Tag: Challenge

That was my January

It ended as a bad memory, and I can only wish that the 31st never happened.

To start with, I hadn’t slept for three days after taking myself off the anti depressants I was prescribed for back pain. That put me in a bad mood, which had been building for the three days.

Then I had to cater for a family lunch which I’d probably the most favourite thing in my life, and used it to keep my mind occupied, with great success, juggling all of the elements.

But after the adrenaline high of getting it done, after everyone went home, it was like the air had been let out of the balloon.

It might be just a symptom of the past year, where just when we thought it was getting better, along came another disaster, just to remind us that we may never get back to the normal we had before COVID came along.

Are there aspects of the measures put in place over the last year worth keeping? Yes. Like keeping 1.5 metres apart. There’s nothing worse than people leaning all over you in the supermarket, or pushing past you, or into you with the trolley driven by the child from hell.

Like sitting further apart in restaurants so you don’t have to listen to the foul mouthed drunken fool at the next table abuse staff, his guests, and our ears.

Like everyone cleaning off the child dribble, sticky ice creams and slobbered candy off the handles of the trolleys with disinfectant wipes, and doses of hand sanitiser. Some people still don’t understand the basic concepts of cleanliness.

OK, enough of a rant. I’m just tired and cranky.

I think we all have reason to be cranky though. Our politicians seem to err too far one side or too fat the other, and there never seems to be any middle ground. Fortunately most of the people in this country take everything the politicians say with a grain of salt, and can make up their own minds what is right and wrong, and very few go off on a mad tangent, and in that way we don’t suffer too much.

But we can’t leave the country, rightly so, and no one but our own people can come back, and it is these few that cause our problems. I don’t think rigid quarantine works anywhere in the world because there’s always the few that break it, and the few guards who want to profit from it. IT is perhaps the price of freedom, though some will tell you we have none.

In reality, we do, and a lot more than anywhere else in the world, except perhaps New Zealand, and good thing we are neighbours.

But as for January….

It was like December, November, October, blah, blah, blah.

I’m not expecting 2021 to be much better than 2020, and nor am I expecting the vaccine will be the Godsent we’re looking for. I think a lot of people failed to realise viruses mutate, and it takes time for that to happen. TO say you have facilitate a vaccine in record time is the statement of a fool, for that very reason.

It might not take 5 years, or 9, or 15, but it will take as long as it takes to collect all of the variations and mutations, and have a vaccine that works on all of them, not just one or two. The South African mutation is a case in point, and if it becomes the dominant strain, then we are back to square two, maybe.

Perhaps deep down that’s what is making me angry, the fact I, one of the more vulnerable, may never, ever be safe.

What I’ve been watching…

I just happened to be flicking through the endless channels of our cable service and remarking of the terrible selection available, that I stumpled across a John Wayne western.

On odd choice you might sat for a person who lives in Australia, and has had no familiarisation with old American history and the wild west. Yes, I suspect it was nothing like what we see in the movies and on television, but, no one does the American wild west like John Wayne.

Of course, it helps when other stars are in it like Dean Martine, known more for his easy style of singing than for his gun slinging. That too of Walter Brennan who turned up in an old television series The Real McCoy’s, and Ricky Nelson from the Nelson’s, another television show we used to watch.

That western was called Rio Bravo. it had basically the same script as El Dorado, and each followed the other, so I got a two for one hit. El Dorado had James Caan and Robert Mitchum, another two favorites.

Not long after that I got another dose of Wayne and Martin in The Sons of Katie Elder, no so much the same script, but the same sort of rollicking western. Bad guys, yes, were dressed in black. You could always tell who they were, without introduction.

And the landscapes the films were shot against, picturesque indeed.

There are others, like True Grit, with Glen Campbell, and it seems that a western can take a singer and turn them into an actor of sorts. Certainly, True Grit is one of my favourites.

When that brief moment of euphoria died away, it was back to the search for entertainment, and I ended up sampling a few series, just to see if any were worth watching.

Snowpiercer – what an interesting premise, seven years going around in circles on a train with what is suspected to be the last of civilization. I suspect there are more people from other countries alive, just not using a form of transport. It wasn’t all that bad…

Bridgerton – An interesting twist on the bread and butter period productions from the BBC and ITV. My favourite, and the only sane member of the family was Eloise, and don’t we all aspire as writers to be like Lady Whistledown

The Outpost – yes it’s a teen angst show, but you have to suspend belief sometime in your dotage, and settle into what might be called entertainment

His Dark Materials – Read above. Ruth Wilson is deliciously evil, most of the time!

Pennyworth – Who knew that Batman’s valet was such a complex character, with such a dry sense of humor.

Star Trek Discovery – I’m never sure where this is going or why, and at the end of this series, I’m still in the dark. Perhaps that’s why Star Trek is such demanding viewing.

The Crown – Yes, I knew there was a reason why I hated Prince Charles, and now I know. If it could be said there was a sane member of that family, it’s probably Princess Anne, though she might tend to disagree with me with the brothers she has.

I let you know if I find anything else that might tempt me to turn on the TV.

It’s certainly not to watch CNN or Fox News I can tell you.

In a word: Green

Of course, it is a color, one used for traffic lights, grass, and a lot of different shades.

It’s made up of blue and yellow, adjusting the amounts of each to get the shade you want.

I once had a dark green suit.

I don’t have any green emeralds.

When you get a green light, it means to go ahead, or just go, in traffic, or for the starting of a project

And a green run on the ski fields denotes the easiest run – just about my level!

Green with envy, yes, though I’m not sure why they picked green for envy

In England especially, a green is a patch of grassy land, usually in the middle of a village

A green worker is one that is new to the job, and usually gets all the rotten jobs

Then there is the biggest money-spinner of all time: going green, which means eco friendly.

I have only one question, why is it to go ‘green’ is to charge far more than normal

Oh, and by the way, political parties that are ecocentric are usually galled the greens

And, these are the same people who chain themselves to trees, detering bulldozers

The blue sea is really green, believe it or not!

I’ve been reading…

I’m taken back to my school days after reading a post about bullies.

I know there are a host of different types out there, but I’m guessing the habit of those who ate perpetuating it start at a young age, and that’s in school.

I got through school by perseverance and luck. I say luck because at the very height of that bullying it could have been a lot worse than a bloody nose and minor fractures.

Back then I had no idea why they picked on me other than I was small and frail looking, so I guess I was someone who would not be able to defend themselves.

It was another realisation that others in my grade were never picked on, but it didn’t sink in that they were bigger and could, and possibly did, fight back.

Now, with the benefit of time and reading, I know or understand the motivation behind it, that perhaps they didn’t know any better because of what had happened at home. After all, what we see there, every day, is the sum of our first experiences in life, and therefore consider that as the norm.

But here’s the oddity that I only began to understand when I had children of my own. My father was a bully, he beat my mother, and us frequently, and for no reason at all.

It wasn’t until much later when I found letters he had written to my mother before they were married, that I got an insight into the psyche of the man.

He had been treated appallingly by his parents and most likely by his brothers, and spiralling out of that environment into a world war, if perhaps to escape what was happening in his life, it only got worse.

I suspect the bullying might have been a symptoms of everything that had happened at home, at war, and just having to cope with coming back to a world that was completely different to the one he left behind.

And as one might have expected, his children, as a result of seeing and being on the end of such treatment, might well have turned out the same.

But they didn’t.

It turns out we have a choice, to perpetuate the violence or understand that it is neither necessary or acceptable. Of course those options were not readily available or to be discerned unless there were outside factors.

I was lucky that the bullying in school did not have an influence, that it was not for long, and that relief from it was mostly due to moving schools, and states, before it had an effect.

At the new school there were a few borderline cases, but it was a school that didn’t tolerate disrespect in any form, and I learned that what I had suffered before was not the norm everywhere.

That change of scenery also had an effect on home life too, and now I understand that people forced to work in jobs they hate because of their circumstance quite often dictates how a victim might conduct their personal life.

We had always been in situations where necessity dictate circumstances, as bad as those could be, and its effect on a person’s mood, outlook, and behaviour.

My father finally had the job he wanted to have, with the freedoms that came with it, and we all benefited. It didn’t mean later that circumstances wouldn’t change for the worse, but it was long enough for me to realise what the motivation was behind his behaviour.

And that it would set the standard for the rest of my life, and although we had some very low lows, I knew that it was my own choices that led us there, and I had to accept responsibility for those choices, and not let them drive my behaviour.

There was no question at any time that I should take my anger out on anyone but myself, and fix the problem, which each time it happened, I did.

In the end, I like to think that my children learned from my mistakes, and that since they were never subjected to the horrors my father visited upon us, They did not visit them upon their children.

So the bottom line is, and I cannot see why this is so hard for governments and social progressives to grasp, that the problem needs to be attacked at the very root, and that is family life.

Yes, by all means, at a school level, tell children about the horrors of bullying, but it must be done in concert with their parents, because all too often those children have picked up their habits from home, and are almost past the point of no return.

And it can be done. I am a case in point.

Searching for locations: Hong Kong Park, Hong Kong

After arriving in Hong Kong early in the morning, we were taken to the Hong Kong Conrad Hotel where we were staying for several days.  We had a short sleep, then I took the grandchildren for a walk and we found Hong Kong park, with a Fountain Plaza, waterways, a waterfall, and turtles.

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Part of the fountain area.

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Turtles resting on a rock

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A turtle about to go in the water

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The waterfall.

It was a pleasant surprise to find this park in such a highly built-up area.

Nearby was a multi-story underground shopping center that was huge, and very conveniently accessible from our hotel.

I have to stop thinking…

Have you ever wondered what you might have been back in the 1700s, or the 1800s in England, or whatever country you reside.

I live in Australia, so I suspect I would be a convict or the descendant of a convict. Certainly in those past years, there is nothing to suggest that I would have been much else, based on the fact I used to be a tradesman, and later a computer programmer, only one of which existed back then.

In England I have often imagined what it would be like for the underclasses, and very definitely where I;pd finish up. A servant maybe, like a stable boy or footman, or an agricultural worker before the industrial resolution, or a coal miner after it. Poor people it seemed had no prospects.

In the 1900s, my time on earth, and before the computer era, I trained in a trade school, doing woodwork, machine shop practise, and sheet metal. There was also farming. For the select few there was Accounting and business studies, but to be a clerk you had to go to a different school.

My family couldn’t afford it.

When I left school, as soon as I could, and therefore without the benefit of a good education, my prospects for work didn’t amount to much, and among my first jobs was mail sorter, telegram delivery boy, a packer for a book wholesaler, an odd job boy in an abattoir, and later a clerk.

Perhaps then I formed an idea that one day I might be a writer. I certainly had a go, but never did anything with it. I guess, even then, I knew my limitations borne from what I perceived was my station in life.

What did I want to do though? It didn’t matter. People from our social strata couldn’t afford university fees so I was never going to get a tertiary education. That just about ruled out everything.

So what happpened to change all that?

Reading.

From as young as I could, I read. Not only stories about people who lived so very different lives to me, but reference books about everything. It gave me an understanding of what it might be like to be something else, then gave me the impetus to actually apply for what I would call ‘a real job’.

Whether I could do it or not was irrelevant. I just wanted the chance.

It took a wile but then someone gave me that chance. That door was prised open just a little, enugh for me to get a foot in.

I had several tenets to abide by, don’t speak unless your spoken to, respect your elders, and don’t say anything unless it’s relevant.

First job was mail boy under a very crotchety old man who thought I was a waste of space. I learned everything he knew, listened to everything he said, and did everything I was told, better than everyone else.

I moved up to shipping clerk, creating manifests for ships cargo. It was the golden age just before computers, the days of the mainframes that had the computing power of an IBM XT.

They fascinated me.

My next job was for a new company, working for a mining and shipping company, as a distribution clerk maintaining a shipping timetable. That led to a role in communications, the days of telexes and internal couriers and memos, and memorandums for board meetings.

It wasn’t heady stuff, but I was in management, learned communications, and understood accounting.

When I left there, I became a computer programmers. It was dumb luck, my brother in law was an insurance salesman, created listings of investment outcomes using insurance products, and his individualised reports used to take in a week or so, restricting the number of clients he had.

This was the days of the first Apples, and IBM’s. I had a small personal computer, and told him I could create a program to work out his calculations in seconds not days, and he gave me the opportunity.

The rest is history.

So, it makes me wonder had I been back in those 1700s and 1800s, whether or not I may have started small, and made something of myself. A lord of the manor I would not be, but perhaps something more comfortable than a coal miner maybe.

I guess I’ll never know.

I fell asleep in front of the computer screen

And when I woke up, I realised that I had just had a very bad dream. Or don’t they call bad dreams nightmares?

Can you diagnose yourself as having depression?

Of course, if you were to tell someone else, in one of this very serious tones, “I think I have depression” they will ask you what you’ve got to be depressed about.

It’s a good question. My first answer would be, “why did the doctor put my on anti depressants?” You know the stuff they give you, some derivative of serapax,

Then, if you tell anyone you’re on that stuff, they turn around and tell you just how bad it is and get off it right now.

That’s all very well, but you tell them you still have depression, and so the argument goes on.

But…

These days, they use low doses of anti depressants to manage pain, and in my case back pain. The first pill they gave me was lyrica, which slowly took my memory away so that I couldn’t remember what anyone had said earlier in the day.

I thought I had early onset Alzheimer’s, or worse, dementia.

So I got off that, got the pain back, and moved to anti depressants. Now I’m seeing things.

That might help with the imagination for writing stories sometimes, but telling people you see the patterns on tiles moving is not a good start to any conversation.

Back to depression, though. It might be caused by being locked down and not being able to go anywhere, but that has never bothered me because I hate going out.

It might be a result of my childhood coming back to haunt me, and, believe me, you would not want the childhood I had, but it’s a maybe. A lot of old people find their past creeping up on them, and what happened 60 years ago seems more relevant than what happened 60 minutes ago.

You might think you’re badly done by, that everyone else is responsible for the mess you made of your life, if it is indeed a mess, but no, that isn’t true. My life is exactly what it’s meant to be, though how I got here remains the biggest of mysteries.

It’s why I’m writing the autobiography of a very ordinary nobody.

OK, that might be a hint, thinking I’m a nobody. After all, when I go out I always feel like I’m invisible.

A friend of mine tells me he always cries when there’s a sad part of a film on, and that’s his determination of depression.

I do too, but I don’t think it’s that.

After all, I did psychology and should understand the nuances of the human psyche, what makes us happy, what makes us sad, what makes us us.

So, rightly or wrongly I’ve stopped taking the anti depressants.

If suddenly my blog suddenly stops, you’ll know I’ve made the wrong decision.

I find myself in a very strange world

And I don’t know how I got here. I have a sneaking suspicion that I stepped through a portal, only I didn’t recognise it as one until I reached this side.

I say this side, because the world I’m in now is not the world I remember from a while back, well, perhaps a year or so. Time passes very slowly here.

Before, everything made sense, China didn’t hate us, and we had just finished touring some of the most remarkable sights of that very country.

There was no coronavirus and I didn’t fear for my life, and the fact I had a compromised immune system didn’t matter a hoot, except for the constant pain in my lower back and hands, the result of psoriatic arthritis going berserk as I get older.

My grandchildren were in school, alternately loving and hating it, and every Friday I would get one from school and she would tell me how her world was hell, and I had no idea what it was like.

Another would start all her sentences with ‘basically’, and the other would end hers with ‘like’.

I would lament the fact our schools no longer teach proper English, and we could sit around and talk about the YA novel I was writing for them, and that they were the characters in this mythical kingdom. And, yes, they are princesses, if not crotchety one day, and all smiles and goodness the next.

And, in an instant that whole world was blown away.

Am I angry? I was. A year is too long to be mad at everyone and everything.

Have I a different outlook on life? Yes, I live every day as if it was my last, because the truth is, it just might be.

Can I travel anywhere? No. There’s too much risk in a world where few people under the age of 65 care about consequences.

Is there a reason to live? You may well ask.

I have thought about this often, lying awake in bed every morning, asking myself why I would bother getting up. I can’t go anywhere, I can’t do very much.

But…

We have here an almost remarkable record in keeping the coronavirus at bay, so we have some freedom. WE can’t leave the country, and every other month a state or two closes it’s borders, so travelling outside the state is too risky. The schools are back, and I resumed pick up duties last Friday, and, yes, the sweetness of the complaints about school life are like music to my ears.

Have I a reason to live? Yes. There’s three girls, grandchildren, one 11, on 14 and one 17. The 11 year old is in the last year of primary school, the 14 year old lamenting the third year of secondary school, and the 17 year old is in the last year of secondary school. She can also drive herself, a shred of independence that has changed her outlook, going from child to someone more mature.

I hadn’t realised how much their lives were in such a constant state of change. Nor had I realised how much they prefer to tell me about it rather than their parents.

So, the answer to that deep and meaningful question, is there a reason to live?

Yes. We can have so many things we think are essential to live our lives taken away, but in the end they are all but superficial. You can lose a car, some of your mobility, a house, any sort of chattel, but they are insignificant. What matters most, and always will, is family. I’m lucky, and indeed, extremely grateful, to have mine so near.

Now I suppose I should be getting to bed. Tomorrow, I have just been informed, I’m rostered on in what is known as ‘poppy’s taxi’.

And ready to hear the next enthralling episode of school life these days.

Searching for locations: Just how hard can it be to see some snow?

You would think it is a relatively simple thing to get to the snow.

Of course, there are a few necessities like skis, boots, poles, and warm dry clothing, but that can all be bought or rented when you get there, or if you are an enthusiast, you already have the gear.

So, you get in the car, set the navigator, and off you go.  Till you get within 20 k of the ski field, it’s all plain sailing, everyone is excited, and mentally preparing.

Then it all starts to go sideways.

Those last few kilometers to the top are going to be arduous particularly if it’s been snowing and the roads are icy, but the weather is fine with blue skies and no recent snow falls.  Were expecting a slow drive and a parking spot.

The road is open.

But…

So late in the morning, a sign at the bottom of the mountain warns all the car parks at the ski field are full, but we venture on anyway.

As you can see, the cars are parked so far away from the ski fields, the prospective skiers have to almost run a marathon before they get there!

And for some odd reason, we picked the very day everyone in New Zealand also wanted to go up to the ski fields so parking, even near the Chateau Tongariro was gone and there were endless cars looking for parking spots and traffic wardens had their hands full trying to keep traffic moving
So, for us and everyone else, everything stops at Chateau Tongariro, and from there the only vehicles allowed up are buses.

It’s about 10:30 and we are advised the only way we were getting to see snow was to take a bus

Now, there are two types of busses.  You can go up on a local bus, from Whakapapa Village that costs $20 a person which in the context of the cost of skiing not very much, but if you’re not, it’s quite expensive.

The second, one we were advised to use, operates from a place called National Park, about 9 km away, a snow shuttle that costs $6 each.  The trouble is by the time we were ready to go there, to catch a shuttle, there were no more shuttles.

We did not know what to expect when we got to ‘National Park’, but being a railway station makes sense.  It’s the only place with a very large carpark!

Oh, well, there’s always tomorrow.

In a word: bark

Yes, this is exactly what a dog does, sometimes annoyingly all night, that sharp explosive cry of a dog or, believe it or not, a seal

Much better if the dog is a guard dog, because then you need it to bark when there is intruders

Then there’s another form of bark, that which grows on a tree, and makes excelled burning material, if not a little smoky, for a BBQ.

Ot that the bark of some trees can be used as material for carving, and of others, like the paperbark, to make was seems like paper to write on.

Then there are expressions that start to make you think, concerning this word, such as:

He was a boss that liked to bark orders.  I had one like that, almost looked like a dog too.  Never could ask someone kindly.

He was barking up the wrong tree.  Never seen a dog do this, but many people gave so the literal meaning is to waste your time looking in the wrong place

Then there’s bark or barque, the name of a certain type of boat or masted ship with three or more masts, dating back to sailing days

And then, just top it all off, someone goes and says your barking mad.  Probably just after you were barking up the wrong tree, looking for the barking dog on a barque.