Category Archives: Uncategorized

Anyway, as I was saying …

Golly, is that the date? Must try harder.
It’s hard to think of things to write about, but becoming an Aged Pensioner qualifies, I suppose. Yes, it all happened, and I was going to say it went smoothly, but Centrelink failed to return my original documents once again. I even include a stamped self addressed A4 envelope when I send them, but it does no good. I’ll just have to try again.
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Oh yeah, nearly forgot. The Bali villa is now open for rental and advertised on the web. Thanks to Ian and Naomi, who’ve put in an enormous amount of work.
The Balinese managers’ website is http://www.bbevillas.com/villa/villa-frangi
and the Perth website is http://www.villafrangi.com/
Have a look. 
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For the benefit of my interstate and overseas readers, if any, the heat goes on. The eastern states people (ABC News website) are saying it’s been such a cool and wet summer over there that they’re in danger of disbelieving Global Warming, but we can’t forget over here in the west.
Last year here was the hottest on record, the winter was the warmest, and now we’ve broken the record since records started (1877) for the highest number of heatwaves in a row. A heatwave is defined here as more than three days of maxima over 35C, and we’ve had eight this summer. It’s not too bad now, 29C today, but I’ve still turned the aircon on for a while. It feels hot. And this is autumn!
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The Stirling City Council have announced that they want to do their bit for the environment by trashing 45 mature trees at the north end of our Charles Riley Reserve. These are beautiful decades old peppermints and tuarts that are the only shade for the area, used by many picnickers, school sports people walkers and dog walkers, including me.
Why? The sporting people want the practice oval enlarged and yet another sports pavillion built, at a total cost of $5 million! (There are already two pavillions on this ground, one for football and cricket and an enormous one on the east side for athletics that seems to be quiescent most of the time.
All these trees will be cut down!
Under the council’s plans, every tree within the grassed area above will be uprooted and trashed! I took this shot in 2004, so the trees are bigger now, and they are used by magpies, crows, galahs, rosellas, black cockatoos, sulphur crested cockatoos, wattle birds, silvereyes, doves, peewits, mudlarks, kookaburras and other birds I’ve missed.
The new pavillion is to be built about where the pine tree is in this shot. Oh, and dog walking is to be banned from the grassed area and restricted to an area behind those trees to the left!
It just fries my brain that this could even be considered. The council say new trees will be planted. Yeah, sure – for future generations. They’ll take 20-30 years to grow enough to give shade. This area is used by school sporting people and people like me, but footballers have the councillors’ ears, so they’ll probably win. There’s a strong protest being mounted, but I don’t hold much hope.  Gloom.

Ya gotta laugh!

…or you’d cry.  I know I’m a sad case when I read the fine print at the end of newspaper advertisements, but the ad for Polytechnic West on page 53 of The West yesterday caught my eye.
In the last line it says, “Errors and ommissions accepted”. Obviously! A double banger. I reach for the sic bag. I think I’ll have to send them a rocket.
>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<


I got the letter from Centrelink on Friday: pension’s all fixed, payments start on 15 February. Nice to be getting something back after all these years. Apart from the Health Care concession card, I’ve never had any government handout before. 
I never got the First Home Buyer’s grant in the 1980s, nor did I get the $900 bonus in 2008 for the GFC. Why? My income is so low that I don’t submit a tax return, but that meant I didn’t qualify for the bonus!  I wrote to the PM’s office to protest, but just got a gobbledygook fob-off reply.  At least they did reply.
<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>

Phew it’s hot!  Air conditioning makes it bearable, but I feel imprisoned in the house at times. It’s junk collection this week and I wish I could go scavenging, but not in this heat.

Lucky Dog

Good news about the lost dog running up the road I wrote about on Tuesday. I was leaving the rugby club last evening and happened to glance over the fence and through the hedge at the tennis courts below.
There was the same little dog, running back and forth chasing a tennis ball with someone down there. I could be mistaken, but I reckon it was the same dog. All’s well that ends well.
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Historic day last Wednesday: I submitted my application for the Age Pension. It took me days to figure out how to answer the Income and Assets questions and in the end, I just had to front up with one of the questions unanswered, pending their advice.
A supervisor was called over and he eventually agreed with my interpretation, so it was easy after that.
I’d been told that opening time is the best time to avoid queues and so it proved. I arrived at 0840am and there was no-one in front of me. They still made me sit down and wait for 15 mins, but I was all done and out by 0920.
It means I’m in their clutches now! Every change in my financial circumstances has to be reported from now on. Ho hum…
Anyone who calls me an old aged pensioner had better be ready for a slap!

I Love Dogs!

My heart melted today, and it wasn’t the heat. I was waiting at the lights to turn into Marmion Ave and a small(ish) white dog ran past on the road, in the middle of the left traffic lane. He was just running up the slope in the centre of the lane, not diverging and not weaving.
The cars caught up with him, blowing their horns, and he eventually got the message and eased over onto the verge, then looked lost and wandered into the undergrowth toward my street.
I wanted to jump out and take him (her? it?) to safety, but I couldn’t because of the traffic. Poor little dog, lost, bewildered, burnt feet… I hope he’s OK. He had a collar on, so I hope someone did the right thing.
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Minnie scared me this morning. Years ago, I found Boopsie, my Border Collie, curled up in the far bottom corner of the yard. It turned out she had a bowel blockage and must have been in bad pain and had gone there to die (as dogs do). Luckily I found her and got her to the vet and $1500 later, she was OK.
This morning, when I called Minnie at about 8am, she was down there too. She came out and just looked at me, then slowly made her way up to the path and inside. This is new behaviour. She seems OK, so I hope…
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I finished reading my latest book today, Fall of Giants by Ken Follett, and all I can say is Wow! Phew, 850 pages and I didn’t want it to end. Luckily the cover says it’s part one of a trilogy, so I’ll be waiting for the next one.
It’s a historical novel starting at about 1910 and covering WW I, the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Treaty of Versaille after the war and the origins of Germany’s years of poverty leading to the Nazi party. It’s a soap opera in a way, but it’s engrossing. I now know a lot more about those times.

By Goddard

Thanks to KG (no, not King George V) I’ve discovered Robert Goddard, the British author, and I’m a fan! Good writing, complex plot lines, surprising twists and turns and quite a few new words to look up and learn.
I thought the author’s name seemed familiar and a few nights ago I was watching a program about rocket development (yeah, rocket science, slightly). There was the name Robert Goddard again, this time the American rocket developer in the 1940s and 50s.
I’ve just finished the UK author’s book Past Caring, and here’s another coincidence: the storyline encompassed British politics around 1910, David Lloyd George, the suffragette movement and King George V (hence my reference above). My current book is Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants, and by coincidence, it’s set in the same time, 1911, suffragism, Lloyd George and King George V.

That’s handy, because now I understand all the references in Follett’s book, which, by the way, is not nearly as well written as Goddard’s. Follett’s a good story teller, but not a great writer in my opinion.

Don’t eat the mushies!

An amazing and tragic coincidence. A month or so ago, there was a report in The Guardian web news site http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/13/filmadaptations?INTCMP=SRCH about a London couple who went to stay with friends in Scotland. They decided to pick some field mushrooms and cook them up for dinner.
Apparently one person assumed the other person knew which mushrooms were OK to eat, so they went ahead and et ’em. Later that night all four of them felt sick and by morning they were alarmed enough to consult a book on mushrooms to identify what they’d eaten.
Ambulances were called and they all ended up desperately ill in hospital, with kidney and liver failures, dialysis, transplants etc etc. Ironically, both couples had nominated the other couple in their will to look after their kids if anything happened to the parents, yet here they all were, at death’s door. They all were/are in dire straits. It caused a serious rift in their friendship, because the visitors assumed the locals would know what was OK, or vice versa.
Now we have the ABC News item http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-04/two-die-from-death-cap-mushrooms/3757764?WT.svl=news0  of a very, very similar tragedy in Australia, Canberra, with two people dead.

I wonder who pronounced the mushies fit to eat in this event?

2012 !

Well, 2012 at last. Happy New Year to all my readers… all three or four?
It’s significant to me, as well as many others, because it’s the year we 1947 baby boomers turn 65. I can clearly remember where and when it was that I first thought about this milestone.
It was while I was walking, or perhaps riding in the pale green Commer mini bus driven by Joe Crawford, along the dirt road to the Werribee hostel. It was 1959, my last year of primary school at Wundowie. I worked out that I’d be 65 in 2012 and of course it seemed so remote as to be unbelievable. But here we are. I made it. We made it. Well, I’ve got six weeks to go, but barring accidents…

It was a quiet night around here last night, and Minnie wanted to sleep outside in the sand pit as usual. But about midnight the fireworks started to go off.

Well, she doesn’t take kindly to them and let out a few barks. Then she went quiet and I nearly let it be, as I was nearly asleep, but then I realised I’d left the gate open. And then I remembered that I’d taken her collar off earlier to wash it. Uh oh.


I got up and went looking for her and she was nowhere to be seen. So there I was standing on the street at 1210am in my jarmie shorts calling her and panicking a bit, because I didn’t want to have to go looking for her.


Luckily, after a few minutes, she appeared under a street light a few doors down and came when I called, albeit slowly and reluctantly. She thinks she can run away from thunder and loud noises.


That was the only problem I had. No loud parties in the neighbourhood, thank goodness.

Beautiful day here, cool 25C heading for 30. Very nice.

Wish I’d Said That

On 11 November I posted about the date: 11/11/11

I’ve just read another guy’s web comment on it: “… also 11/11/11 for our US cousins.”

Wish I’d thought of that!

Revision!
It’s all clouded over at the moment (5.45pm) after a hot 36C day. Two more days of heat, 38C and 39C before some relief on Friday.

Summer Solstice

Here we are, 22 December 2011 and it’s the longest day of the year. The days start getting shorter from now on. 
Hang on, you say, wasn’t it yesterday, 21 December?  No, I have it on good authority that because of the 1/4 day (365.25 days) in our years, every four years the solstices move one day.
That’s lucky, because I meant to write this yesterday!
The Santa Clause
Anyway, another Christmas rolls around and what a year it’s been for me. One I wish I could erase and do over, to be honest, but it’s working out OK.
As you know, I got the idea that selling up and moving to Bali was the answer to all my dreams. Well, it could have been, but it turned out to be much harder than I thought. It seemed so easy at first, but it wasn’t in the end.
First, I couldn’t get a buyer for my house. I’d just assumed it would be snapped up due to the resources boom, but not so. I got one offer, but it was never formalised and was far too low.
Second, I’d assumed I’d be able to take Minnie to Bali with me, but no, due to the rabies scare up there, no animal imports allowed. That really upset me.
Third, getting rid of most of your possessions and furniture is a lot different to simply packing them onto a truck to move by road. It’s a lot harder than you think.
Fourth, the salesman felt my house was too cluttered and smelt of dog (quite true), so he stripped all the carpets and window treatments out and repainted the interior. Yes, he did it, with the aid of my good friend Keith, and he went far beyond the call of duty. I worked damn hard too, getting rid of most of my books and DVDs to a charity and taking a heap of stuff to charity op shops, along with many, many trips to a bulk rubbish bin. I also gave away nearly all my clothing to the Good Sammy bins etc.
Then there were three or four weekends of garage sales (I wish I hadn’t sold some things at such crazy low prices!) and all the cleaning and tidying each weekend for open house inspections.
All the while, I was going crazy under the pressure of what to do with Minnie. I couldn’t bear to give her away or leave her. She’s getting old now and increasingly lame from arthritis.
Then, early April, I had a little ride in an ambulance due to prolonged atrial fibrillations and spent a couple of days and nights in the hospital. Not serious, but a bit unsettling. And all this time, January to end of April, we had probably the longest, most persistent heat wave we’ve ever had! Every day was 33-36C for four months with virtually no rain.
So the period from January to end of April was almost too much for me. I’d committed to buy the villa in Bali, but I had no house sale to fund it. I’d paid almost all my money on a deposit and had a progress payment looming, which I couldn’t meet.
So I figured spending the whole month of May at the villa would let me relax and recuperate.
Instead, I fell into a deep depression up there. It felt like a hot, humid prison. Luckily, my brother and his wife and daughter were coming up to stay, so I had some company after the first 12 days but had to come back early to Perth.
However, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and I’m pleased to say that it’s all worked out rather well. My brother and his wife had long held a dream of buying a place in Bali themselves, in part so as to get good child carers for their severely autistic daughter. My villa was a bit more elaborate than they’d planned, but it really is ideal for their purposes, so they decided to go in with me as a joint purchase.
In order to ease the costs, we decided to fit it out for rental and they’ve done a great job in this last half of the year. It’s ready to rent now, and is advertised on a Bali web site (http://www.bbevillas.com/villa/villa-frangipani). They’re up there now for Xmas/New Year, doing the final preparations, and we should see some return on all the hard work soon.
Meanwhile, I’m still in my house in Perth, still with bare concrete floors and no curtains, but I don’t mind. Minnie’s still with me, and seems quite happy, even if she doesn’t look so good. I ain’t leaving her! I’ve lost my desire to go to Bali at the moment, but I guess I’ll get back there someday. When my ship comes in…