My neighbour has a Vote Liberal Zak Kirkup sign on her front garden. Obviously she likes incompetent losers, fraudsters, conspiracists, nasty party infighters and all round idiots. She thought Trump was great.

It’s a coincidence because on Thursday the local branch of the Labor Party phoned me and asked if I’d do How-to-Vote cards on 13 March. I said I can’t stand for long periods, sorry, so they asked if I would put a Vote Labor sign on my front garden. I said yes. Maybe I might swap my sign for next door’s one dark night, and hide hers. Heh heh.

The McGowan Labor government have proved themselves to be excellent administrators. We have zero community transmission of the virus in the state, the state budget is back in surplus after the disastrous mismanagement of the previous Liberal rabble and the WA economy is not just recovering, it’s booming in the middle of a pandemic. Labor are going to romp home.

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A Little Knowledge Department: in Thursday’s West Australian an article said that a local fast money entrepreneur has bought a ticket on Jeff Bezos’s SpaceX rocket for one of the first sub-orbital flights. It said it will rise about 100km to the edge of space and (I kid you not) travel at more than the speed of light.

I think he’d better get a money back guarantee because (a) you simply cannot travel faster than light – not even close to the speed of light; and (b) even assuming you could, he’d theoretically get back to Earth before he left, so he wouldn’t have done the trip (I’m being very loose with the physics here).

As I understand it, there are no sub-editors at the West these days, since cost cutting started, so tripe like this gets through. Their grammar is atrocious too. There are a few good journos there trying to do serious work, but the paper is a rag. I buy it to read with lunch at the shops, but mainly for the ads and local news. I knew nothing until Thursday of the violent attacks at City Beach earlier in the week, for example, even though I read the internet/national news avidly.

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I must add my hearty praise for several women here. The first is Amanda Gorman, the 22 y.o. black woman who read out her poem at President Biden’s swearing in. What a powerful, moving performance that was. She’s going to be a star, and she’s only 22. I was very impressed.

Next was our own Australian of the Year, Grace Tame. Groomed and repeatedly raped by her maths teacher at age 15, he only got a 2yr 10month jail sentence and boasted about his exploits on Facebook when he got out. But Ms Tame was prevented by law from speaking about her experiences! She fought to get the law changed and won. What a woman! I admit I find her incredibly attractive in the physical sense, but also for the sheer power of her presence. I think she’s got a bright future ahead.

And third, it looks as if Tanya Plibersek might have overcome her misgivings about being a possible future leader of the federal Labor Party, and hence a possible second ALP woman to become PM. I think she’s outstanding and I would love to see her replace “Albo”. I’m sure he’s a good bloke, but as a leader, he’s embarrassing.

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I finished Fermat’s Enigma by Simon Singh. I think what I said previously here about Andrew Wiles finding the link between elliptic equations and modular forms via the Taniyama-Shimura hypothesis was as hard as the maths got, so although I don’t pretend to understand it, at least that was the crest of the hill. The rest of the book was just about Wiles’s further search for the missing link to finally nail the proof.

It’s a good book but like the next one, is padded out with long, detailed biographies of every mathematician who ever had any bearing on the result, dating back to Pythagorus. It got a bit tedious.

My next read is Prime Obsession: The Reimann Hypothesis and the author admits that he does the same, provides long, detailed biographies and descriptions of the lives and times of all the characters. At least he tells us that almost all the non-mathematical stuff is in the odd numbered chapters and all the maths is in the evens, so he is a bit apologetic about it. However, I’m in chapter 3 at the moment and I’ll keep going.

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Phew, it’s ‘ot! I’ve been out to the shops for lunch and to buy the paper and a few groceries and I burnt my fingers on the car when I closed the boot. There was no breeze and the sun was on the back of the car, despite the shade sails.

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It’s a bit over a week since my heart operation and I’m noticing a subtle improvement. It’s a bit easier to move around and I don’t tire so easily. No more chest pains, either. There’s a psychological lift too, a result of the physical improvements. It makes me want to walk a bit more, which can’t be a bad thing.

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I got my new pension card in the mail last week and it included a reminder that I’m entitled to one return or two single direction free trips on state government transport each year. I used my entitlement for a trip to Kalgoorlie on the Prospector in 2019 with my friend but didn’t do anything last year. I think I might do it again this year, like, soon. I think this time I’ll go for two nights instead of just one. I see the York Hotel in Hannan St is offering a room for $104 so it looks good. I’ll do the same as we did, rent a car for the two days as well. I saw all the old shops in the main street and I want to do some photography of them.

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I’ve said before that I enjoy, no, prefer dressing as a woman and it’s becoming my way of life now, every day in other words. Therefore my trip to Kalgoorlie will be 100% en femme, no male clothes at all. It will be easy and fun. I’m totally comfortable this way now, no nervousness, no embarrassment, just enjoyment. I don’t leave the house as a bloke any more, only as my female self. Why? It makes me feel happy! It’s so enjoyable. So there!

I’m back at home after a couple of days in the Mount Hospital for an angiogram (angrygram, geddit? I hardly need one of those). For most of the past year or so I’d been noticing little twinges of angina in my upper chest, and late last year I thought maybe I’d better do something about it.

Well, lucky I did, because the angiogram yesterday showed a heart blood vessel was 90% blocked. I heard the surgeon say the word severe while I was on the table, so he put a stent in, my seventh. It looks as if I was lucky, “dodged a bullet” as they say. It was easy and I feel fine. This was the third stent operation I’ve had and just another of many of these heart probes. This one was through the arm, thank goodness. I’ve had several through the groin into the femoral artery and I don’t like those because of the pain when the local anaesthetic needles go in down there.

Not to mention the difficulty one surgeon had in finding the artery, occasionally. I remember one procedure where the surgeon was grumbling and muttering as he couldn’t find it. Thank goodness he wasn’t too proud to say so and called for another surgeon to assist him, successfully.

Brrrr, those catheter lab rooms are cold. I don’t know why. Possibly so that the surgeon doesn’t perspire? I was on the table being prepped (by those lovely nurses – so competent) and this guy came in wearing what looked like a Hawaiian shirt, all floral patterned. He mumbled something like my name as he brushed past but I didn’t quite hear him. He came closer and repeated the greeting, and as I was seeing him upside down and in that shirt, I still didn’t immediately recognise him. It was the right surgeon though, so I let him go ahead. Heh heh.

Then it was back to the ward with a plastic pressure strip on my right wrist artery where he’d gone in. No problems, no bleeding.

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I’d been allocated a shared room and a guy was brought in about 5.30pm for the other bed. Holy smoke, the noise for the next three hours or more! He was the same age as me but had not much idea of his medical history and present complaint, or what medications he was on. The resident doctor had to prise it out of him, with his wife there too (all behind a curtain) not being much help.

Finally the noise quietened down and the people left, but then the coughing started (or continued, I suppose). Loud, hacking coughs every 30 secs or so, sharp, unrestrained. I thought, help, is this going to go on through the night?

Finally about 8.30pm I asked the nurse if there was another room available and she was very nice, went away and came back and said “Follow me”, so I was moved to another room, a private one with a great view out big sliding glass doors to a balcony overlooking the Narrows Interchange Gardens with all their leafy trees. Aaah, bliss. The nurse came back with all my things soon afterwards and I had a good night. The food was dead boring – I must remember not to say diabetic diet next time.

I had a reasonable night’s sleep, interrupted three or four times for a pee. Looks like prostate might be next on the agenda. I awoke right on sunrise, 5.30am, to the sun flooding in through the trees and those big glass doors. Lovely. Australia Day, 26 January and perfect weather, 28C, balmy breeze. Keith gave me a lift home, thank goodness. I caught the train in yesterday and taxi from the city centre to the hospital, but I felt a bit weak and tired this morning so didn’t want to walk too much today. Nap time now, quite sleepy. More later.

Phew, bit hot. No sea breezes, apparently due to a big, very slow moving high pressure zone over the eastern part of south west WA, directing easterly winds and blocking the westerlies. I’ve had to use the aircon at night two or three times recently, which is not normal. I can only tolerate an hour or so before having to get up and turn it off, by which time my bedroom is like a cool-box.

I was talking to a friend yesterday who’s very into home automation – lights, alarms, door locks, that kind of thing. I said I’m not much interested, but I’ll admit I’d like to be able to switch the bedroom aircon off with my phone without having to getup and go out to the dining area. It might actually be possible. But would it be worth the effort?

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I read an item in The Guardian today, describing the Trump presidency and the list of his transgressions made my eyes widen: “… savage occupation, butchery, usurpation, religious massacre, civil war, regicide, chaos, theocracy, military coup, foreign intervention, mass migrations, colonial genocides, and a constant cycle of rebellions and repressions.” Worst president in US history. A thoroughly bad person. Vicious, vengeful, selfish, untrustworthy – almost any words you can think of are applicable. He has 400,000 COVID deaths to his name. He deserves to be assassinated, torn limb-from-limb in my opinion, erased from the face of the Earth, like Adolf Hitler. A disgusting person.

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Up to now, electric cars are not selling well and apart from their high price, one drawback has been the time required to recharge the batteries, akin to refuelling with petrol or diesel. Most electric cars need between 30 minutes to two to three hours to charge up. That’s a long time to be sitting in a service station cafe waiting.

Well, a company has developed batteries with five minute charging. That’s not a full charge but it’s about enough for 200km or enough to get you to the next charging point.

The great thing is that it’s not some exotic new technology. All they’ve done is change the way existing materials are used and they’re confident enough that they’ve released manufacturing samples for testing. These are not rare engineering samples with long lead times – the article said manufacturers are being offered details to begin manufacture. And they’re supposed to be no more expensive.

Unfortunately this all sounds too good to be true.

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WHAT??!! Ordinary lake water, with all it impurities and amoebae and viruses but blessed by a “cleric” is considered holy and pure? To have special powers of protection and healing. Goodness gwacious – there are some easily tricked people in Vilnius. I think I might head over there with books of tickets for the raffles for the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. What a load of bollocks!

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From my favourite photo dog/blog today: Idle diversion: what do you think was the greatest artistic accomplishment of the 20th century? In any art. Define it however you’d like.

I added my comment: I nominated the first thing that came to mind – the dawn of the New Millennium on 31 December 1999/1 January 2000. [I still gnash my teeth at the error in the dates but all the TV networks worldwide fell into the same mistake so it couldn’t be helped. The real change of millennium was 31 December 2000/1 January 2001!]

Anyway, I’ll never forget staying up all night to watch the TV coverage, starting with the first dawn from the Chatham Islands (?) east of NZ, the first place in the world to see the new dawn. Then we saw New Zealand’s dawn, followed by the Sydney/east coast dawn and the didgeridoo player standing on the top of the Opera House sail. Haunting. Combined with Midnight Oil and Yothu Yindi, moving on to Uluru – wow, the hairs still stand up on my arms. I stayed up all night, aided by copious quantities of champagne and saw the slow dawn on the east side of my house. I’m ashamed to admit that I was far gone enough to think I would drive down to the beach to see the sunrise over the ocean. Er, wrong side of the continent!

Then the TV coverage moved on to the rest of the world but I think I was too tired and went to bed after that. But that’s what I would nominate as the greatest artistic event of the 20th century for me. I’m so glad I was here to see it. I have a DVD of the TV coverage but the quality was so poor in those days that I don’t think I’ve ever watched it.

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My current book is Fermat’s Enigma by Simon Singh. If you don’t know, the 17thC mathematician Pierre de Fermat left some writings about the deceptively simple equation:

There are no solutions to x^n + y^n = z^n, where n = any integer greater than 2.

I say deceptively simple because you already know this equation – when n = 2, it’s Pythagoras’s solution to the sides of a right angled triangle a^2 + b^2 = c^2. The usual numbers are 3^2 + 4^2 = 5^2 or 9 + 16 = 25. We learnt this in primary school. Other numbers are 5, 12 and 13 and 10, 24 and 26.

However, Fermat postulated that there are no solutions for n >2. None! None to infinity, which is the required standard of proof. In other words, not x^3 + y^3 = z^3, not x^4 + y^4 = z^4 or any other power. But infuriatingly, he wrote a note in the margin of his notebook saying he had found a “marvellous proof, but there is not enough space to write it here.” Unfortunately he didn’t write it anywhere else either, and so for the next 300 years no-one knew if he really had found a solution or not.

And it has proved an extremely difficult proof to find. The greatest mathematicians, including Gauss, Euler and Hilbert tried over the centuries but were unsuccessful. So it remained. Part of the problem was that mathematicians questioned whether the amount of effort, the years of work, justified the result.

Until the 1980s. A British guy, Andrew Wiles had been obsessed bythe problem since he read about it at 10 years of age, and after gaining a PhD in maths from Cambridge, when he moved to Princeton University in the USA and a pair of Japanese mathematicians made a breakthrough in another area of maths, he decided to dedicate himself to the work.

I’m about 3/4 of the way through the book and I must say that although Mr Singh explains things very well, I’m struggling to keep up. The Japanese breakthrough was the Taniyama-Ochura conjecture, but if you asked me to explain it, I don’t think I could. It’s something about linking elliptic equations with modular forms. Wiles realised that if he could prove the Taniyama-Ochura conjecture, that would prove the Fermat theorem. Simple, eh?

Anyway, Andrew Wiles finally announced that he’d succeeded in proving the Fermat equation problem in about 1987 to great acclaim. But a few years later, an error was found in his work and he had to spend more years fixing the problem (don’t ya hate that? 🙂 ). Finally, he released his new solution in 1991 and entered the history books as one of the greatest mathematicians ever. He hasn’t received a Nobel yet but I’d say it’s a certainty. His mentor and maths coach at Cambridge was an Aussie, by the way, Dr John Coates.

I’ll finish the book, but the going’s getting hard.

My next book is Prime Obsession: The Riemann Hypothesis, about prime numbers. Nothing like maths books to put you to sleep.

I mean ain’t it nice to be free of COVID fear, free to do anything, go anywhere (within the state, that is) and I’m looking forward to the vaccinations in a few weeks. What a contrast with what we thought were the pillars of democracy, the USA and the UK. Exemplars of competence and common sense. NOT!

Both Trump and Boris have hundreds of thousands of deaths on their consciences through their incompetence and denialism. Trump I expected, but not the UK government. I’ve always admired Britain for its leadership and competence but not any more. They’ve crumbled into an amazing pile of stupidity under this Tory government. Boris was always known to be a liar and a fool, yet people voted for him. Well, your vote may well cost you your life in Britain. It’s clear that my dream of visiting Croft Castle is on the back burner indefinitely. It probably won’t happen in my lifetime now.

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No sea breezes lately either. It’s very noticeable. I went down to the Jindalee Beach walkway yesterday around 4.30pm and what breeze there was was mostly warm easterly. The ocean was almost calm and the sand was broad and flat, beautiful. This was looking down from the walkway high above. I’m frustrated by this beach because to get to it requires descending an 80 step wooden staircase. Going down is not too difficult but getting back up again is a lung burster.

I’m very hopeful (yes, full of hope) that a new aquatic centre will be built at Alkimos this year. That’s five minutes drive north of me. I really, really need this as I can’t swim in the ocean any more, unless it’s a very sheltered beach. Boy, I miss being able to ocean swim but I can’t risk it now unless it’s very calm.

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Which reminds me, I’ve been having a small amount of angina recently and so an angiogram is scheduled for Mon 25th. I’ve had these many times before and I’m not worried, especially as the cardiologist says he’ll go in through the arm rather than the groin (apparently I’m too fat down there, harrumph!) It’s at the Mount, so I’ll have to take the train in and taxi from the station. It’ll be an overnight stay. That’s fine with me, I like the food and I seem to sleep well in hospital.

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The guy organising the Facebook Channel 7 History project has renewed his call for submissions. He says 147 people registered their interest but only 10 have submitted, which includes me, of course. He’s pleading for more.

Even though I wrote 8,500 words I could have written a lot more and I’ve been tempted to do a second submission, a fill-in-the-gaps Chapter 2. But I really should direct my efforts to my own history.

I made a good start a few years ago but I’ve been bogged down by a lack of knowledge about who’s who in our early Sydney relatives. However, the My Heritage web site has allowed me to build a very comprehensive family tree, complete with many photos to go with the names, so I’m much better equipped now. It’s not just Sydney either – I now know much more about the Arnold side.

As well, I’m very pleased to have received a USB stick from my cousin in Rhode Island, USA, with scans of all the documents and newspaper clippings his mother, Yvonne, amassed. There are 141 pages! Most of them have more than one document, too.

Unfortunately he’s not very computer literate and many of the scans are of very poor quality. But it still gives me links between people with many birth, marriage and death dates to add to the MyHeritage tree. Wow, it takes up time.

I paid for one year of access to that site to gain access to their photo enhancement facility but I’ve done just about all the photo enhancements I need so I don’t want to pay another $230. I wonder what will happen when I say goodbye to them. Presumably I’ll lose access to the tree, so I’d better get a good printout before roughly September or whenever is the expiry date.

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Speaking of books, a former workmate at Ch.7 has done a picture book:

He said he found a book publishing broker who handled the printing and ordering side of it. I’ve bought two copies $25 + pp each) and I plan to visit him in Mundaring to collect them. Asap. When the weather cools down. I’ll ask about this broker. Interesting. http://www.thepossumwhisperer.net/ if you’re interested.

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Wow, it’s hot. Yesterday 41deg, the day before 39deg, today 37deg. Thanks to air con in house, car and shops it’s not a problem but it’s not good for the lawn and garden. I pity the birds and wildlife. I’m not hearing any birds lately. I hope they’re just away on holiday and sending tweets 🙂

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Holy smoke – trust Sony to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Who thought Sony was a car builder? They make hi-fi and PlayStations, yes? Well, look at the video above. What a thing of beauty. I want one!

Unfortunately, it seems it’s just a concept model, a demonstration of what they can do, not meant for production. Well, I haven’t been much interested in electric cars up to now. Teslas are not bad but I wouldn’t pay their price to get one. Most of the other makers’ electric vehicles are just weird looking re-hashes of their existing models.

But this Sony car excites me. If it was available and I had the money, I wouldn’t hesitate.

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This is a reminder of how pathetically weak Australia is at encouraging our take-up of electric vehicles. It’s absolutely vital to combat climate change, yet there are no government incentives to change over. Three state governments have even discussed imposing a tax on EVs! Why? Because the governments don’t get any excise tax from petrol sales as they do with normal cars.

I despair at this country. We have so much talent in science, engineering and manufacturing, yet we stuff up every big project we undertake due to political interference and ineptitude. The NBN is the prime example. As originally proposed by the Rudd Labor government, we would have had fibre to every house and building in the country, allowing speeds up to 1,000Mb/s. But when the Turnbull Liberal government came to power, they put politics first and had to have a point of difference, even though it made no sense. As a result we’ve got a dog’s breakfast hodge-podge of a scheme which, now that it’s complete, has to be rebuilt at massive cost to somewhere near the original idea. Malcolm Turnbull, the man who single handedly crippled the NBN. What an achievement.

Similarly, there are many companies busting to build solar and wind energy projects, yet the federal government puts obstacles in their way. The funding for the alternative energy council is always being reduced and gas is promoted as the way of the future, even though LNG (gas) is a major polluter. Why is gas promoted? Because the Liberal government is mates with the big gas companies and executives.

Oh, I could go on and on but it’s too depressing. If there’s a right way to do things, expect Liberal politicians to take the opposite path.

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It was the same when I was working – I was appalled and frustrated at the way management behaved, and because I was interested, I used to read books and articles about the best managed companies in the world, mainly US companies of course. And I used to think, it was as if the management of the company I worked for had read these books and said, “Right, you managers, this is what we will not do.” It was so glaringly obvious that our management were determined to manage badly (and hadn’t read or understood these books).

In particular, their rule seemed to be, “Keep it secret, don’t communicate, don’t tell your staff what’s going on.” Oh, I’ll write a book about this one day. I kept a diary at one stage over about a two year period because things got so bad that I felt I would need to have a record. I’ll publish it one day.

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I think I said I’ve been using a free substitute for Microsoft Office due to problems I was having with it. I found WPS Office and I’m finding it’s marvellous! It’s so good that I’ve paid the $40 annual fee for the Premium version.

Well knock me down with a feather but in the list of Chinese companies that the US (Trump) has banned from the New York Stock Exchange was a company called WPS Office. It even showed their logo, which is the same as the one for this software.

This is annoying – it’s a Chinese company. I’m very disinclined to buy or use anything Chinese now, in view of their authoritarian government’s jackboot-on-the-neck approach to international relations.

I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve looked in the Help-About for any indication of their base but didn’t find anything. I’ll have to do some web searching.

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I’m listening to Amazon Prime Music, as I said and although it’s good, there is one very annoying thing and I wonder if it’s deliberate. At the end of each track it suddenly cuts off, either early or just drops out for about two seconds, before resuming and going on the the next track. I wonder whether it might be deliberate to stop us recording tracks, ie to make it annoying to build up our own collections. I don’t know.

Phew, day after day in the mid 30s, definitely a heat wave. It’s not too bad at night, thank goodness, down to 18C last night. I still have the fan on all night but I must admit it gets a teensy bit chilly in the early hours.

I’m sleeping quite well since I dropped that medication (yes, it was an antidepressant) and I fall asleep within 10 minutes or so. That’s a complete contrast to when I was taking it. I was seeing four or five am every night before I finally succumbed to exhaustion and dropped off. I was fearing going to bed, whereas now I look forward to it.

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I’m doing a fair bit of reading before lights out and I’ve just finished The Surgeon of Crowthorne, by Simon Winchester. I’d heard of it for a long time and now I’ve finally found out what it’s about.

In fact it’s the story of the Oxford English Dictionary, and the surgeon is an American, Dr William Minor who found himself in Britain in the mid 1800s. Unfortunately, due to a predisposition to mental illness, exacerbated by service as a doctor in the American Civil War, he developed a fear of Irish immigrants fighting in the war. He had to carry out some horrific acts as a surgeon, including branding a man as a deserter, and became unemployable by the US Army. As he was a man of means with an army pension, he moved to England.

Unfortunately in his deranged state one night, he shot and killed a stranger, an innocent man who he thought was an Irishman. He was found not guilty by way of insanity and sentenced to imprisonment in Broadmoor Hospital for the Criminally Insane, which is is just outside the village of Crowthorne, hence the title. It’s an hour by train from Oxford.

Dr Minor finds out about a new attempt at a comprehensive English dictionary being compiled starting around 1880. He happens to be an intelligent and learned man, despite his delusions, with a large library in his adjoining cells in the asylum. He writes to the man in charge of the OED project, Dr James Murray, and his help is eagerly sought and accepted. Yet Dr Murray doesn’t find out for more than 20 years who this man is or what his address at Crowthorne means. In that time, Dr Minor contributes tens of thousands of entries to the new dictionary, all on small sheets of paper laid out in a specific way for the checkers and classifiers in London, and later in Oxford.

Finally, curiosity by Dr Murray leads to their meeting, in the asylum, of course, and a firm friendship develops, despite the circumstances of Dr Minor. This continues for another 20 years or so, when Minor, by now very frail in his eighties and having lost most of his mental faculties, is given permission to return to America, where he dies a few years later.

I enjoyed this book very much. It’s a Penguin, so not expensive, and expanded my knowledge quite a bit, not just about the dictionary but also about the American Civil War and mid century London. Highly recommended.

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Speaking of words, I’m peeved!

Pre-prepared. This is ridiculous. If something is prepared, there’s no need to say it again as pre-prepared. This is a tautology in a word.

Lay is the past tense of lie. I do not lay down to sleep, I lie down. Chooks lay eggs.

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Woolies has Easter buns (hot cross buns) on sale already. Good Friday is 2 April this year, three full months away! But I realise I’m being ridiculous – if people want to buy and eat these fruit buns, why not? I’m very partial to them myself.

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I shouldn’t support Amazon, that huge anti-union, anti-competition company, but I admit to buying a few things during the COVID restricted times last year and, in order to save on shipping and postage as well as expedite deliveries, I joined their Prime scheme. It costs about $8 per month, i.e. $96 per year, but I reckon I’ve easily saved that in shipping and postage costs already. As well, delivery times really are fast. That new big tripod wasn’t scheduled for delivery until this week but it surprised me by arriving last Wednesday.

In the Prime deal you also get Amazon Music, access to ‘free’ music streaming over the internet. Boy, I’m hooked. The big deal for me is that it allows me to try a much wider range of music than I’ve had access to before. I think I’ve said, I’m a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to music. I made my choices in the past but when it comes to forking out $20 or so for a new CD that I can’t pre-listen to, I hold back. Consequently, although I’ve got more than 1,000 CDs on my hard drives, I wasn’t listening to them much.

But now I can wander anywhere in the recorded music landscape. Usually I just listen, but if I particularly like something, OK I’ll search out the CD and probably buy it.

One CD I’ve ordered this way is by a group called Liquid Mind. I know nothing about them but this is ethereal meditative music with a subtle beat and I’m hooked. They have several CDs so I’ve chosen a cheapish entree. Recommended (if you don’t want your music to interrupt your thoughts too much).

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I’m pleasantly free of urgent things and able to choose what to do next. My first priority has to be the Croft History volume 3, 1955 to ?? Unfortunately I was boarding away from home at Northam in the early 60s, then moved to Perth in 1965 and I didn’t have a camera, so there are very few photos from then. Dad took a lot of their Beverley life so that’s OK, but I have very few of me growing up then. It’s not all about me, though, and I have the words to write clear memories of that time.

In fact I have two quite long illustrated articles I wrote for our school 50th reunion in 2014, so I can just incorporate those. Must press on with it.

I nearly forgot, my cousin Stephen in the USA sent me his file, 60MB of it, of all his scanned family history documents. Holy hand grenades, it is huge. There are 141 A4 pages. I’ve hardly had time to start on it yet, although I’ve looked at every page.

So much of it is scans of official documents going back to the mid 19thC, all the marriages, births and deaths, old photos and newspaper clippings. His mother, my aunt, apparently collected all this stuff – I had no idea.

The immediate benefit is that I can finally put definite dates to so many people, and work out who they were, what relation to me. There’s months of work here. Months? Hah! Years!

Well, Happy New Year and good riddance to the old one. NYE was a pleasant day, only 31C yesterday but I thought it was a bit humid – it reached 59%, I see. The cold cabinets at the bottle shop were too dewy to see into.

Here we are past the end of a momentous year, and as much as we hope, it ain’t over yet. Here in WA we’re sitting pretty, no worries mate, go anywhere, do anything within reason. Just don’t leave the country, OK?

The vaccines, plural, should fix us up eventually but it’ll be another year before we could consider international travel. This reaction by some precious few against mandatory vaccination before flying is just crazy. They obviously don’t remember vaccination certificates which were required before boarding as recently as the 1970s. Smallpox, yellow fever, malaria, hepatitis, tuberculosis; they were all infectious and dangerous and you had to get vaccinated before travelling. No problem, we just did it.

So what’s all this about not wanting to be compelled to vaccinate before you fly. I’ll tell you now, if I knew I was placed next to someone, literally rubbing elbows and being coughed and sneezed on in an economy class seat on an aircraft, I would ask to be moved. How dare you expose me to your germs just for some vapid notion of your “rights”. What about my rights? Keep away from me, fool.

No, I will very happily submit to vaccination and present my card before travelling. That’s if I ever make a big trip again. My legs are getting weaker and weaker and I can’t walk far without stopping to sit for a while.

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I’ve been perusing the Perth Fringe Festival web site to see what’s on this year, February 2021. It’s a full program, no concessions to the virus.

I can’t help noticing how many of the Fringe shows involve gender-bending and cross dressing. It’s full on drag in so many shows, mainstream. This is what I’ve been noticing over the years, that many, many guys want to dress female but male culture just doesn’t allow it. That’s mostly so, but if you can gain respect, you can be accepted in male groups.

I’m totally comfortable going out dressed female these days, no fear, no nervousness and I don’t feel any stares or second looks, no problems at all. I was all dressed up at the bottle shop yesterday and a guy called me Sir. I said, “Don’t call me Sir! Miss or ma’am please.” Smiles all round.

It’s only 20-30 years ago when cross dressing was something to be hidden, with secret societies necessary. I used to wonder how I could ever do it, how I could get from my car to any venue. Now, pah! No-one cares, no-one looks at me and I have no fears. It’s a complete change in societal attitudes, the LGBTQI message having got through loud and clear. What am I? I’m T but not Transgender, only Transvestite. It’s a wonderful thing and I’m so glad it’s happened in my lifetime, while I still have time.

I’ve earmarked (put on a list but not bought a ticket yet) quite a few shows, mainly involving burlesque by women, including a repeat of one I went to last year, Burlezque (photo above). I went to this show dressed very daringly last year and was very surprised at how no-one looked twice at me, not on the train going in, not even as I walked past the doors of the big pubs full of drunken blokes in Northbridge. I came home on the train dressed this way and no-one stared at me, even the young guys who I thought might be troublesome. I was amazed and pleased that, really, anything goes now. This is great. I might do it again this year. Finally, finally!

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Uuurrrgh, I’m not happy about the Lost Bali book being organised by the American woman. I finished my contribution a couple of days before Xmas and sent it off, formatted as she requested as a Word document and laid out as I want it with a couple of dozen images. I went to a lot of rouble with image placement and paragraph spacing, wrapping the text around the images, using dropped shadows and soft edges.

But I got a couple of emails back saying how she hasn’t had time to read it (thanks a lot!), but then saying she wanted me to re-send it as plain text, with the images removed and these sent separately.

What?? To me, this is like telling an artist his pictures are wanted for an exhibition, but he must send just detailed pencil sketches, with the paints and brushes sent separately and the editor will reconstruct the paintings. Gaaaah!

Now she wants me to give her a title for my piece, even though it’s got one at the top of the article. At least that gives me more time to come up with something imaginative. I’m not happy about this, though. I had this happen back in the early 90s at TVW7, where I submitted an article, as plain text, as requested for the company newsletter. But the newsletter people didn’t talk to me and just printed it as it came, a jumble of text with no carriage returns and line feeds, no paragraphs. I doubt people would have read it because of that. Now I foresee something similar happening. Grrrr.

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“Perfidious Albion”. Perfidious: “faithless, basely treacherous”. Not for nothing has Britain (Albion) gained this description. Throughout history, Britain has practised treachery and gross crimes against humanity – slavery, torture, genocide, extermination, concentration camps, wars against local tribes, territorial land grabs.

Today, 1 January 2021, the UK has left the EU. They have demonstrated once again that Britain is not a country to be trusted, that puts its own interests first and foremost, that is not a team player. Some people see this as an opportunity for Australia to do a free trade deal with Britain. What a joke. I do not trust Great Britain one inch. They have done the dirty on us before when they joined the EEC in the 1970s, cutting us out of their market for agricultural products. They’ll do it again. Britain cannot be trusted!

What fools they are. Vladimir Putin will be rubbing his hands with glee – he’s seen one of the major European powers break away. He’ll keep chipping away at the Eastern bloc countries like Hungary and Belarus too.

Polls in Britain show that even though the first referendum showed a wish to break away by a slim margin, polls nor show a massive reversal: 47% want to stay in the EU versus only 38% wanting to leave. Too late now, it’s done.

As well, British people are showing themselves in this pandemic to be irresponsible rule defiers. They refuse to quarantine themselves, refuse to wear masks properly or at all and will not socially distance themselves.

The result is that the COVID virus is devastating the country. Britain has the highest death rate in Europe by far, and is third in the world for deaths and infections. The hospitals are being hit by a tsunami of sick people, putting all the medical staff at huge risk. The vaccinations have not had time to be distributed or to take effect yet. But the British public don’t seem to care.

As a friend said the other day, this is Darwinian natural selection at work. The intelligent rule abiders will survive, the stupid low-IQ will die. That would be a good thing, except that the rule breakers take the elderly and innocents with them.

What a sick joke Britain has become. When the Scots held a referendum some years ago about whether to devolve from the UK, I wanted them to stay in and was glad when it was defeated. My views have changed now. Scotland is the most intelligent part of the country and most definitely wants to remain as part of the EU. Now is the time for them to assert their independence and break away. Go Scotland, leave the UK. The south east of the country, London and the Tories, are ruining the rest of Britain. Walk away. And we must tread very warily, as Britain is not to be trusted. What a pity. A once great power, now in ruins.