mind, and Munich at the time of the Octoberfest.  As a beer drinker that is also high on the bucket list.

Scotland, more so since we’ve started watching Outlander, and besides being a beer drinker, I am also partial to a good Single Malt, the Whiskey trail.

Ireland, because my wife’s previous name was Murphy and at some point, in the long distant past some relatives emigrated to Australia, and she would like to visit the country of her forebears.

But with the current state of the world, our health issues, and that all-important requisite money, or the lack of it, perhaps it’s time to visit other parts of our own country.

Perhaps it’s time to do a culinary trip, particularly down south.  It’s practical and achievable and safe.

And it’s a big country.

Have you ever…

Started to write a post, get so far, and another theme or idea slips in, and demands to be written first?

I’m on this nostalgia kick, simply because when I turned on the TV to catch up with the latest COVID news, it was on a channel that shows old movies.

In case you don’t realize it, I love old movies, not just those from Hollywood, but also from Britain.

What was on?

An American in Paris.

Well, it had to be one of my favorites, even though I’m not a great fan of Gene Kelly, the sheer majesty of the music more than makes up for the story in between.

Could it be said, then, this was from the golden years of Hollywood? Such bright and cheerful movies such as Singing in the Rain, and An American in Paris, perhaps exemplify the Hollywood musical.

Years before, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were the quintessential musical stars, followed by the likes of Judy Garland and Deanna Durbin, and later Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. A couple of musicals, in particular, comes to mind, firstly the Wizard of Oz and then High Society.

Moving forward to more modern times, several stand out in the1960s, My Fair Lady and Sound of Music. By this time theatergoers were dining on the superb talents of Rogers and Hammerstein, and Learner and Lowe. Of the former, musicals such as Carousel, South Pacific, and The King and I were on my list of favorites.

Even later still in the 1970s, there is Funny Girl, and Hello Dolly, which has a connection to the past with its director, none other than, yes, Gene Kelly.

But it seems once the 60s had passed the notion of the Hollywood blockbuster musical had gone, and we were left with clip shows like That’s Entertainment, put together while Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire were still alive. WE still had the film versions of the stage plays, but the lustre had, somehow, gone.

Perhaps it will return, who knows, after all, everything old is usually new again, it just takes time to go full circle.

Let’s talk history

What happened yesterday is history, but that’s not necessarily how we view what is history and what isn’t.

Similarly what is and what isn’t history is usually decided on by academics, because history texts that are used in schools are not written by ‘the man in the street’ authors. They’re usually university types who specialise in a particular field, or specialise section of history.

Even then one doubts that what is written is not a consensus of a panel.

So, when we talk about re-writing history, that takes a very brave bunch of people who want to buck the norm.

Our history, that which was taught when I went to school,. about our own country, Australia, started in 1770. Some brave soul tried to say it began earlier than that, before Captain Cook and the British arrived, out up a flag pole, and declared it belonged to Britain, like in 1606 when the Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed on the Cape York peninsula, only it wasn’t called that then.

And he might have been as surprised as Captain Cook that there were people here to observe their arrival. Yes, people had been living in this country for tens of thousands of years before the Europeans arrived.

But that was not what we were taught. No, Captain Cook, 1770, the a fleet of ships in 1788, and off we run as a new country, and a dumping ground for Britain’s convicts. Our history starts there, and then meanders through time, dividing the country up into states, having famous explorers like Burke and Wills, and Blaxland, Wentworth, and Lawson, Hume and Hovell.

And we commemorate all these people and those who were in charge over the years, with names of states, cities, rivers, mountains, everything under the sun. You’ve only got to glance at the list of hundreds of these forefathers and explorers to see just how many places in this country were named after them.

No heed was taken of what they may have been called before because no one really understood the languages of the first people who lived here. And they never seem to rate as a matter of study for us children back then.

Now, as people have begun to realise our history goes way, way back, and that there should be a nod to those inhabitants, they are considering re-writing some of our history to incorporate these people. And change the names of places to their original. A famous instance of recent renaming is of Ayers Rock, now called Uluru.

Even then, Australian History didn’t rate very highly, and I have to say, as a child at school 50 odd years ago, I learned more about the British Empire/Commonwealth, and about the English kings and queens, than we did about our own Governor Generals, Prime Ministers and State Premiers.

Could I tell you the name of our first Prime Minister? No. I can say when Australia became Australia, yes. 1901. Can I tell you the first King of England? Yes, William the Conqueror in 1066. There were kings before that but they only ruled of parts of England.

But over the years since I have read the odd book of Australian History but for some reason it never quite seems as colourful or as interesting as that of England or Scotland, or even some of the European countries.

Now, since I’ve been reading about what’s happening in the United States I have begin to take an interest in American history, and it, too, seems to suffer the same problems we have with ours, a bunch of academics decided what it was, and what it would not include, and then there is this thing called the 1619 project.

Wow, that seems to have stirred up a hornet’s nest.

Can’t wait to see what happens next.