Christmas Photos

On Christmas day we were looking at a photo of Jod, me and Meredith when we were kids, taken more than fifty years ago. Meredith said she'd like to have one taken now in the same pose so she could put them on her wall side by side.

From left- Annie, Elvie Jod, Meredith, me, Roger.

The kids are Annie and Brett's girls Ella and Evie.

Lib was at work and our boys were in Bendigo at Lib's sister's for their bash. Rosie and Matt were coming later, Brett took the photo and is going to try to scan the 50+ year old one so I can put it up too.

A Kind of Hush

It's quiet today. Lib's gone to work and I had a walk in the garden with Rob to work out where he could put some vegie seeds he bought cheap. He's been bitten by the gardening bug, I'm happy to say. In the end we decided they could go in pots and old tyres as our current garden space is full with beetroot, beans, zuchinnis, button squash, tomatos, cucumbers, eggplant and pumpkins. His seed packets include radishes silverbeet, leeks, beetroot, pak choi and kol rabbi, all of which should do alright in containers I think.

Elvie just rang to say Shane wants 10 bunches of green holly; why, after Xmas, I know not. She asked could I pick it, they're busy at the farm working on the 'Herb and Spice' order, which Ian wants to pick up at midday. Jod was looking at the paper having morning tea and saw that Norman Hargreaves died on Boxing Day, which has made him sad and upset. When my parents moved to Dixon's Creek onto 300 acres of bush soon after they married, the Hargreaves were on the farm next door. Norm was the youngest of the three boys who were staunch friends of my parents through tough times then and remained so throughout their lives. It's like the end of an era for us. Norm was immensely strong, quiet, a real bushman from a different time. He was 82. He suffered dementia made worse by the bushfires last February which destroyed pasture, stock, and fences on his farm. Jod worked for Norm on the bulldozers for a while, in the late seventies, I think it was. I'll post about the Hargreaves one day.

I hope Jod isn't too upset to have his mind on the job. Shane also wants beech, berries and flowering artichokes and Foxy is picking up today too. I picked camellia for her yesterday and she wants whatever's going. No rest for the wicked as they say. I wonder at the origin of that saying. I weeded the herb/vegie garden at the farm yesterday, the basil seed is up and away but would be swamped by summer weeds particularly oxalis and paspalum unless the rows are finger weeded so the young plants can get away. I mowed Hughesie's grass on Saturday and did some cutting back, so with the exception of Christmas Day it's been work as normal. Lib worked Christmas day, Sunday, and today.

The town was quiet when I walked through this morning. There's been some changes I haven't mentioned over the last month. The sweet shop closed down, and on the door of the vacant shop a sign went up, 'TATTOO MAYHEM'. Shortly after, a sign went in 'Pandoora's Book Cafe' window next door, 'CLOSING DOWN  LAST DAY 31 DEC'. Yesterday I noticed the window front of the proposed tattoo shop had been smashed and hoardings put up over the broken window. It creates a poor town image. There's a sign in the pub window, 'CAFE OPENING SOON'.  Lordy, Lordy! The local supermarket has changed hands. Richard Mullet, the popular proprietor who went to Camberwell Grammar at the same time I was there, has ridden into the sunset after a decade or so, and a new owner 'Andrew' has taken over this business pivotal in Gembrook's commercial precinct. I hear he has another small supermarket somewhere in the hills and I wish him well. We need good businessmen in this wide brown land.

Talking of supermarkets, a fence has gone up around 'Sally's' supermarket at Emerald and I expect demolition to begin shortly in prep for the new 'Safeway'. Rumour has it a medical superclinic is to be built on the site of Dr. Mark's surgery and the Emerald Community House next door, though this hasn't hit the headlines of the local papers and may be fanciful nonsense.

I have some good things to blog about but not time now. I'll leave you with a quote to think about, a powerful sentence by Sir Thomas Browne, whose work I've not come across before, but who now excites my curiosity.

"There is surely a piece of Divinity in us; something that was before the elements and owes no homage unto the Sun."

Apocalypse?

For most of my life, in my conscious recollection, I've lived with the underlying threat of nuclear war and human obliteration. This was particularly strong in the 1960's during my adolescence at the height of the cold war, and this must have influenced my attitudes then and helped shape my views now.

Added to that, my parents were religious and served up an unhealthy portion, regularly, of apocalyptic prophesy from The Book of Revelations, which left me scared stiff and waiting for 'Kaboomba' at any moment. I claim now, more than forty years on, that this was not good for a developing mind and may have been the reason for my rebellion and somewhat unpredictable, foolhardy, and antisocial behaviour in my later youth. In common lingo, I was screwed up, without understanding why.

I'm not bitter about this. It's nobody's fault. Seven years before I was born atomic bombs destroyed entire cities in Japan in one swift hit. This historic event was witnessed by my parents in the medai of the day after six years of World War 2 during their adolescence. Then came the arms race and the cold war with the Soviet Union. The whole world was screwed up.

It's still there, the threat of nuclear destruction, but probably we've all relaxed a little thinking that if nobody has pushed the button yet then there's a good chance they won't. Who knows really?

A couple of years ago I bought a book in an op. shop, an auto biography called 'Dr. Helen Caldicott, A Passionate Life.' I came across it this morning and had a quick look. She starts of by saying how she read a book that changed her life when she was nineteen, 'On The Beach', by Neville Shute. That must have been in 1957, and led her to spend 25 years of her life in political activity campaigning for nuclear disarmament.

A little into the first chapter Helen revealed that as a baby she was suddenly abandoned by her parents for two weeks when her mother was pregnant with a second child and in the interests of her health her husband organized a holiday while Helen, 18 months old, was placed in an institution that cared for babies.

I quote, "Years later when I became a pediatrician, I discovered that when a baby is suddenly abandoned by its parents, it screams for about two days for no avail and then gives up and sits in the corner of its cot, uncommunicative and severely depressed. It often takes months for the baby to forgive its parents and it may never completely return to normality and a state of trust."

What amazed me was that I never expected to find common ground between Dr Helen Caldicott and brother Jod. When mum was pregnant with me, her and dad, at Auntie Clare's insistence, went on a holiday to West Australia with Clare, who paid, and left Jod at mum's friend Zoe's. When she came back Jod was a different child and hardly recognized her, and she felt terrible for having left him, a guilt I think she still carries. Jod is two and half years older than me so he would have been about two years old. He turned 60 last month and for much of that 60 years was at war with his parents and the world in general.

After describing how desperately ill she became while her parents were absent, DrHC continues, "These events changed my life. From being a trusting happy child I put a wall around myself and never reall trusted anybody again, and to this day I let very few past this barrier."

My childhood best friend, Graeme 'Bubs' Forster, whom I haven't seen for probably more than 20 years, said to me the last time I saw him, when we were discussing our childhood, "We're all victims of victims." It's not a bad way of looking for understanding of people.

In Dr HC's second last paragraph she says, "However the work of global preventative pediatrics is not over.
The lives of my grandchildren are now threatened with on going ozone depletion, the perils of global warming, pollution of the air, water and soil with a multiplicity of chemicals and radioisotapes, deforestation, and species extinction combined with the rampant overpopulation of human beings.
I paid a personal price for the intense political work that I conducted over a twenty five year time span, through the pain I inflicted on myself and those dear to me. That said, I must continue."

DrHC's book was published in 1996 but the message still packs a punch. The ozone one has diminished but the others are bigger than ever. As far as I can gather HC is still writng and campaigning on environmental issues. She must be a remarkable lady whom I'd love to have to dinner.

Let's hope this Copenhagen thing can help save our children's children.

How Good Is This?

It's raining steadily outside. The phone rang a little while ago. Foxy, the customer for whom I would normally pick today, has said she doesn't want any beech foliage tomorrow, so I can enjoy the rain and a rest today without having to get wet through. It has been a fairly solid six weeks of work since our little Alice Springs holiday.

I drove up the street this morning. I'd say it's the first walk I've missed since the holiday, although I did let the dogs out at the station for a walk for ten minutes in the rain to let them have a good stretch out. 'Pip' flushed a rabbit out of the blackberries behind the little replica of the original station site and ran about 3 k's in ten minutes I'd say. 'Snowie', not really relishing the wet, stayed pretty close to me.

On my way back I dropped off a tub of honey at Chas's front door. Chas is one of my walking mates. He's a retired carpenter. He takes off every winter and camps at Evan's Head in NSW. The last couple of years I've picked some camellia foliage in his garden. I hadn't seen Chas for a couple of months till last Saturday morning, and had wondered if he was away.

"You've lost weight Chas," I said.

"My oath I have. I've  lost more since I got home. "

"Have you been crook?"

"Have I ever? I lost my oesophaegus and the top part of my stomach. The operation was 28th October. I'm just glad to be able able to start walking again, although icould barely make it up the hill."

"Cancer?"

"Yes. I just had a bit of a tickle in the throat to start with. I tell you what. I was so glad to get out of intensive care and I never want to go there again. It was four days of hell. There were wires hooked up to me everywhere and I couldn't sleep. There was so much noise all the time with poor buggers nearly dying around you and all the alarms and emergency procedures. It was hell."

"I didn't even know at all that you were crook, Chas. I'm sure walking again will be a great help, and your strength will gradually return. How's your appetite?"

"I have to try to eat six or seven very small meals a day. The trouble is I'm just not hungry and it's so hard to force yourself to eat."

I thought this morning maybe a bit of nice honey would help. I dropped off a bottle of red wine at Harry's place in the same street. Harry likes a drop of red wine but finds the sulphur presevatives knock him around in the way of 'hangover' if he has more than a couple of glasses. The preservative free wine is OK he finds, and I came across line of unfiltered, preservative free wine while I was shopping at Dan Murphy last week.

While I was in DM I looked for a bottle of Penfold's Kalimna Bin 28 for my friend 'Blossom', which I give her each year at Xmas. They were out of stock in the normal display but I found a 2004 bottle in the special section. 'Bloss is in hospital recovering from a second bowel cancer op. so I'm sure she'll appreciate it, come Xmas she should be well enough. She was in intensive care for some days afterwards as she was having difficulty breathing but I have just enquired and found she's back in the normal ward now.

The wet weather lets me catch up on a few things. I'm off now to pick up the beehive at Keith Smith's. They'll all be inside because of the rain so I can do it in daylight. And I have to pickup the key to the Lakes House. Keith rang me earlier to remind me he still has it, after spending 4 nights down there in late November.