Fool's Paradise – Infinity on a Shoestring Gender: Male (last time I looked); Writer; Thinker; Studier of the Human Condition (and chickens' entrails); Wonderer; Laugher; Listener; Character; Recent Optimist; Part-of-the-Solution Aspirant; Sarsaparilla, Cocoa, and ex-White Black Tea Imbiber (no sugar - plenty sweet enough); Twenty Eight Thousand and Twelfth Living Wonder of the World; Amateur Worm Farmer Extraordinaire and Professional Worm Admirer; Humus Assist and Humorist; Play Up; Yes-Hoper...
And I reckon: Reality is actually far better than the best any of us can imagine, the universe is friendly and funny, laughter is a powerful medicine as well as an efficacious antidote for self-importance, and the best is yet to come, despite any and all appearances to the contrary...
Sunday: While I arose about four in the afternoon, thus not ‘present’ for most of the day, I could tell that no rain had fallen since the angels’ piss mid evening last night – thanks you once little boys and girls who lied and who now work for the Weather Bureau. I began coaxing some life into my frame, but within minutes of putting the phone back on the hook the gorgeous gargoyle rang, and we spoke for approaching an hour (first, I quickly rang back to the pulchritudinous puppyfattle in Balingup, since our Optus deal covers any amount of STD calls within Australia in the monthly cap). My word that gal can still talk the back leg off a Border Leicester! We covered a lot of ground, and decided a tentative date for me to return to Balingup to get her, from the old Universal Brotherhood property, with the assuageable-resistant artefact in the passenger seat on the downward journey, of course. If I could drive with a couple of diazepams under my diaphragm I’d be tempted – anything to deaden the tedium!...
Saturday: I know what many millions among my billions of daily readers are thinking right now: when will Payton exclaim “It’s Sarrerdi!”; well, just for that, I’m not going to now! Hrumphhh!
I dragged myself out from between the low thread count polycottons upon the demand of the alarm, which is so raucous I touch cloth most times it goes off. It was eleven, and I wasn’t convinced the sun rises that early. However, sunlight or no, I had to scamper around and get ready for a picnic with The Babies and Pa pree in Kings Park. I had committed to pick up Pa pree at a quarter to one, and so getting to him before one was quite an achievement for me.
Those billions not familiar with Perth’s climate will wonder what’s the big deal, mainly sunny, dry, and has been this way for about a week, get a life Inkletter. However, when the following facts are inserted into the montage you, like me, will doubtless be heading straight to get a cocoa, neat: in two days’ time it will be winter, and June is the wettest month on average, and we’ve had sweet fanny-all this year, which also explains why I’m having my cocoa dry, the brown Homebrand stuff snorted from a tablespoon through a leaf of toilet paper, for even five dollar notes can be hard to find.
And so we had a marvellously lovely time in the park, because it was bloody warm (almost 27 Celsius!), bloody dry, and bloody sunny mainly, apart from when it wasn’t sunny (!). Also a million other folk, tourists, wogs, wops, and wallies decided to descend upon Kings Park as well; remember, some of my best friends are wogs, and I invest the term with dollops of love, compassion, and shit stirring.
The Babies Ink&Peggletter met us there in the carpark of the toffee-nosed restaurant, and it was not a small relief, for the calibre of the reasoning inhabiting one side of the discussion and debate on the drive was little short of atrocious; the subjects having ranged from climate change to economics to leadership to the virtues. We found an empty table up near the area where poor Corryn Rayney’s murdered body was found, but that fact did not take away from the very pleasant picnic we had under the shade close to Saw Avenue and May Drive corner. After the victuals we walked near by taking photos of Payton the Koala Bear, Bartholemew ‘Bomber’ Inkletter, Basil Montgomery Inkletter, and Baby Inkletter the Koala Bear, as well as ourselves, some very striking tree trunks, and Baby Peggletter even caught the human Baby Inkletter on video, beating Payton the Koala Bear with a blackboy flower stalk (oh dear, how non-PC of me!) while he was perched in a peppermint tree. To those who don’t know the blackboy plants – several similar looking species of the Xanthorrhoea genus – their flower stalks can reach over ten feet in length, and two inches diameter, and when dry are light and reasonably tensile. So it constitutes cruelty to stuffed animals to beat one with a blackboy flower stalk.
We finished our afternoon together by visiting the recently transplanted boab tree from the Kimberley closer to the main entrance to the park, and it has taken root. It’s a mere 750 years old, and was but a seedling when I was a boy. A visiting foursome of wrinklies, a bit older than moi, got me to take some photos of them, and they took some photos of me with Payton the Koala Bear, all in front of fatso flora. The one lady asked me if my photos were for a website; how prescient of her, and I gave her the google terms that would find my site. The local couple had Irish visitors with them. They were good sports, and accepted my commiserations regarding how hard Ireland has been hit economically.
Pa pree and I got back home about half five. I left him at his place and came home to try to catch a badly needed hour’s nap, but sleep would not descend from cosy heaven. I got back up and did some work on a composite photo for the header of my ‘In other news…’ page, which is header photoless. I zoomed around to Pa pree with his din dins just before seven, then dashed back to catch My Beloved, and then, while eating my own vittles, laughed and laughed watching Kath and Kim, the episode called ‘Lust’. The laughs continued with the Vicar of Dibley, but I was falling asleep by this time. And I was watching it on commercial television, ughh! spit, spit, teerrruuhhhh! At least during the interminable ad breaks I was playing a recording of Letterman I’d missed a week or so ago; I got a lot watched, given the length of the ads…
I battled with the usual health problems, and later descended upon the poota to write, with my fifties and sixties music massaging my ears, heart, and soul. All the while a headache was intensifying behind my eyes and forehead; if I had a dollar for every time this has happened, or for every hour it’s lingered, I’d be a rich man.
Umple Dais got back from Thailand early this morning, with a cold, but apparently it is not likely to be swine flu, having passed through the temperature detectors successfully. He will keep his distance from Pa pree as a precaution though.
I managed a dual posting, and various online researches, as well as downloaded the video of the First Tuesday Bookclub episode of early May which I missed recording the beginning of: my plan is to watch the first ten minutes on this here poota, then the rest in the relative comfort and quality of the lounge and its DVD recorder and TV setup. Seeing the 96 Meg file fly down like a hawk warms the cockles of my heart, given the more than decade of interminably slow dial up speeds I’ve lived with. I’ve deliberately kept my 24/7 running Netants throttled back to 7 kbs all this Optus billing cycle, so that I’ll keep the top speed for the month. I will likely let it rip on the last day, and use up my 30 Gig allowance, thus amassing much more of Librivox’s wonderful talking books, of which I have at this moment 1304 chapters of in Netants’ queue, and then before the new cycle begins I’ll be able to test how the 256 kbs throttled back speed loads web pages. A good test is my very own main site, still data heavy, which used to take several minutes to load on dial up, but with our Optus Yass!Fusion plan in unthrottled mode it’s taking about 30 seconds. When I do things for Pa pree on his poota, I am hit in the face with a wet salmon at the grindingly slow dial up speeds he suffers, which is from ISP Lizzy – but he pays only $9 monthly for 6 hour sessions, so who’s complaining justly?
I attended to a frivolous spat between KoolKoala and Gladys Hobson with their comments at my Visitors’ Book; I’m wondering whether I should remove comments moderation and let folk rip instantly? I think I just will, like it is with my ‘In other news…’ site, the one you’re likely reading this very entry on now. If problems arise, I can always delete problematic comments, and reinstate the comments moderation setting. And this is not to suggest for a second that Gladys or KoolKoala ever have been problematic: quite the opposite, they’re a lot of fun, and currently are trading punches in verse. Hey, I just was away for few minutes taking the comments moderation setting off the Visitors’ Book – where angels fear to tread…
Believe it or not, after some late telly watching (too physically weary to walk) of my recorded programs backlog, and a bit of someone I’d never heard of, one of those early Sunday morning Christian shows, a young fellow with the weird name of Shawn Boonstra – who spoke some sense despite obviously being at least somewhat a literal scripture believer (‘Christian Dogs: The Commandment Against Murder’ was the title to his talk, and he explained some sound psychological principles. Lest the religious macadamias bellow that I believe more in psychology than in God, I’ll now give them this corrective: sound psychology comes from God) – yes, believe it or not, I didn’t hit the soft sack till almost six, with dawn not long away. No puppyfat piranha to cuddle, but nevermind…
Friday: I had issues with the alarm at ten, so reset it till eleven, and even then didn’t drag myself off the mattress till after half eleven, then set about, on this ridiculously warm, sunny, and dry end of autumn day, getting ready to take Bob swimming. The bounteous buxomite phoned about midday and we had a good chinwag, and I put to her the plans I’m cooking to try to afford the solar panel offer twixt the Feds and the solar panel industry. She was a bit confused about what I was on about – and this time I don’t blame her – but she will consider my proposal.
I got to Guildford about half two, and we drove almost straight to Swan Aquatic, which early on resembled a ghost town, but it did pick up with the after schoolers. While Bob splashed about like a deranged blowfish I attended to the usual paperwork, some unusual paperwork, and then did a bit of long hand writing of a chapter for Venty Still well ahead of where I am. I wanted to have some practice writing of the romantic encounter I plan for a Venty and a former Dardanup lad in – wait for it – 2038, at the old Balingup property where in the real world the alabaster dragon and I met about one and a half thousand years ago. I am aiming at this stage of getting things warming up very gradually, more implicitly than otherwise, but I also plan to end this encounter rather explicitly, but hopefully with a version of taste that the discerning grown up hopefully will recognise. Explicit taste, tasteful explicitness, what should I call it? I want to pay homage to the urges of biology, without obscenity, or is filth the better term?, given that my description plans will be called obscene my many of the more prudish set for sure.
Why do ladies at Swan Aquatic call an ageing codger like me things like ‘Sweetie’, ‘Love’, ‘Darling’, in exchange for just giving the normal social rituals of greetings and such? Wimmin, deeply mysterious beasts they be.
Before I knew where I was it was time to take Bob to Fish Market Reserve, where we took a walk in the dark almost, helped by the crescent moon, around the river bank, hoping for the sound of dolphins, but being disappointed. We finished with a cup of thermos tea under the park lights of the Swift, before I delivered Bob back to House Three.
I posted a belated Wedding Anniversary card to the beast beautifulat Balingup on my way home, so I hope she gets a fillip when it arrives next week in that matchless hamlet. (I haven’t got mine from the doe eyed domuch yet by the way…)
I caught the tail end of My Beloved, then shot around to Pa pree’s with his vittles, and Umple Dais’ valuables he’d left with his big sis before he left for Thailand two weeks ago. He is due in tonight at Perth International, so methinks he’ll call to see his old man in the morning and will get his things as well as the mail I’ve been collecting. With a bit of luck I’ll get a sleep in before picking up the old hoary one for the King’s Park picnic The Babies Ink&Peggletter have arranged. Anyway, well see soon enough about that… I did a couple of things on Pa pree’s poota, then came back to catch the last bit of The Collectors, and then ate my vittles, warmed up from the frozen dinner containers my wonderful wife makes for me when she’s away. Am I worth it?
I stayed on to watch most of the SBS World War 2 documentary about Stalin and the German advance on Moscow, before SBS’ late news. I shot off to do kitchen work, programming of the new Uniden phone (which is looking a promising bit of kit), and some pooting, then dashed back for one of my highlights for the week, Friday night’s Lateline with Leigh Sales, who radiated again tonight, with her eyes and smile being second to none, repeatedly, and who proved, when those two pieces of gristle came on for the weekly political palaver, the Opposition'sfamily spokesman, Tony Abbott, and Parliamentary Secretary Mark Arbib, that women are the rightful repositories of beauty. Leigh had that flattering hair style, light make up, especially around her lovely eyes which don’t need the poly filla that she occasionally slips up and uses, and a professional outfit, of which I have but one complaint: the pattern on the blouse is too big, and would look much better if it was smaller patterned or even plain. Big patterns don’t look good when only a tad of them are revealed. She wore this very outfit last week if I recall correctly. Black is a good choice, and definitely long sleeves, in her role chewing it with the bastards. Shorter sleeves are admissible occasionally, as Ali Moore pulls off so well, but sleeveless never.
Anyway, I felt revivified just having my eyes rest on Ms Sales, and my how civilised were the palavering political punks tonight! Tony Abbott takes a bit of stomaching for me, and I am sure I can’t pin down only one problem with his manner and motives. Outside of politics I suspect he just could become a top friend and counsellor. Stephen Long was a delight as he always is, informative, intelligent, and on top of his economics issues. The chemistry between Sales and Long is great.
Having imbibed my current affairs fix, I descended on the keyboard and wrote up a couple of these here diary entries. And before I knew where I was it was after one in the morning, no bull. Would I bull to you? Oh, also I took a risk and posted a comment on Damyanti’s site ‘Writing on Writing: Amlokiblogs’, praising her beauty, her physical beauty; she has a most femininely blessed face. And add to that the fact that her site is excellent, as well as very giving and helpful to aspiring writers, what more could a lass want?
Very late, in the time slot usually occupied by my legendary late night walks, I watched Leigh Sales' Lateline of Wednesday night the 27th May, two days ago, which I had recorded, while eating cheese and 5 pears, yes, “Farve farve farve… tyoo, farve farve farve!” pears. Leigh looked professional in a long sleeve blue shade jacket, and she used her no nonsense look to grill Foreign Minister Stephen Smith in an interview.
Now this interview is a good example of the inner mongrel phenomenon most politicians have in abundance, as well as most journalists. Ms Sales, though, doubtless had to go to some lengths prior to the interview planning how to summons some inner mongrel to ask Stephen Smith “…why do you think that there's a perception that you're a weak Foreign Minister?” The likes of the late Sixty Minutes stalwart Richard Carleton probably would have had difficulty keeping a lid on his inner mongrel, and Kerry ‘Kezza the Great’ O’Brien and Tony ‘SilverToes’ Jones I’m sure would have managed to find plenty of inner mongrel just below or at their respective surfaces to ask such a question with the seasoning of bitter herbs that it takes to do. The angelic Ali Moore of Lateline Business on the other hand would not have been able to do it. I’ll paraphrase how she would have to tackle such a question: “Mr Smith, what in your view would epitomise a weak Foreign Minister?”, and she’d likely add: “Honorable sir, your Holiness, how I love your work, and please forgive me my impertinence, do you like apple pie?, let me bake you one…”
Seriously for a moment, I suspect that these borderline rude and offensive questions and remarks asked of and directed towards interviewees would amount to some of the worst parts of the job for the more noble and decency aspiring journalists, and I do strongly suspect that Leigh Sales is in this latter camp. And so we see a microcosm here of part of the human condition, that of compromise; to live on Earth is to compromise, and the art is to improve the achievement of balance. Ms Sales has to keep one eye on ratings and the demands of her minders, another on her guests and future interviews, another on her career prospects, another on her audience’s perception of her, another on her soul growth, another on what her children, if she has any, or her spouse or lover, will think of her, and so on. A damn hard balancing act for sure, but a necessary one. (But did Leigh go a tad boasty with a Twitter about this interview the other day?)
By the time all this was attended to, it was after four in the morning on this dead still night. One would think I’d have leapt into the cot right now, but somehow more things needed to be attended to, and it was closer to half five when my head hit the stones.
Thursday: Up too early, half nine, maybe four hours of sleeping time. I rushed around to get ready to take Pa pree for his annual check up with his doctor, some kind of study he joined last year or the one before. Of course I had the poor old fart (he who is never late, punctuality being the greatest virtue, apparently) giving birth to kittens, for my “twenty to” became “ten to” in actuality, but I dropped him at the surgery door dead on eleven, to have the nurse give him the once over before the doctor was let loose.
I descended into the elegant and controlled chaos of the local major shopping centre while he was in the surgery, and bought a reduced in price Uniden cordless phone to replace – long long overdue – the Telstra model we’ve had for some years; $34, and I don’t want to spend more on the rubbish, if the Telstra model was any guide. I managed both a Big W visit as well as Coles, culling a few more notes and shrapnel. As well as a trip to the Post Office to mail droogs, blood pressure droogs, to the unique uxor at Balingup. Then the dreaded mobble went off, informing me that the ineffable artefact was done at the quack’s. I drove back to pick him up, and dropped him into the centre for his own shopping spree. After a quick sortie into little dubbelyu myself, I returned to the car and drank thermos tea, ate pears, and read.
It was after two when I dropped the cantankerous keepsake home, and by three, after another phone call regarding the solar power panels offer this time to Clear Solar – who are emailing me information, and, by the way, were vastly more informative over the phone than Austech Solar were, and neither did the lady slur her words – I attempted to sleep, but gave up after 45 minutes. Thus this state of spaced out wakefulness meant I was able to clean the house up in preparation for The Babies and Pa pree’s visit tonight, as well as do a bit of outside recyclables sorting before dark. Showering and vacuuming took up some time, before I picked up the arsemellow memento, then went to the local Dewsons’ centre and bought fushnchups for tonight’s din dins. I had promised to cook tonight, and so I did, by contracting out the fish and chips preparation. I couldn’t cook to save my life. I thought Baby Inkletter knew that. And it’s all her mother’s fault. The short order chook has ruined me: I can’t cook, wash, iron, mend, clean, essentially she’s rendered me as utterly useless in these regards as Prince Charles. It’s a terrible affliction, having a wife who pops nice food in your mouth whenever you open it, sews back on a button before it’s bounced twice, even irons my undies – well, no, that one did stop about the time we got married. Don’t read into this that we cohabited beforehand, only that she offered to do my laundry when we both lived on the Brotherhood community a thousand years ago. She knew too well that the second best way to a man’s heart is through his crisp wrinkle free Y-fronts.
The Babies Ink&Peggletter arrived well before eight, and prepared the salad ingredients they brought with them, and we proceeded to decimate the dinner, before playing ‘Time’s Up’, in which I came second for a change (from last). Pa pree usually doesn’t join the games, but watches telly instead; tonight the Sony Trinitron, our pride and joy of about 7 years ago or so, was stricken with a rainbow halo on every channel, meaning it was the TV’s problem; I was not as nervous as I would have been, given that a year or two ago a related problem, on the right side of the screen developed one day, all day, and was gone the next. [Back from the future update: the problem was history the next day! Having said this, it is twice now, so something must be amiss in the gizzards of the electronic behemoth which happens to weigh several tons.] Dessert was a treat by Baby Inkletter, a treacle pudding with cream, but that was the poor little possum’s undoing, at least we think so after some research later. Just before leaving time she felt unwell suddenly, and vomited the entire meal up into the laundry tub, the same one her mother fills regularly, and it took her quite a while after laying down to be able to go home, which was after midnight.
Later she googled about it all at home, and suspects the cream, given she might now be having lactose tolerance problems. None of we other three had any ill effects, and we all had the same things to eat and drink. It was painful as a parent to see her get so unwell.
They delivered the dilapidated delinquent home on their own way back to Adelaide Terrace, and I attended to a few bits and pieces in the kitchen and at the computer, including, at long last, connecting up an old HP scanner Baby Inkletter gave us almost two years ago to the USB port, and finding to by absolute delight that it did a colour scan in great detail after WinXP detected it and provided default software, drivers and all to run it (a begrudging point for you Bill Gates), before hitting the sack about three; no walkies of course, damn, grrr…
Tuesday: By some miracle the mobble did not ring, and so I managed to stay sleeping until a bit after three in the afternoon, needing every minute of it, yet feeling little better for the nine hours. The house was as silent as a tomb without the irritable dirigible, but that has its advantages too!
Where has all that lovely rain gone? Be that as it may, I eventually teased enough life into myself to venture outdoors, back doors to be precise, and tend to some jobs left for days, such as feeding kitchen scraps to the worms, and sorting out some of the mountain of recyclables I have accumulated over a very long period of time.
Almost dark, I charged inside to shower, just as the phone rang, and it was none other than the frilly-knickered lizard, brimming with news from Balingup. As I had teed up with Pa pree to take him to the local shops about six, and considering that lack of punctuality is considered a capital offense, I had to cut short the chat with my darling, and jump into the shower, then rush around to pick up the erratic artefact. I left his evening meal in his place, then we called first at Umple Dais’ to check his mail, and send a cursory eye around to see that all was well. The Umples himself phoned me on the mobble earlier from Thailand to let me know he was still in the land of the living.
I waited at the local Dewsons’ carpark while Pa pree got some supplies, then returned to his place where I installed the Olympus camera program on his computer. I returned to our place just after My Beloved had started, and I got my frozen meals that the erotic Eskimo had made for me heating. I stayed on for Kerry O’Brien’s interview with Community Services Minister Jenny Macklin, then Foreign Correspondent, with the report ‘Detroit: Ain't Too Proud to Beg’ by Tracy Bowden. What a pity it has come to this, thanks to the idiots and delinquents running the U.S.A. car companies these past decades, who couldn’t see writing on the wall if it was branded on their foreheads.
I stayed where I was and then watched my recording of Jenny Brockie’s Insight report ‘Doctors and Drugs’, which was a very good look into the relationship between the pharmaceutical companies and doctors. I came back, after a more leisurely phone chat with the erogenous ermine in Balingup, who needs droogs for blood pressure, not having taken enough with her, so I’ll mail more on Thursday, and some computer work, to watch Tony SilverToes Jones do his usually very good thing on Lateline, enjoying in particular his short interview with Stephen Long on the iron ore price reduction negotiated between Rio Tinto and Nippon Steel, as well as with the singular Minister who’s always wong, Penny Wong, in Paris, on the political argy-bargy surrounding the emissions trading scheme here in Australia.
Then I was treated to the wonderful Ali Moore and her Lateline Business program, who yet again dressed superbly and professionally for presenting.
I spent all night on and off doing catch up emails as well as a dual posting on this site, between dealing with my usual health issues, and bits and pieces of cleaning up around the house since the bedlam of last week’s frenzy in preparation for the Balingup visit. When I say all night, I mean all night. I haven’t walked for ages, by the way, and I miss it, but I’ve got to find the energy from somewhere. I hit the lonely sack about half seven, the sun being up for a while.
Monday: I punched the top of the alarm when it rudely informed me with attitude that it was ten o’clock, but I had to obey the bitch of a thing at eleven, and so I stumbled out of bed, and rapidly began to coax some life back into my frame. I looked like I was about a hundred, and felt twice that. The thrill seeking lizard was down in Balingup where I left her yesterday afternoon, lucky thaing.
The house looked like a bomb had gone off in the kitchen, but it had to remain that way, for it was off to Bob’s for his Perth outing day, put off for about a week. I dropped off the TV guide from The West to Pa pree with his torch, left in the car from last night, and, seeing that he was apparently alive and well, I headed east into Malaga. At TheGood Guys I stopped and went in search of a second Homedics percussion massager, given that the irritable iguana took to and kept her recently bought model at Balingup, and given that it is a real help to my gammy left thigh.
Murphy’s Brother’s Law kicked in, and of course only the three different diplay-only models were available of these gizmos, and to cut an involved story shorter, after embarrassing myself somewhat by assuming the displayed price under the whiz bang model one up from Janny’s was the price of it (stupid boy, why on earth would the price immediately under the unit have any relation, nay, correspondence, to the model itself?), and asking if I could buy the display unit, I instead ordered a new boxed version, paying for half of it there and then, with a 5 to 10 working days promise of delivery to the store – yeah, so in other words, the lovely petite lady hadn’t any idea when it would arrive, but I don’t blame her, only the system she’ll be labouring under, where the customer is to be fed some bullshit and kept in the dark as much as possible. What I thought was a $59 unit will be $85, but it has some features that interest me, including multi-variable speed percussion settings. I hope it’s here before the myxomataic marvel returns from her jaunt in the most beautiful part of the Southwest.
From this nuanced nadir I sped on to Guildford, and pleased Bob greatly by announcing to him that we would take the Swift to Perth city, instead of catching the train. And it is on these journeys that you realise that this fellow whom fate did not favour could have been the best taxi driver in Perth, or anywhere, having The Knowledge to a remarkable degree. First port of call was Kennedys Sewing Centre in Queen Street, where a thousand years ago we bought our first overlocker as a married couple on credit, but the salacious sewer (!) had bought a top shelf Singer back in the early seventies there in her dark ages (before she met me); we have bought several machines through Kennedys or their outlets since, when once the threaded monster wears the old machines out. Yes, the material girl has possibly kept Kennedys afloat single-handedly, and all for personal sewing only, plus the needs and wants and flippancies of Baby Inkletter and Pa pree, with sheets, curtains, and gifts for friends thrown in; yet I have yet to see a willie warmer, assured by the saucy sexpot that she hasn’t yet found a bolt of material wide or long enough.
Perth was spectacular, washed clean and fresh by last week’s urgently needed long delayed rain. Dullsville? I couldn’t give a shit, it’s my home and I love it. I was born here, and it’s in my blood and soul. Some of the people could do with some rejigging, but then so could folk everywhere.
Bob ate his lunch in, of all places, the Central Park forecourt, the tallest skyscraper in Perth, while I took some photos of Payton the Koala Bear, much to the curiosity of many people around.
Next we walked to the Esplanade, and I got more photos of that favoured piece of grassland. Back to the city centre to catch the Yellow CAT, and on the way I took the photo in Hay Street looking into a low sun that won praise from Gladys Hobson within a few short hours of posting it as a header for the Main Site; I don’t know how many times Gladys has caught some change within no time of my making it. After the CAT ride, and on the way back to the car park in Murray Street, I took a photo of Payton by the road verge, and having propped him up with my wallet, picked him up and left my wallet there. Almost back at the car I realised what I had done, then walked and ran, all but touching cloth, with the speed of a fellow well past his physical prime (except in the cot), to the spot, only to find… yes, it was there, on the edge of the footpath, in one of the busiest streets in Perth for pedestrians. While the couple of hundred bucks in it would have hurt to lose, the real pain in the arse would have been the loss of the cards and licence and you name it. So I was mighty relieved, and deeply grateful to the unseen reality humming in the very space between and within every atom to have not lost it. I had been propping the little bugger up all afternoon with my wallet, and early on the thought crossed my mind “I would not want to lose my wallet doing this would I?” Prescience, stupid boy!
We drove back via Bob’s old hunting grounds in Meltham, and in fact had a cup of tea in the park opposite his old home, now a new pair of houses, at dark. I learnt from social trainer Colin that Maxine is leaving at the end of this week; she has been very good to me, easy going, and clearly loves Bob and thus cuts the poor bastard a lot of slack; not every supervisor nor social trainer does cut him the slack he obviously needs, and he then suffers for it. Love is the key, as always… Oh, and I must add, it is always an anxious time when some new boffin takes over, with his or her grand schemes…
I was home after seven, getting petrol before the driving was over. I took Pa pree a meal, and spent an hour doing a few installations and a bit of tutoring on his computer for him. I was weary when I got back and settled into the Player recliner, and ate my heated up din dins, all pre-cooked and frozen by the faithful frolicker, in recognition of the enormity of the problem she has created by rendering me incapable of doing anything domestic for myself after 27 years of marital blizz(ard). It’s wrong, but it’s been done, and now we just have to manage the problem.
I watched TV for the current affairs on and off, enjoying Ricky Gervais on Letterman, and before that I take my hat off to the calm analysis regarding North Korea and its latest showing off of its nuclear muscle of Mark Fitzpatrick in his interview with Tony SilverToes Jones on Lateline, then was revitalised as Ali Moore took over the screen. I did what I could at the computer, again battling with Blogger’s refusal to display a comment properly I did in reply to Gladys Hobson praising my header photo. Was it that long back that I reminded my billions of daily readers where I would like to shove any and all of Blogger’s editing tools, as well as their lame templates? And without Vaseline? And so after all of the interminable mucking about I didn’t hit the sack, all alone in a cold bed, till about a quarter to six.
Monday: I slept reasonably well, but not for long enough. The alarm rudely announced that it was nine in the morning, and it was hard to leave the warm bed on this coldish morning, snuggled beside the soft inviting warm voluptuous vixen, who began making inappropriate snortling noises to try to persuade me to stay; given what she did to me and got from me yesterday afternoon, I couldn’t countenance that – I have standards, and still have some virtue…
I set to and had breakfast, and used this last forecast fine day for a week or more to do a job up the backyard best done in dry conditions. I made some progress on it, sorting out ‘decaying’ plastic bags and their small fracturing pieces from other material, a job best done dry. The back eastern corner neighbour’s dog, by the sound of it a beast from the bowels of Hades, made the occasional charge up to the fence on its side, trying to frighten the crap out of me.
Janny picked took Pa pree to the local shops and then brought him back to spend the rest of the day here, and next I got ready to drive to Guildford, and set off soon after half one, having managed a health issue acceptably. An idiot driver of a huge and long truck with trailer tailgated me at 80 kmh all along the WhitemanPark section of Marshall Road, even though I was doing the limit. Bob was ready for swimming, on this changing weather day, the sky filling with cotton wool balls, harbingers of a front trying to make it this far north from its Southern Ocean digs.
First off (after the obligatory stop to pick up TWO Homebuyers – every week Bob gets two, and gives the spare to no-one) we called in to Midland Gate, parking in the underground car park. We got to the lift, and who should be almost there as well were Brian and Janette H., Janette pushing Brian in his wheelchair, but he otherwise was looking well in the face since his stroke of 2007. I hadn’t seen them for over a year at least I’m sure. We chatted for some time, and they invited Missus Inkletter, whom they haven’t met, and me to visit them in the hills. I was struck by how easy it would have been to have missed them, for it was on impulse that I chose that carpark out of the many surrounding Midland Gate.
After a purchase here, we continued on to Swan Aquatic, where Bob did his laps, and I, in blasted longhand, put the finishing couple of pages or three into my essay on nationalism. Then I barely began, in the remaining time, to read another book loaned to me from Baby Inkletter, The Lucifer Effect, by Philip Zimbardo; it relates to discussions we’ve been having relating to nationalism and patriotism. We drove lastly to Fish Market Reserve for a walk along the river after sunset, followed by a cup of tea.
I got home a tad before seven, having another close encounter with a dangerously fast and speeding utility on Marshall Road, this time in Malaga, perhaps doing 110 kmh in the 70 kmh zone. My Beloved was my reward, with tuck tuck from Missus Inklefrustrated for both Pa pree and me, followed by Kerry the Great’s 7.30 Report. I was thrilled by the inundation of Lake Eyre story, and the explosion of waterbird breeding and plant growth, and forgive me, but the story about the struggling commercial free to air TV station companies here in Australia did not elicit its full complement of appropriate tears; the standards of commercial TV have long been in the pits, and the way they’ve treated their audiences for decades leaves mountains to be desired. Viewers have been voting with their attention, and going elsewhere; why am I not surprised?
I was becoming mighty weary, so I hit the sack at half eight, almost falling asleep, but those weird leg pains I get in my left thigh plagued me, so I got up again after a half hour. Janny had returned Pa pree to his place, and I watched the last half of Four Corners, then the first half which I had recorded having hit the sack for viewing later. It was about that seriously self deluded or worse Wayne Bent aka Michael Travesser, the incarnation of God in man, from New Mexico, whose only miracles thus far are to get seven women to have sex with him. His followers are an excellent example of the severely deleterious side of the phenomenon I sometimes call RAB, Reasoning Attenuating Belief. The phenomenon also has positive effects, such as hypnotically induced pain relief, and many others.
Young SilverToes interviewed Kevin Rudd on Lateline, and the PM continued to prove that he is a protoplasmic dictation machine, with his tiring idiosyncratic perfectionist idiom. The report on the upcoming play in Melbourne, ‘Seven Jewish Children’, with Miriam Margolyes and Max Gillies, certainly did appear to expose bias against Israel, although I base this upon the snippets in Lateline’s report, and there might be balance in the script I am unaware of. What I heard the actors recite from their sheets was something to the effect: ‘Jewish (mothers, people, folk?) happy at the deaths of (Palestinians, Arabs?)’ I didn’t hear the reciprocal sentiment that we know exists on the other side. Balance never hurt anyone, but it did shed light in murky corners and illuminate shades of grey.
That gorgeous creature Ali Moore fronted LatelineBusiness, again proving she knows how to dress professionally for her role. I was interested in the report on the unintended repercussions of the tax changes to the lower paid end of the employee share schemes; is there anything that can ever be done in economics that has only upside?
I used my good old emotional blackmail trick to get a huge plate of apples and pears sliced up for me with shavings of cheddar cheese by Missus Inkletter before she retired, and consumed them at the computer while writing, after midnight, listening to my favourite songs. I had a coughing fit when a drop of my own saliva tried to go down the wrong way – getting old sucks… no, that’s coarse and too teenage: getting old has knobs on it.
I did a dual posting late, very late, for Friday 15th, the day dear Bud Tingwell died. No walk yet again, due to weariness, and what with investigating 3 column Blogger templates through Google searching, time disappeared and I didn’t get to slip in beside the thrill-seeking lizard before 4 a.m. However, the fun had only just started…
It took me ages to drift almost into the Land of Nod’s vestibule, when I heard Janny vomiting, and I sprang out of bed and assisted the poor old possum at the laundry basin, while over five minutes she proceeded to empty the contents of her stomach, hurting herself in the process, as well as earning a burnt throat out of it, due she thinks to an Acimax tablet she had not long taken to try to quell indigestion. It is very hard to pin down what is causing her vomiting sessions while on the Byetta regime, but this is the first for several weeks she’s suffered; the nausea is a daily occurrence however, almost always in the hour after her two needles a day, as well as at other times.
It was a bit after six when I finally got to sleep, while the alarm clock was conspiring to shatter my snippet of slumber before too long…
Sunday: Janny was up before me, preparing to go to a Mormon church service at Ballajura, a curious predilection she has once or twice a year. I stumbled up about half eight, after twelve hours of reasonable sleep, and began the daunting effort to wake up.
While the translation candidate was away for almost four hours I ate breakfast, read the paper, gleefully taking in the daylight saving trouncing from yesterday’s referendum, and cleaned up the kitchen, which job took over an hour alone (kitchen clean ups take me a long time for at least three reasons: I am slow; I am thorough; I recycle every once living scrap, be it oil, fat, leftovers, peelings, crumbs, you name it, for my worm farms outdoors).
On her eventual return from the doctrinally deluded dudes (roughly no more so than a thousand other religious groupings I hasten to add, as well as subscribing to very much that is good) I gave the terrifying trilobite the emotional blackmail treatment, and thus was rewarded with a big plate of apple and pear slices and shavings of cheddar cheese, with a moccers coffee. Towards mid afternoon the rapacious reptile began undressing me with her eyes, and I knew I was a goner, with submission my only hope, given her history and track record when I resist. And so, as long term readers know only too well, she cast me off like a desert bleached spare rib bone after committing repeated acts of carnal knowledge upon and with me, at which point I felt safe to slip away, though greatly weakened, while the salacious sparrowhawk lay there in the boudoir glowing with extreme satiety, reliving in her endorphin swimming mind the multiple mind enrapturing orgasms she had just been the fortunate spoiled rotten pig recipient of.
Be all that just written as it may, on this warm fine balmy day I got towards an hour of backyard titivating done until dark. Then the commode dragon gallivanted off again to the Ballajura chapter of Terrestrial’s Angels, and she was missing for a bit more than three hours, in which time I watched My Beloved, then did another kitchen clean up for over an hour (refer earlier disclaimer!). We watched Compass together, then she was so tired I put her to bed, and came and did some catch up diary writing and one dual posting till after one a.m., despite my own tiredness, on this still crisp night, with, according to the little boys and girls who lied and now work for the Weather Bureau, one day of fine weather to go before the big drought breaks here in Perth.
I am far too tired to consider walking. I have been battling the usual health problems these past two days. I may now have a new problem: I lifted the television off the purple back room trunk for Janny to be able to get materials out of it for dressmaking tonight, and my back feels really painful; it is a heavy mother of a television, and I am twenty years past doing stuff like that.
My catch up writing took far longer than I planned, and I got quite cold sitting here at the keyboard, finally slipping in beside the grossly satiated frilly knickered lizard just before half two…
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