Tag: Non Fiction

In a word: Pad

Here is another of those three letter words that can have so many meanings that it is nigh on impossible to pin it down.

You have to use it in a sentence which all but explains it.

For instance,

A pad might be a writing pad, or a note pad, something on which you can write, notes, stories, anything really, even doodles.

Cats, dogs, a lot of animals have padded feet.  I’d say, for a cat, those pads would be like shock absorbers.

You can pad an expense account with false expenditure in an accounting sense, I’m sure a lot of people are tempted to do so.

I know places, where a single man might live, is called a bachelor pad.  So many men like to think they may have one, but it takes money to buy the accouterments of seduction.

Then there’s a medical dressing, a square of gauze called a pad, usually absorbent and soaked in disinfectant to help protect and repair a wound.

Shoulder pads, for broader shoulders

KInee pads, for when crashing off a bike

Shin pads for soccer, and ice hockey players

A helipad which is for helicopter landings and takeoffs, much the same as a launch pad for rockets.  Unfortunately, rockets do not generally have a tendency to land, not unless they are bombs, like the V1 and V2 rockets of WW2.

It could also be someone walking around a house in socks, the man stealthily approached the thief, padding silently in his socks so he wouldn’t be heard.

And lastly,

A place for frogs to hang out, ie, the flat leaves of a water Lilly.

Any more?

I’m sure there is, just let me know.

 

In a word: cue

Another small and sometimes confusing word.

The first meaning that comes to mind is a cue is a prompt, often from someone standing behind the camera in a television studio.

That is to say that a cue is some form of signal, a wave, a nod, or verbal.

A cue can also be where a tape or recording is set to a certain place, ready to play.  One could assume, if playing tracks off an album of songs, and you wanted to play the fourth track, then you would cue it up, ready to go on, of course, the moment you got a, yes, cue to play it.

Then there is a cue used in a game of pool or snooker, that is a long thin tapered piece of wood with a felt tip.  

Not exactly my favourite game, but it’s always the cues fault, not mine.

This is not to be considered with Que which is a shortened form for Quebec, in Canada.

Or que, which for some reason, only in California, is short for barbecue.

Or Queue, as in a long line, or a short one, of people waiting to get on a bus, or waiting to get tickets  

In my experience every queue I get in is always a long one, and then suffer the frustration of waiting hours only to be told the tickets have all been sold.

Almost as bad as being stuck in a traffic jam, which is technically a queue of cars, never to get through the first set of lights, and sometimes not the second.

And don’t get me started on phone queues.  

Queues are for people who have a lot of time on the hands.

Searching for locations: Siena, Italy

The Piazza del Campo is one of the greatest medieval squares in Europe.

It is shaped like a shell.

This is where the Palazzo Publico and the Torre del Mangia are.

At 102 meters (334 feet), the bell tower is the city’s second tallest structure.

When it was built in 1848 it was the exact same height of the Duomo to show that the state and church had equal amounts of power.

Around the edges of the Piazza are a lot of restaurants, where you can sit in the shade, have a plate of pasta and sip on a cold limonata.

Searching for locations: San Gimignano, Italy

We have visited this town on a hill, famous for its fourteen towers, twice.  The first time we stayed in a hotel overlooking the main piazza, and the second time, for a day visit, and return to a little restaurant tucked away off the main piazza for its home cooking.

No cars are allowed inside the town and parking is provided outside the town walls.  You can drive up to the hotel to deliver your baggage, but the car must return to the carpark overnight.

This is one of the fourteen towers

I didn’t attempt to climb to the tower, which you can do in some of them, just getting up the church steps was enough for me.  Inside the building was, if I remember correctly, a museum.

Looking up the piazza towards some battlements, and when you reach the top and turn left, there is a small restaurant on the right-hand side of the laneway that had the best wild boar pasta.

Another of the fourteen towers, and through the arch, down a lane to the gated fence that surrounds the town.  The fortifications are quite formidable and there are several places along the fence where you can stand and look down the hill at the oncoming enemy (if there was one).

Part of the main piazza which is quite large, and on the right, the wishing well where my wish for a cooler day was not granted.

Officially, the Piazza della Cisterna is the most beautiful square of the town, San Gimignano.  The well was built in 1273 and enlarged in 1346 by Podestà Guccio dei Malavolti.

And not to be outdone by any other the other old towns, there is an old church, one of several.  It is the Collegiate Church or the Duomo di San Gimignano, a monument of Romanesque architecture built around 1000 and enlarged over time.

Next door is the Museum of Sacred Art.

And I guess it’s rather odd to see television aerials on top of houses that are quite literally about a thousand years old.  I wonder what they did back then for entertainment?

In a word: Stern

It’s what I’d always expected of my teachers, having to stand up the front of the classroom and look like they were in control.

These days, not so much, but back in my day, teachers, and particularly the men, were to be feared, and stern expressions were the features of an effective teacher.

So, in this context, it means a hardness or severity of manner.

Whilst in a sense that was frightening to us kids, another form of the word also can be used to express a forbidding or gloomy appearance.

Grandfathers also have that stern look, but it’s more forbidding, more authoritarian, more severe, more austere, well, you get the picture.  A six-year-old would be trembling in his or her boots.

There again, in facing up to either possibility above, you could stand firm with a stern resolve not to buckle under the pressure.

Of course, not a good idea if you’re facing a tank (with a stern-looking tank master)

Then…

If you’re standing at the end of the boat, not the front, but the rear, you would be standing at the stern of the boat, or ship.

Oddly, when issuing instructions to go in reverse, not something you would say if you were on the bridge, you would instead say, or possibly yell, full speed astern, because you’re about to hit an iceberg.

Or some idiot in a jet ski who likes to think he or she can beat the bullet (or 65,000 tonnes of a ship that has very little mobility).

A dark and not so stormy night…

Today, or should I say, tonight, was the first of many where I will be attending the little athletics programmes for my youngest grand daughter.

It’s that time when the season starts, and runs through to April next year, when the hot summery weather is starting to wane.

It’s a little different this year, and instead of being on a Saturday morning, where temperatures can be up to 40 degrees Celsius, the first few are being trialled at night when it is a hell of a lot cooler for the athletes.

Shortly after we arrived and got through the first two activities, the first a 70 meter race, and the second, shotput practise, I took this photo of the moon slowly rising.

And although I’m not much of a photographer with my Samsung Galaxy phone, in between events, and on our way to the Javelin, a sport I rather thought for an under 11 child might be just a little dangerous, I took this of some trees on the fringe of the overhead lights.

As the COVID restrictions for public gatherings had been lifted and at these types of events, up to 1,000 people can attend, but still practice the 1 1/2 meter social distancing rules, there were quite a lot more adults attending in comparison to the Saturday morning where these same parents usually use the athletics as a child minding exercise.

My granddaughter also did the triple jump, something she did for the first time and had a little trouble with, an 800 meter race where she stopped a couple of times because of a stitch, and lastly a 200 meter race where she came 4th.

Overall, for the first time in three years, and finding herself quite unfit, it is great to see she will be abandoning sitting at the computer for at least one day of the week, in favour of competing.

We can’t wait for the week she does the high jump. She was the best of her group 3 years ago when she stopped, the best at school, and now we are all hoping she will improve on her previous highest jump.

Stay tuned.

In a word: Zip

Which, unfortunately, I do not have a lot of in my step.

At last, we have reached the end of the alphabet because I’m running out of zip to write these blogs.

So…

Zip is the sing, the energy, the spring we have in our step, that usually gets us from a to b quickly.  Without this zest, we would need to take a bus, train, or cab.

Then comes the variations like …

Zip code, we all have one of these, though in some countries it is called a postcode.

Zip it up, meaning do not speak, especially if you’re about to spill a secret.

A zip, which is a part of some types of clothing, usually in trousers, jeans, and skirts to name a few.  Some dresses have long zips, some short, all seem to get tangled at one time or another, or, in the most embarrassing of situations, split.

Then there is a colloquial use of the word zip, meaning nothing, zilch, zero, in other words, a basis for of z words.

And that’s about as much zeal I’m going to show for writing this blog, and I’m going to close the book on it.

Thank you, and goodnight.

It’s one of those days…

You know, the sort of day where you have the best of intentions, you get up ready to start attacking the agenda you’ve told yourself you’re finsally going to sit down and get on with.

The same set of words you’ve been using to fire up the enthusiam you really don’t feel much of the time, but this time, having worked yourself into a high degree of positivity just before going to bed.

Everything is set up. All you have to do is’ bound out of bed, bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to go.

That was the first mistake. You went to be very late, around 2 am, and when you wake up, it’s feels like death warmed up. No bright eyes, and definitely no bushy tail.

But, there’s work to be done.

Before that, there’s other stuff, and as each succeeding chore is down, the less the enthusiasm feels. I have to clean up the dining room, which, at the moment, is the go to for all the tools, paint, tile glue, tiles, everything that’s being used in the latest round of renovations.

Frankly, the room is a mess. I can move a lot of the tools out to the shed now that I’ve finished with them, and the rest, a few pain brushes and the tiling equipment, we be used over the next week.

An hour and a half later, the room is now clean.

I go out to the writing room and look at the list. Good thing I’d didn’t put a time against anything, because if I have, I was now looking at being at least four hours behind.

A phone call made that timeline worse. People always call when you don;t need any calls to dstract you. It’s one of the reasons why I have seriously considered getting the land line cut off. And if it wasn’t for the grandchildren, who know they can call on that line, with a number that’s easier to remember than a mobile, I would.

But that of course leaves me open to the half dozen scam calls a day, trying to sell cladding, solar panels, defend myself form a car crash that I never had, fend off illicit charges from Telcos, and now Amazon. Not forgetting my friend from the NBN who rings once, sometimes twice a day telling me my internet is about to be cut off.

To be honest I wish they would, but as much as I tell them to cut it off they never do, perhaps knowing that if they do, they can’t scam call me anymore.

By the time I get back to my office, it’s time for a cup of tea.

Or something stronger.

The morning has gone, and the afternoon is half over, and all I’ve done is look at the list.

And since blog posts are on the list, this is why I’m writing this whinge.

How is your day going? I hope it’s better than mine.

Wishful thinking…

My phone, being smart and all, has been creating a notification that tells me I have some memories stored on it for this day a year ago, or two years, or many years.

The pictures it is showing are of our trip to Coffs Harbour one year, and Melbourne another year.

It serves as a reminder, but I wonder if those that came up with the idea might have considered that some people might not want to be reminded of events and places in the past.

Like now, when we are forced to stay at home and not travel because of the pandemic.  More and more this pandemic is impinging on us living what we might call normal life, thinking nothing of getting on a plane and going someplace else, other than home.

Of course, there are those who wrap this desire up in a package called ‘human rights’ and then go out to protest the fact we cannot do these things, failing to realise in their selfishness that we are in a pandemic, the virus hasn’t gone away, and it takes very little to create a second, or third, or even a fourth wave.

Perhaps I’m old enough to understand that rights aren’t been trampled, and it’s just a matter of prevention is better than cure.  Now, that prevention has managed to make our state, at least, safe enough to travel small distances, and to some other, but not all, states if we want to.

I don’t.  Not yet.  Not until there is a preventative measure in place, being one of the more vulnerable.  But something those selfish people don’t get or understand, we are learning that if you get it and survive, you don’t always return to your former health.  People who got it months ago, and so-called recovered, haven’t really, so if there is a second wave, they join us in becoming vulnerable, and could die.

So, enough of the bad news.

The good news, we can now visit nearby family and friends.

That’s the other side of the coin with these reminders.  It pops up photos of our grandchildren, reminders that one day all will be well again.

And until then, it’s not a bad thing my smartphone is going to keep sending me gentle reminders of what it was like in another lifetime.

What makes a location – 1 – The places around me

Having just described some of the early life, and the abject misery of being in a house with people who didn’t seem to care about anyone or anything, it flowed down into us.

But, here’s the thing.

When you are so young, you don’t know much about the world, and the people in it. This is learned from your parents, those first people in your life and who teach you the fundamentals, according to their beliefs.

It is the reason why a lot of children who when they eventually begin interacting with others have some horrendous traits, difficulty with language, or the use of swear words, and the treatment of others. If you’re a boy and your father drinks, smokes, swears incessantly, and beats his wife and children, then that’s what the child will do.

Similarly if you are just there, and no one treats you with the care that a child needs, then they become introverted and quiet. You listen and don’t speak, you observe, and wonder what else there is than this life that you have.

When you leave the house, and begin to interact with others, that sheltered life, and lack of interaction with relatives and others leaves you alone and miserable in a world you know little about and are totally unprepared for.

It’s where you start making a different world, one you can cope with, one that you are more than just nothing in. There is television, but it’s not something you can see all the time, and viewing was limited to what parents watch. There’s radio, but it’s from a world outside your own. There are other people you meet, but they might as well come from another planet so different they are from you.

But there are moments when things are different.

Like going to stay at my grandmothers place in the country.

It became a castle. A house with many rooms. A house that was old, made of bricks, had high ceilings, worn carpets, and holes in the floor. A small kitchen with a wood stove. A separate room to eat in, where the food served was completely different to what we had at home.

A large house on a large block of land, next to a church.

A place where there was a garage, rusting hulks of old cars, a large workshop that had all manner of tools and wood lying around, dusty and cobwebbed from years of no use. A whole day could be spent there just finding new and old things, each of which had a story of their own.

A block that had a huge garden, and overgrown fernery, and a huge overgrown water fountain, with paths going off in all directions. And a front garden that would rival the best of any rose garden.

In short, it was a place a child with an active imagination, could turn into anything.

I stayed there with my brother. I doubt he had the awe and wonder that I had, but he too was an explorer and between us we hacked away at the overgrowth, looking for and restoring parts of the rose garden and the fountain.

I remember it well. We never came in the front door. No one did because the path to the front verandah was blocked by overgrowth. But from inside, the entrance hall was huge with ornate wooden panelling.

One one side was my grandmothers bedroom, on the other, the lounge room, with a worn carpet square that covered nearly the whole wooden floor, and huge lounge chairs with wide arms, on castors.

Further across was a huge dining table, and an access through to the kitchen. We never used the dining table because it was covered in crockery, stuff my grandmother won when she went to lawn bowls.

Through an archway to the rest of the house, a huge hallway, where down one side were the bedrooms, four of them, and a bathroom at the end on the other side, and a door that led to the back porch.

THe first room was a storeroom filled with old stuff.

The second room was where we stayed.

The third was empty, and the fourth bedroom was when my mother’s brother, our uncle lived.

In this hall was a piano. It was a hall large enough to hold a dance in, only that would be difficult given that parts of the floor had rotted, and there was no sneaking about because the floorboards creaked.

It was, to me, a house with loads of character.

It was fitting then that it became the inspiration for a castle, and a life that was so very different to mine.