Tag: Non Fiction

In a word: Bill

Yes, it is a name, short for William, though I’m not sure how Bill was derived from William.

But…

As you know, like many words this one has a number of other meanings, like,

A bird has a bill, particularly those birds with webbed feet

A bill is something you are sent to pay for goods or services, and often turn up when least expected, or when money is tight

And, sadly, they are neverending.

Then there’s fit the bill, which means it is suitable.

It could also be a list of people who appear in a programme.

It is used to describe banknotes, such as a twenty dollar bill.

It could be a waybill, used for the consignment of goods.

It could also be a piece of legislation introduced into parliament.

In some places in the world, it could be the peak of a cap

But the most obscure use of the word bill goes to:  the point of an anchor fluke.

What will happen in the future?

I don’t think anyone can predict the future, not anymore, and definitely, now it is a distinct possibility that someone can create a virus that will in essence shut down the whole world, and quite possibly destroy it

This is patently clear after the recent troubles with COVID 19 and although a remedy has been found, it is not a perfect solution, or a means of eradicating it. It has shown that while we might be able to combat one version of it, it’s the mutations that will throw up questions about ever getting back to some sort of normal.

And that begs the question, what is, or was, normal?

It’s been a year or more, and I think we’ve forgotten. What we have discovered, though, is the disparate states of the various nations and ethnic groups, and how they have fared in the wake of the pandemic.

It has highlighted systemic problems the world over, problems that have always been there but simmering below the surface. Problems that could be resolved, but perhaps will not.

But as a first-world nation, we have not been immune to external forces, forces that have tried to break us while reeling from the ravaging of a virus that was brought here, and through no fault of our own.

But from the outset, we seem to have been in a different bubble here.

I will admit that I live in a country with about 26 million people whereas the United States has about 330 million, there is a significant difference in numbers, whereas the US is only 1.3 times larger in size.

All this means that the US has a much larger problem in containing the COVID 19 virus, and probably why, down here, we are having a lot more success in getting the infection rates under control.

One thing we have all learned in the last month or so is that lockdowns, such as those hated by, and rallied against in the US, do actually work when you have much less population to deal with. This is why the actions taken by smaller populated countries such as Australia and New Zealand have been so successful.

Yes, we have had outbreaks, but it has been proved these can be contained. We have rigidly been adhering to the science, and the advice of our medical specialists without political interference, to keep the infection rates down.

Yes, we have limited freedom, but nearly everyone, except those from overseas who came here as immigrants and refuse to accept any form of ‘control’, has adhered to the medical-based requests. Those that don’t, those that have railed against the rules, they are predominantly people who have come here from other countries.

I’m happy for anyone to come here and get away from whatever horrors they leave behind, but only on the condition they leave those horrors behind and try in some small way to assimilate with us, without having to give up their cultural and religious beliefs. When they use that as an excuse for their bad behavior, they should be sent home. Obviously, this country isn’t good enough for them.

We are an island, so it is much easier to guard our borders. No one can get into this country without going through quarantine, and that who try to lie their way in are promptly returned on the next plane out. We cannot leave without a valid reason, and if we do, when we come back, we have to spend a fortnight in quarantine, guarded by the defense force personnel.

For countries like the US, it is so much harder to maintain borders. There will be problems in the future with travelers coming from overseas, especially if the science behind the vaccines being touted doesn’t stand up to a very high standard. I suspect that anyone claiming to have a vaccine and using it as an excuse to re-enable overseas travel will find their pleas falling on deaf ears.

That’s because, as we are learning, vaccines are not infallible, there will be the transmission, and not everyone will be willing to have a vaccine, so even here, as anywhere else, we will not be rid of the scourge for a long time. Travel might be possible, but who will want to take a risk going to another country where it’s not completely under control?

I guess, at this time of our lives, our chance to see the rest of the world is over, and it’s time to tour our own country.

Whether we live long and prosper, well, that’s a story for another day.

Life’s little experiences seem to have disappeared

I’m on a riverboat, sailing slowly down the Nile, ahead of us the Pyramids, a sight, I’m told, to behold despite the ravages of time.

There are others, a curious bunch of people, drawn from all over the globe, and from different classes, in a time when that seemed to matter.

Of course, it’s 1935.

And it’s all in my head.  Something I’d seen somewhere, or read perhaps, and now that I come to think of it, it was an Agatha Christie murder mystery.

Even now, nearly a hundred years later, it may have been possible to replicate it, only a world war, British Empire aspirations and later abandonment, and civil rife made it difficult but not impossible.

COVID 19 did that.

For someone who likes to travel the world, looking for locations, and inspiration, for my stories, the current travel ban has made life far more unbearable than just having to remain locked up for fear of catching it.

It’s the same as sitting at an outside cafe overlooking the main piazza in San Gimignano, having a pizza, an authentic pizza, and a bottle of Moretti.

Or like wandering the narrow cobbled streets of Florence, staying in what was once a 12th-century monastery, having wild boar pasta, and just a short distance away, a gelato.

Or wandering around similarly narrow and cobbled laneways in Montmartre, stopping at a corner crepe restaurant, where the crepes are to die for.

Taking that away is like taking away a hand, or a leg.

How long will it be before the world returns to normal, or will it?

In my conspiracy theory mind it seems to me there is more going on than just a virus spreading, it has overtones of world domination, or worse, watching the destruction of the world economy, and capitalism for want of a better word, at the same pace that climate change is changing the planet.

Neither occurrence is new, it’s happened time and time again over many millennia, it’s just we don’t seem to learn from it.   Well, maybe not in my lifetime.  Let’s hope generations to come do.

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.

In a word: Air

Yep, another of those interesting little words that mean more than it appears.

Aside from the fact it is the air that we breathe, it can also be used to describe music.

It can be a breath of fresh air, though it’s hard to say where in this ever increasingly polluted atmosphere than we could literally draw one, except on a mountain top, where conversely it would be hard to breathe at all.

Have the air sucked out of us, well, that literally isn’t possible unless some madman comes up with a weird sort of vacuum cleaner, but that might be an episode for the X-Files.

He had an air about him, or her, as the case might be, which might refer to a sort of deference or manner.   There again that air might be one of boredom, which is what a lot of students seem to have in class.

Sorry, been a teacher, and know well the expressions on their faces.  Had one myself once, and finished up on the end of a chalkboard eraser.  Yep, in the good old day’s teachers used to chuck stuff at us recalcitrant students to get our attention, and not undergo a storm of protest from irate parents.

These days those same parents would most likely air their grievance, opinion, or view to the headmaster.

I’m guessing that same headmaster would be wishing those same parents to vanish into thin air, though I’m not sure how that would be possible.

And lastly, television stations air shows.

Weird, eh, how such a simple word can be used in so many contexts.

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?

Nostalgia

Ever hear someone say it was better in the old days?

I have.

I’ve been guilty of saying it myself.

But, was it?

When I was a child there was no such thing as personal computers and calculators.  Everything came out of books, and maths had to be done in your head.

Holidays were about joining up with other neighbourhood children and making your own entertainment.  I remember for a long time, as a child, we didn’t have television.

It was down to the meadows near the creek to pick blackberries, swim in the water, or raiding new housing estates for offcuts to build a cubby house.

Not like today with television, video players, movies-on-demand, personal computers, game boys, and a plethora of other entertainment choices.

Were we better off back in the old days?

We were in the sun with no idea that sunburn led to cancer and death.  Sunscreen was unheard of, so in that regard maybe not.

In the old days, the only telephones were in the house and were expensive to use.  You could have a coloured phone so long as it was black and made of Bakelite.

It was a long time before we had plastic coloured phones or even wall phones.  Those were also the days of telephone boxes, the only way they make a call when away from home.

Now every man and his dog has a mobile phone/computer while on the move.  I know, their dogs keep crashing into me on the street.

And then I also remember my father saying it’s not like the old days, so I had to wonder what he meant.

Perhaps it is an oft-used but less understood lament for a time when we remember we were happy and carefree, those days before mortgages, children, maxed out credit cards, and the children’s mobile phone bills.

Whatever happened to pre-dinner drinks and a chat about your day?

There’s nothing more I like to do at the end of a day than sit down and have a drink, usually Scotch and Soda or Bacardi and Coke.

But that’s the problem.

What is your definition of the end of the day?

No doubt for most it is probably that time when they get home from work, and take some time between then and dinner.  From my memories of American sitcoms of the 1950s, it was over Sherry and included a summary from every one of their day.

It was a time when women, apparently, preferred to stay home than go to work.  Odd, for some reason, that Hollywood would ignore the hard-won rights of women to have jobs, though some might argue out of necessity because of the war.

There were no computer games, contrary children, and that period, for the children was between coming home from school (doing homework) and going outside to play.

Yes, none of this disappearing into dark rooms for secret conversations on mobile phones or playing games on computers, or, dare I say it, being stuck in front of a television, pigging out on snack foods.

Any man these days who thought the 1950s sitcom scenario might be a social norm would be vilified by all and sundry.  His children would be in a permanent battle to be left alone, his wife would divorce him if he even remotely suggested she stay home or have dinner on the table when he got home, and that peaceful hour or so before the expected dinner, well, that disappeared a long time ago.

If it ever existed in any era.

So much for American sitcom stereotypes.

Now, in similar sitcoms these days, the children are obnoxious to their parent, yes, every family it seems in the USA is broken, and the mother is the long-suffering one stuck with the children and having to work, whilst the ex is out having a great time with his new girlfriend/trophy wife.

Hollywood is still stereotyping, but it’s much more dark and gloomy.

This is added to the continual threat of online predators, online pornography further reducing women’s hard-won right to be seen as more than just a sex object, bullying, not only at school and online but in the workplace, and above all that it seems men still treat women as second class citizens, not the least of which are corporate entities, and government.

Oh, and the mention of having a drink before dinner in this day and age would be associated with alcoholism, or a drinking problem, caused by excessive stress, and almost always added to an apparent addiction to painkillers or antidepressants.

What might also be worse is the alarming statistics of the number of women now drinking wine by the gallon rather than a few drinks in that period between picking up the children from school and dinner, driven by, take your choice of, obnoxious children or absent-minded or chauvinistic husband.

Damn, have I stirred up a hornet’s nest?

Sorry, I think I’d better cancel the notion of having after-work drinks, and since I do the cooking, so there’s no expectation for someone else getting dinner on the table.

At least we are still married, and the children never had to deal with a broken marriage and two warring parents, but if any of the reports on why children are the way they are, I guess mine missed out on playing one parent off against the other, or get to live in different houses, or tolerate parents other boy or girlfriends, and live on junk food, well not all of the time.

Are they normal?

Perhaps when someone defines normal I will probably tell you.

I ceased being so-called chauvinistic a long time ago, and I had to have an attitude readjustment along with it, because, I’m told, we live in a different world now.

Perhaps I will have that drink or three; it’s certainly a necessity in order to watch the increasingly bad news, the antics of our politicians, and to watch the world gradually go to hell in a handbasket.

Whilst being politely told that I drink too much!

 

So where is hell?

When we are taught about religion, we are inevitably introduced to heaven and hell.

Heaven is the place we all aspire to go up to, though I’ve never really understood why it is up. Of course, all the pictures of heaven are in the clouds, with a set of pearly gates (just why are they called the pearly gates anyway?) and St Peter waiting to ask us the 20 questions that decides whether we pass through, or get the elevator down.

Yes, hell is down. Why? And, for that matter why is it always depicted a dark and full of fire and hot embers?

Now, just taking a step back and thinking about hell, there is a saying, “it is hell on earth’.

Was this saying coined by someone who had actually been to hell and been sent back? Imagine being a reject from hell … that would take some doing.

For those who saw ‘The Good Place’ which ended recently, the notion of hell takes on something of a different meaning.

But, we often say, when at the very bottom of despair that we are in hell. I gather this means that life couldn’t get any worse, which is quite possible on of the universal definitions of what it might be like in the ‘real’ hell.

Or was hell invented by some clergy a long time ago to frighten the parishioners into being good, because the ‘prize’ if you didn’t was a one way trip to, you guessed it, hell.

Come to think of it, a lot of the religious ‘stuff’ is to keep us penitent parishioners on the straight and narrow, though we are allowed to stray every now and then so we have a reason to go to the confessional, where, after straying, we a forgiven for the price of a few hail Mary’s.

And perhaps the unforgiving stare of the parish priest.

So, when we tell someone to ‘go to hell’, what is it we are really wishing upon that person. A fiery end? A meeting with the devil?

Let’s hope that ‘hell’ is just an invention, and that when were finally make it to the afterlife (which is a whole other question that I take issue with) our lives have been such that we know the answers to the 20 questions St Peter puts to us, and we get the magic ticket into heaven.

And hopefully there will be a Red Lobster up there.

Searching for locations: From Zhengzhou to Suzhou by train, and the Snowy Sea Hotel, Suzhou, China

For the first time on this trip, we encounter problems with Chinese officialdom at the railway station, though we were warned that this might occur.

We had a major problem with the security staff when they pulled everyone over with aerosols and confiscated them. We lost styling mousse, others lost hair spray, and the men, their shaving cream.  But, to her credit, the tour guide did warn us they were stricter here, but her suggestion to be angry they were taking our stuff was probably not the right thing to do.

As with previous train bookings, the Chinese method of placing people in seats didn’t quite manage to keep couples traveling together, together on the train.  It was an odd peculiarity which few of the passengers understood, nor did they conform, swapping seat allocations.

This train ride did not seem the same as the last two and I don’t think we had the same type of high-speed train type that we had for the last two.  The carriages were different, there was only one toilet per carriage, and I don’t think we were going as fast.

But aside from that, we had 753 kilometers to travel with six stops before ours, two of which were very large cities, and then our stop, about four and a half hours later.  With two minutes this time, to get the baggage off the team managed it in 40 seconds, a new record.

After slight disorientation getting off the train, we locate our guide, easily ground by looking for the Trip-A-Deal flag.  From there it’s a matter of getting into our respective groups and finding the bus.

As usual, the trip to the hotel was a long one, but we were traveling through a much brighter, and well lit, city.

As for our guide, we have him from now until the end of the tour.  There are no more train rides, we will be taking the bus from city to city until we reach Shanghai.  Good thing then that the bus is brand new, with that new car smell.  Only issue, no USB charging point.

The Snowy Sea hotel.  

It is finally a joy to get a room that is nothing short of great.  It has a bathroom and thus privacy.

Everyone had to go find a supermarket to purchase replacements for the confiscated items.  Luckily there was a huge supermarket just up from the hotel that had everything but the kitchen sink.

But, unlike where we live, the carpark is more of a scooter park!

It is also a small microcosm of Chinese life for the new more capitalistic oriented Chinese.

The next morning we get some idea of the scope of high-density living, though here, the buildings are not 30 stories tall, but still just as impressive.

These look like the medium density houses, but to the right of these are much larger buildings

The remarkable thing about this is those buildings stretch as far as the eye can see.