The Queen

I'll bet your thinking, because of the beekeeping flavour of this blog, that I'm going to write about queen bees. One day, yes. Not today.
Last Wednesday, the day after our Dandenong court and shopping day, Lib and I left for a short holiday at Lakes Entrance. After a busy morning during which I picked green pittosporum at home, camellia at Keith Smith's, vallotta lillies at Huite's and cherry laurel at Sunset, and took this full vanload of booty to the farm, we finally got away at 3.00pm. Lib had been on leave from work since the previous Friday and had planned to go to Lakes on the Sunday, but she came down with a severe head and chest cold so she delayed leaving till after the court case, when I was to have followed her down.
I'd picked a stack of flax and camellia on the Monday and on the weekend done two gardening jobs (I usually do these late in the week), caught up on the honey extracting (the flow has wound down), and deadheaded the lavender and agapanthas at Nobelius Park. With 4 days of planning and preparation, and having the court case out the way, I was relishing the prospect of a break. Lib drove, she was fresh and I was tired. I tried reading but fell asleep. We bought take away pizza for tea on the way through town and I crashed to bed soon after at 8.00pm, and didn't wake till 9.00am the next day ( except of course for my obligatory 4.30 am trip to the toilet to empty the ageing bladder).
We decided to go to Cape Conran on Thursday, about an hour and a quarter's drive east of Lakes, as it has lovely isolated beaches and rockpools, and the weather forecast for Friday and the weekend wasn't good. It was hot at West Cape beach where we had a picnic lunch and I tried in vain to read my current book, 'Abu Nidal, The World's Most Notorious Terrorist', hiding from the scorching sun in the shade of the beach umbrella, only to fall asleep, then be woken by the sun as the umbrella moved in a gust of wind.
Later we moved to East Cape beach where at last an easterly breeze and the shade of a large rock allowed me comfort enough to get my teeth into the book. It was written in 1992 by Patrick Seale well before 9/11 and Osama bin Laden but it details the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict and much of the politics of the Middle East fom 1948-1990. An interesting book. Notable is the similarity in policy of Israel in 1969 to that of the 'Coalition of the Willing' today, that of "active self defense", which means seeking out and destroying targets before or in case they attack. To quote, "Such state terror, aimed at liquidating Israel's enemies, was a good deal more destructive than the disastrous strategy of haphazard terror pursued by the guerillas, although it did not always find its mark." Further, after a widespread terror campaign in the early 70's under the banner of Black September- "in the dirty war that followed, both Israel and its opponents, abandoning all restraint, resorted repeatedly to murder." I haven't finished the book yet but it examines the claim that Abu Nidal was manipulated by Israeli intelligence. I'm up to the early 1980's when he moved his operation to Syria after being expelled from Iraq by Saddam Hussein, where he'd prospered for eight years.
On the Friday it rained. We went to the pictures for the afternoon matinee in a converted squash court and saw 'The Queen'. We loved it. It was the first time I'd seen a movie in a theatre for ten years, we talked about the characters and the storyline on and off for the rest of our trip. I guess seeing that we remember the public emotion in that week after Lady Di's death made it interesting to see what went on behind the scenes in the British heirarchy, and to glimpse the life of the Royals. The beautiful stag at Balmoral, its hunt, the wounding, the resulting stalking and 'finishing off' seemed a powerful metaphor for what happened to Princess Di.