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Be all that as it may, meanwhile:
In other news…
Friday: The alarm actually worked accurately today, but
I began the coaxing of life back into the mortal frame, cleaned up the kitchen for the slumbering Celtic crocodile, and managed a cowboy watering outside. During her phone call to Pa pree she was informed that a speeding fine had arrived at his address, and a stressful ‘conversation’ ensued. The fine was for me, but it’s Pa pree’s car. As it turned out I was shot doing 48 kmh in a 40 kmh zone in Terrace Road Guildford, and while I’ll cop no demerit points, I will be relieved of 75 bucks thank you very much Inkletter. We the responsible drivers of
I got to Bob’s at twenty past three, about as late as I ever have, but he was keen to go swimming, and didn’t miss a beat over the lateness. I didn’t burden him with the fact that he was with me on the way to the pool when I copped that speeding fine a few weeks back as it turns out, out front of
I did a fair bit of editing of Venty Still Part One in longhand while Bob did his impression of a dolphin, and who should I see again with his grandchildren: Peter W. of Balga TAFE. His young grandsons obviously think he’s the greatest, which is not too far off the truth.
On the way back from the pool occurred one of those rare moments when Bob bursts with spontaneity and I see a glimpse of what we would all be enjoying if he had never been stricken: at the point of passing the Midland Police Station corner off Morrison Road, where every week I ask Bob if he would like to “Spend a night in the can?”, he shouted “Turn!!” as a joke to say, “Yes, throw me in the can tonight!” Such moments leave me high. We returned to Fish Market Reserve in Guildford this time for our cup of tea and walk, with threatening skies above, it having already drizzled just when I decided to take an apple break outside at the pool. I got home towards eight, having to get petrol in Malaga at Better Choice (the cheapest around in this rising cycle) on the way home, from a young service station attendant fellow who I’m not sure if he was a zombie or on something, or maybe, like me, was dropped repeatedly on his head by his older brother but had less to start with, then picking up Missus InkleIrattlefrompills’ scripts from the local chemist, which I had left for dispensing on my way to Bob’s. Before I left the pharmacy, which has a new young pharmacist who I’m left in two minds about as to his friendliness (Yeena, come back you sweetest thaing the other side of a mortar and pestle!), a heavy shower caused me to cower under the awning till it stopped; a nice problem to have. It can start raining and not stop for eight months as far as I’m concerned. May the dams overflow, may the Gnangarra Mound top up like Pamela Anderson, and the Yarragadee Aquifer also, may this year be the year of the duck, or the webbed feet, or the umbrella.
The missus was not happy that I wanted her to deliver the vittles to Pa pree, but sometimes absence makes the heart grow fonder. After the banging and stomping session had adequately conveyed to me “Not happy Payton”, she drove off in the direction of the near octogenarian, and I settled in to watch The Collectors on Aunty, and wow what a collection of old bone cruncher British trucks Graham Kircher has, a mere 22 of them! Missus InkleIwasn’thappyPayton and I watched a late in the series part of the program about Churchill’s bodyguard; fascinating, and this is the episode in which Churchill nearly died in his sleep in North Africa or was it the Middle East?
I caught most of SBS’ News next, but flaked out at the end, rallied, then staggered to bed and asked Janny to rouse me in forty five for Lateline. Which she did, and I staggered back to the Player recliner, and enjoyed Leigh Sales’ interview with Antony Green, the ABC's election analyst and the most knowledgeable person on Australian voting in the universe, excepting God, past present and future. The bloke’s a walking database. Now the billions of daily visitors to my blog know how dimly I view any Government that calls an early election for anything but the most dire emergency reasons; this is why Alan Carpenter, the politician formerly known as Premier, is now known around my place as ‘Bastard’, and I won’t shed a tear if Anna Bligh ‘Bitch’ becomes the politician formerly known as Premier tomorrow, for having the gall to call Queensland’s election six months early on a feeble pretext. You deserve to lose Anna on that alone. And if you do, squandering your twenty odd seat majority in the grubby process, I hope your flagrant disregard of the people’s wishes at the last election causes politicians in this country to wake up at last, and if they don’t have the guts to fix terms, then that they do have the guts to face the people at the end of their elected commission. As
We didn’t finish watching Lateline, courtesy of a power cut. Janny had fallen asleep, but the unfamiliar pitch black and the silence roused her out of her slumbers, and I heard a voice ask me about the lack of electrons moving through the wires, though of course that’s not actually how she said it; “Ooohhh, no pretty lighty lighty, telly telly, big soundy soundy, darlsie!” After I explained the power cut, I began to sense a menacing bedroom-eyes-look developing out of the pitch black darkness from her side of the room, and before I knew what was happening, I was being rodgered to with an inch of my vinegar string by candlelight in the boudoir, meekly acceding to her every command, for I know from bitter experience over decades the consequences of resistance.
While this shameless exploitation was ongoing, the power finally came back on, and hearing Letterman from the loungeroom was my big chance to get away, pleading the need to watch the show. As it turned out it was a repeat from last year, the one with Billy Crystal and his racoons story. After this I attended to some computer bits and pieces, needing to boot up again courtesy of Western Power’s outage. I had the pleasure of reading a long comment posted to my latest posting here by Gladys Hobson, who finds much she can concur with in my blast at el Papa the other day.
When some health issues had the lid hammered down on them I went on a very very late walk, about
From the kitchen to the back room, with a cocoa, unsweetened – gggrrrr…. – and on with this writing and venting, while Emmylou Harris serenades me; how about ‘Lovin You Again’! Emmylou, do you ever visit Swan Aquatic?... and now, as I write, the beautiful green of the Bambusa vulgaris cv Vittata thicket through the back room window is a joy, soft and clean from the rain and bathed in early morning sunlight, its million green fingers suspended in the fixed air, with birds singing and flitting busily around preparing breakfast: bugs in porridge.
What better backdrop to add to the spray I gave the Roman Catholic Church in my very recent diary entry of March 18th: Benedict – Joseph Alois Ratzinger – if you won’t devote your energies to a massive reformation of the mighty institution you head, particularly in regard to sexuality and ethics, as well as superfluous ritual, then you really best limit your advice (and zillions hang on your every word mate) to purely personal spiritual matters, and in an inclusive atmosphere: call on every person, including yourself, to daily, constantly, invite God to be OUR best friend, and help US to achieve an all encompassing supreme desire to know and do His will (which is to love Him with all OUR heart, and to love OUR fellows as He loves US), and then to invite Him to give US all possible help to know and do that will. Every day, one to one, each one of US to God OUR Father. The Gospel is a love story. Heaven is a relationship. Eternal life is best friendship with God. No rituals necessary, no intermediaries either. Prayer is a conversation with our best friend, worship a privilege and a joy, simply living as in the presence of God. Yes Joseph, you’d be doing your church out of the need to exist, but on the second upside you’d go down in history as a great friend of God and man. There would have to be a great garage sale – proceeds to the poor – of fancy raiments and peaky hats, gold and silver cups, chains, trinkets, prime real estate, some fabulous ready made high roofed restaurants, but hey, travelling light is a liberating experience!
+paytontedwithlove+
Saturday: As per usual, the dual posting of my diary entry/ies took forever. Oh, but to take some of the sting out of this excruciating loss of time, it’s Sarrerdi! Another week has almost bitten the dust. The Babies should be well on their way to Balingup by now; the self-spoilt rotten loveable little rotters are having a couple of days away in that paradise where Baby Inkletter’s parents met a millennium ago, and the sparks of suppressed passion soon becaming a raging inferno, devouring all in its path, even water. Their love making soon became gold medal winning each time every time, but they did tie the knot first.
Don’t ask me how, but the entire morning evaporated, between more computer work, cowboy watering of the major clumps of bamboo and giving them the acid high nitrogen booster mix that I’ve learnt they like, as well as being force fed a bowl of sliced pears and apples with coffee, made by Missus InkleI’llkillhimwithkindnesseventually, in the lounge. I supplemented the fruit and coffee with almonds. The coffee was at the strength enjoyed by the Celtic crocodile, and I took half an hour to drink it, it was so strong. I had asked for Moccona as a treat, but gee that girl knows how to ruin a nice coffee by making it taste like tar. Yet on the other hand, I can drink cocoa, the real stuff – not your namby pampy wussy sugared milk powdered brown colouring crap that passes as cocoa – so strong, without sweetener, that even the Swanbourne Special Air Services elite would run screaming from the table at Campbell Barracks: “Mummy, mummy!” I can even take cocoa powder, dry from a spoon (kids, don’t try this at home, you may choke, for it’s drier than the
I dragged myself to the shower, and finally to bed, near two in the afternoon, and begged the chalcedony chameleon to sorbolene my feet, which she did (regular visitors know that Missus Inklehornbag’s feet sorbolening is an X-rated experience), but I was so tired I couldn’t have even if she threatened to hurt Payton the Koala Bear. I was soon in the merciful embrace of Madame Nodette.
Apparently shortly after I succumbed to my slumbers Janny picked up Pa pree and did some local shopping at Dewsons’, before returning to spend the afternoon and evening till almost eleven here with him. Despite her bad leg, she let me sleep, and did the local driving herself, bless her fishnets. About five, late afternoon, Deelerson The equalSecond (twins) called in to gratefully accept the meal that Janny had cooked for the Deelers.
Not long back from returning the borderline octogenarian, Janny woke me, as I had asked, and I got up from almost nine hours’ sleep. She plied me with chips and eggs, and we watched a ‘Ripping Yarns’ on free to air, the first I’ve ever seen, and it was a hoot, as well as very incisive at highlighting societal prejudices. I would like to see them all, and I notice it is over thirty years since the episode we watched was made. Michael Palin looked positively an infant. Then Janny was able to unload the frustrations of her afternoon and evening into my empathetic ears, poor thing, she who has no life of her own because it is devoted to everyone else’s, whether she wants it or not.
I then snuggled her for a while in the cot, still chatting, before leaving her reading as is her want before she drops off, hopefully, to sleep. I came to this ’ere poota to write and check the emails, site visitor stats, and such like. The evening is cool, and how nice to possibly have finally broken summer’s back!
I attended to some health issues, then launched on this almost crisp night for my very late walk. Happily, I don’t think I sneezed once this walk; my allergic rhinitis of the last thirty years, despite daily medication, rarely lets me escape multiple sneezing sessions and streaming nose every day, and often on my walks. The fence behind Dewsons’ has been repaired at long last, a vertical wooden slats affair, along its boundary with the park. There is never a day when this park isn’t polluted with rubbish, dropped even within inches of two bins that can be empty even. Oh, and the site of the old service station by the Masjid Al Taqwa mosque is racing ahead with its development, so far about half a dozen concrete slabs have been poured. And it’s not looking like a shul will be materialising there.
I was greeted with a blue screen of death on my return, and this is becoming a bit of a habit with the poota of late; it’s averaging some kind of catastrophich freeze or reboot or blue or black screen incident weekly; my emailing to three different email addresses of my most crucial new writing daily, as well as backing up to the thumb drive Baby Inkletter gave me, is gaining more significance. Janny surfaced for a tinkle after I clanged a plate at the sink during a mini clean up, and I then kept on at the poota. The Sunday Times thrown up our drive revealed that my letter to the editor on daylight saving didn’t make it, at least in this issue; the phone confirmation they seem to need will be a challenge though, for almost no-one can get through. I sent an email to Reeve Chocson to thank him for some cancer prevention information he gave me last time we were at their place, specifically Ross Horne’s understandings, and I then found an online version of his ‘Health & Survival in the 21st Century’ and read a chapter of it. I also finished and sent an email to that wonderful young fellow, Sidney Thayne, who in his former life as a dutiful Mormon missionary plodded the local beat for some months a few short years ago.
Having played Emmylou Harris’ album, ‘A Cowgirl’s Prayer’ a million times in the past week, I changed back to Alison Krauss’ and Union Station’s ‘Lonely Runs Both Ways’, to acoustically massage me while I write on this here poota. I started a new document, titled ‘VENTY STILL – the novel’, and copied the draft of the prologue and part one so far over, to preserve the original effort intact, and I want to get much done each week on it, or I’ll never do it. I have a million ideas, so now I must precipitate them from the solution of my effervescing mind…
+paytontedwithlove+
Sunday: I actually did a half an hours’ work on Venty Still, editing in some long hand notes, new writing and tweaks, into the very early part of the story, and it was very enjoyable to be back at the novel writing grindstone, before taking a break with some back garden titivating in the early morning light, in dead still conditions and the quiet of a Sunday morning. More health issues needed to be tackled, before returning to the computer to write some more.
Again that strange phenomenon occurred of a lot of time disappearing, and I’m battling, some hours later when writing about it, to account for where so much of it went. I know I returned to the back yard to cowboy water and fertilize my prize bamboo clumps, but what else devoured the time I haven’t a clue. Anyway, when I woke the alabaster dragon by arrangement not long before midday, as she needed to sleep of the nausea generated by her Byetta injection before eating, she force fed me another huge bowl of sliced apples and pears with coffee, weaker and nicer this time – the pears have been such a delight, and the apples are fabulous also; thank God for Benara Fresh Markets and their budget enabling boxes of fruit! – and I supplemented them with almonds (another Benara Fresh purchase). By the time we chatted and I had my shower, she orgiastically sorbolened my dry feet – formerly known as ‘cracked’ – and tucked me into bed, it was close to
While I slept Janny took a call from my mother, and caught up with the state of the union over at East Victoria Park. Apparently my niece Marie, whose baby was due a day ago, hasn’t had the baby yet. This bub will be my sister Helena’s first grandchild, so it’s a big event!
By arrangement Janny woke me just before seven so I could watch My Beloved. Well, Anna Bligh ‘Bitch’ has now translated, in my lexicon, to Anna Bligh ‘Brat’, for winning the six months early election she called in
We then watched the three features on Sixty Minutes, and, with regard to Liam Bartlett’s story, ‘Killer at the Wheel’, I cannot agree with the push to define deaths at the hands of drunk drivers as murder, unless the drunk driver set out to kill a particular person with their car. Legislate for much higher penalties yes, apply them yes, have them perhaps equal murder penalties yes, but don’t do stupid violence to the definition of murder, and insult the bereaved of murder victims, by calling unintentional killings at the hands of drink drivers ‘murder’. I support the intent of the moves, but not the method. The proponents of calling these deaths ‘murder’, such as District-Attorney Kathleen Rice, New York Nassau County Prosecutor, are doing themselves a disservice, highlighting their reasoning’s logic deficit, and thus undermine the good thing they are trying to achieve.
The story on Sue Morphett struck me as amazing in one key way: Ellen Fanning made no attempt to strongly clarify Morphett’s pay issue, as reported in our media over the past weeks. While Fanning did ask what Morphett is paid, virtually no details of the apparent Pacific Brands’ board’s self awarding, in the latter part of last year, of very substantial increases in the pay of the top management were examined, or contrasted with the job shedding of the low paid employees. I find the cursory look at the executive pay subject that survived the editing and made broadcast quite intriguing, and it begs questions of Sixty Minutes’ handling of the interview. If ever there was a good case for examining the ethics of company boards with their executives’ unsupervised snouts in the trough while the business they manage is penalising its workers, without these workers having a say in how they are dealt with, this is it. Curious, especially given Sixty Minutes long standing addiction to sensationalism of every kind.
The French egomaniacal spiderman, Alain Robert, while being amazingly agile, is really a public menace, and it would be better off for all of us if he was in a circus. Peter Overton had the chance to tell him so, and instead glorified the fool the more.
To the computer to write, while Janny gassed to me while dressmaking nearby in our back general purpose room, come office, come storage room, come Fool’s Paradise - Infinity on a Shoestring Operations Centre, before I charged back to The Box to watch a harrowing Compass on Aunty, while eating my vittles. ‘Life and Death’ had a hundred sad sad moments in it, with the story not over yet for the fellows still on death row. Nguyen Tuong Van’s mother’s ongoing tribulation, as with Myuran Sukumaran’s mother’s, and doubtless the parents also of Andrew Chan, and others on death row, drives home the outspreading devastating impact of our wrong choices.
We stayed in the lounge and watched an older recording of Good News Week, the first of them I’ve seen since they moved to Channel Ten. They are as crude as ever, but there was a lot of wit as usual, and many a laugh was heard ringing around the Inkletters’ lounge.
I put the rapacious reptile to bed, buttering her trotters with spikenard, and then fertilized and watered the greatest Sansevierias in the world, which just happen to be under our front patio, even though it was after
It was as still as all get out again, which was beautiful; cool, almost damp. As is the case every Sunday night, the oval behind Dewsons' is a pigsty of litter from fast food and you name it. I wonder how many children are present with their littering parents at these 'picnics'? They will come to view as normal the leaving of waste where one sat. What amazes me is the number of times the immediate vicinity of a bin, if it happens to have seating close by, is strewn with litter, while the bin can have oodles of room in it.
I did some kitchen clean up work on my return, then dealt with some health issues, before tackling the keyboard again.
I did a dual post of the last couple of days of this diary, a tad of Venty Still editing, took a shower, and hit the low thread counts after six hoping to quickly succumb to Mistress Nodette's charms…
+paytontedwithlove+
2 comments:
Thank you for sharing your life downunder. I guess your waking hours must be similar to those in the UK. Mm — either you secretly desire to live here, or your body rhythm is the result of living down under and all the problems therein.
A very interesting view of Aussie life, politics, and above all — neighbourliness.
Gladys
Gladys: You try living upside down for over fifty years, and see what it does to your diurnals.
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