A good Easter

On Good Friday, 29th, Jenny came over at breakfast time and made us a rather special breakfast -- bacon & eggs with pancakes and Maple sauce

Then that afternoon Z came over at 3pm and stayed until 6.30. She brought with her a big platter of fruit & salad. Our discussions were good and ended harmoniously

On Saturday night Jenny put on a family dinner for Joe, myself and herself. We all got Scotch steak and salad with rhubarb & apple for dessert, which was a rare treat. Jenny & Joe talked quite well but my poor hearing left me out of most of it. But it was good to have a get-together for our remnant family -- most of whom now live overseas

After dinner I was given the choice of what music to put on. I felt like some Gregorian chant so I brought up on Youtube some Renaissance polyphony sung by the Gesualdo Six.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBl1KIyL6OU&list=PLJFPfaQpmP8hVEAnVA32JPs0Lr4R4uvaw&index=25

They sang well but I do wonder why they named themselves after a murderous and rather mad 16th century composer. What they sang were motets by various composers so it was church music -- rather appropriate to Easter

On Sunday morning Joe and I breakfasted together as usual and we did have some restrained discussions. We went to Annerley Maccas.

Then between 3pm and 7pm I saw Z. We went to Nando's for Mediterranean salad. In bed afterwards Z got rather involved in talking about her rather difficult childhood. I endeavoured to offer some helpful comments but may have done more harm than good

Serbia and the Bhagavad Gita: A reflection

Around 700 years ago, the Serbian empire was a significant European State covering all of what we now know as the Balkans, roughly coterminous with the former Yugoslavia

But Serbia seems to attract wars like magnets attract iron and the modern Serbian State has contracted to a small State of roughly 7 million people. Serbs have fought valiantly and have usually been the victims of attack rather than the attackers.

They have mostly been Orthodox Christians but Matthew chapter 5 in their Bibles has been lost on them, is it has on most Christians

Contrast that with India. The Bhagavad Gita tells Indians that when we are attacked, we should surrender rather than fight. It saves lives. And Indians have done a lot of surrendering. The result? India is a large and important country with a population of around 1.5 billion people. So who have been wisest? Serbs or Indians.

I greatly sympathize with Serbians for their awful history. But they would probably have been wiser to heed their own Holy Book, in Mathew chapter 5. Indians have shown us the results of heeding similar advice. The Serbian empire was a multi-ethnic State, as was India, so the comparison is pretty fair, I think

The British have been wise too, but in a different way. Largely by securing the moral high ground, they have always entered into a lot of treaties and alliances. The result is that a lot of foreigners have always died to secure British independence. In WWII, countless Russians, Frenchmen and some Americans died to Britain's benefit. They have avoided the worst of the wars by getting other people to die for them. That is cleverest of all I think.

As Winston Churchill once put it: "For a thousand years Britain has not seen the campfires of an invader". Contrast that with poor Serbia

Another McDermott masterpiece

Canadian John McDermott is a professional singer well known for performing broadly traditional songs. His talent is to put appropriate feeling into what he sings. I have put up recently his version of "Scotland the Brave" and I do go back and watch it occasionally. And I think the song below is very well-done too. It is about an episode in Australian history but I think it is broadly intelligible.



It is an antiwar song so it might seem strange that I am putting it up. Is not anti-war a Leftist orientation? And I am after all a former Sergeant in the Australian army. But many military men are very skeptical of the need for war. They die in wars. But when there is a war on, they are usually keen to go and exercise the skills they have trained for. Even I volunteered for service in Vietnam in that war. But when it comes to the reasons for the war they are involved in they are often deeply skeptical, and particularly skeptical of the management of their war by the "Brass". The song above is an example of that latter attitude.

The song does inspire some recollections. Contarary to what the song predicts, the ANZAC day marches did not wither away. They are still going strong. I was watching a parade once in the company of JHM, my beautiful but demure girlfriend of the time. As we watched, the navy came marching along -- tall men in white uniforms. JHM really came alive at that. She greatly enjoyed that part of the parade. With big smiles she utterered expressions of admiration for those marchers -- not so demure at that point. Women have always liked men in uniform.

Surgery

A few weeks ago, a tumour sprang up on my scalp. I had one of those a few years ago which was expertly removed by Tony K. So I went to him again. I also had a prominent growth in the middle of my forehead which had been there for some time so I also wanted that gone. Tony was happy to take out both in the one session so I went for that. From past uncomfortable experience I usually avoid having two procedures at once but it seemed the obvious thing to do on this occasion as both lesions were prominent and not far apart.

And so it was done yesterday. It was a long and uncomfortable time on the surgical couch so it tried my patience but I survived

An uncomfortable after-effect was that there was some slight bleeding from both wounds. But with the help of an icepack, I stopped it. It made me nervous about how I moved however, in case I started it bleeding again. I was particularly concerned that I might do something in my sleep that started it up again. I did however manage a sleep straight through from 11pm to 4am without mishap so that was reassuring. A 5 hour sleep is good by my standards

I got up for a while but went back to bed and gradually drifted back to sleep until 8pm. No bleeding and only slight discomfort

Good Friday update (29th): All feeling back to normal. No discomfort at all. I still look a horror but I don't feel it; 4th April, stitches out

Limping limpets

I have no particular quarrel with vegetarians but I am a bit puzzled by those who do it on moral grounds. What do they make of me prizing a limpet off a rock? The limpet presumably dies forthwith but does it have any feelings that we should respect? If not what is the morality involved? It seems to me that the limpet is animal life but has no feelings as we understand it so why is it bad to prise it off its rock? Should I feel guilty about making a limpet limp?

Travel: A reflection

I suspect that we all have in us an urge to travel, probably stemming from a hunter-gatherer era in our evolutionary past. Until the arrival of the white man a couple of hundred years ago, Australian Aborigines were still in that lifestyle and they are well known for their urge to "go walkabout". And if we are in some way forced to live within an unchanging environment we do go "stir crazy".

I do not travel now but I did plenty of international travel in my '30s

My ex-girlfriend Anne is a real travel-holic. She has been almost everywhere in recent years and is presently in the midst of her second trip around Australia. She is doing it in some style. She has a large caravan pulled by a powerful diesel Prado driven by George, her obliging de facto. So she has a comfortable home every night and all the change of scene she wants. So she is smart. She has got it all together. She living out her final years in an enviable way

St. Pat's day

Today is St Patrick's day so all honour to the blessed Saint. I have plenty of Irish ancestry so I respect the day. I just wish St Pat would come back and chase all the deadly snakes out of Australia. We need his like

Some people say that there never were any snakes in Ireland anyway but I doubt that. Nearby England has always had snakes -- adders, grass snakes, vipers etc. So no migration across the Irish sea seems unikely. And vipers are a mean lot that are found almost everywhere



I have actually started the day well. I had a long and relaxed breakfast with my son Joe during which we discussed many things -- from Trad wives to steam trains

And I am expecting Z this evening with some prospect of her bringing Serbian food with her. It's probably not too different from Irish food.

She presented me with an attractive raw food lunch yesterday.



Update: Z did bring me an assortment of Serbian food at about 5pm. It was good and did include a lot of potatoes, in the best Irish style

A visit

I was eating my dinner on the verandah when an intelligent-looking face appeared on the handrail in front of me. It was a substantial mother possum with a well-grown joey on her back. I didn't react. My startle response is often absent. So she came over and sniffed at my dinner but I held it away from her. So it was a a peaceful encounter beween possum and person. She was rather a big possum so an Abo indigenous person in a tribal context would have thought his dinner had arrived

A peaceful contact with an attractive wild animal was a rare pleasure. We were nose to nose at one point. Only in Australia

Another pleasant surprise of the evening occurred as I was preparing for bed. I found a rather nice little panty on the rug on the other side of my bed.



Sadly, there was no nearby empty champagne bottle to go with it so the significance of the panty was much diminished by that

I suspect that finding a discarded pink panty beside his bed would be aspirational for many men

Being intellectual

It's a well-known thing that some autistic people have extremes of ability in various ways, often in music or mathematics. My oddity is to be extremely intellectual. That had advantages in my academic career but it does tend to cut me off from most other people

It is of no importance but something that may put me in a minority of one is what I do when I get itchy and scratch. I say out loud "Oh,oh, oh. Totus ardeo": A rather absurd thing to say. It's obviously a literary quotation and seems to be Latin but where is it from? I have just remembered. It is from a line deep within (song 22) the Carmina Burana:

Oh, Oh, oh, totus floreo, iam amore virginali totus ardeo, novus, novus amor est, quo pereo.

The full sentence says the singer is bursting with love. I will have to sing it to Z some time

A commemoration

As any frequent reader of this blog -- if there are any -- will know, Z and I have had our ups and downs but we have nonetheless been together for over two years and I am happy about that. And Z is too. She has suggested that we commemorate "two years of love" (in her words). As I have said here previously that I love her and always will, that is an ideal state of affairs.

She has suggested that I buy her a watch as commemoration. She likes watches and I have previously bought her a couple from OpShops that I liked. This time she wants one that she has chosen -- seen in a jeweller's shop. So I am giving her the money for it. I am glad that I am able to give her something that she likes

I was originally going to buy her flowers but she asked for a watch instead

She arrived at my place around 2pm. Our afternoon consisted of a trip to Nando's for a salad lunch; a trip to Coco's to stock up on fruit and veg; A trip to Macca's for a cold Mocha coffee. We then mainly lay around until about 5pm, when she left in a happy state. I was happy too.

A sad day

Anne is off for another around Australia trip so today was the last time I will see her for around 6 months. We breakfasted at Buranda: Calmari for me and a Viet omelette for Anne.

We went back to my place afterward and spent the rest of the time until 12 chatting desultorily, as we usually do, and listening to Bach

A pretty good day

With the aid of various pills and potions, I got a good night's sleep last night so woke up not long before 9am.

I then texted Z for a while but she was in a negative mood

Jenny arrived shortly after 9 to help me with a medical appointment and left after that.

Then around 10am Anne arrived ready for brunch. We went to Buranda where I had a breakfast of smoked salmon and a big mug of iced coffee. Gourmet stuff! We then back to my place where we relaxed and listened to some medieval polyphony, which we both enjoyed. Anne left at noon.

Then at around 5.30pm Jenny arrived ready to spend the night at my place, which she did. At around 6pm she cooked me some tender Scotch fillet with fried onions and plenty of salad. I am skipping bread rolls these days so that I eat more salad.

So it was a pretty good day for a geriatric 80-year old. A pity that Z was not in a positive mood but you can't win 'em all

Excommunicated by Medium.com

Google has deleted some of my blog posts because of their political incorrectness. But I now have a new censor: Medium.com is a site where people can put up their personal thoughts and stories. I use it as somewhere to go when I have time on my hands.

Its posts are mostly open to the public but you can become a "member" by paying a small monthly fee. I have paid that fee as I do get some value out of the site. And there is a privilege attached to membership. Some posts are made available to members only. How that selection is made is a mystery to me.

The site does allow and encourage comments on its posts and I have put up comments occasionally. They have however now put up a flag whenever I log on to say that I have violated their rules The rules concerned are a very long list so I have no idea which rule I have broken and when. And I now no longer get the privileged members-only emails.

It would be nice if they had the manners to tell me which particular comment they disliked. Even Google does that whenever they delete one of my blogspot posts.

It will be interesting to see if they take their monthly fee from me. It will be a test of how hollow or not their pretensions of having principles are.

Some original mini-plays meant for household performance

In English country houses of yore, guests up from London over the weekend were always welcome. Country life was a bit boring so guests were a welcome distraction.

But what did you do with guests when you had them? During the day was no problem. There was always huntin' 'n shootin' 'n fishin' -- which is mainly what the guests came for. You can't do much of that in London. And for some there was also tennis.

But what about the evening? What about after dinner? Port and cigars were helpful but not always quite enough. So amateur entertainments were often organized: Often for the last day of the visit. There were charades and concerts and amateur plays written for the occasion that people rehearsed in their spare time up until the actual performance. And the amateur theatricals had the advantage of involving the ladies, who otherwise mainly read the latest novels and gossiped.

I thought that those traditions should not die entirely so I have written some mini-plays for performance at parties I attend:



Waterhouse (Concerning the Professors Waterhouse in Sydney)

Unselling (How a retailer sells you what he wants to sell you)

AN EDWARDIAN TRILOGY

Following are three plays with Edward VII as the central character. They can however all be performed successfully as individual plays without the context of the other two plays.

BOOK 1: Building the "Dreadnought" (An Edwardian version of "Yes Minister")

BOOK 2: The King's trip (Concerning Edward VII as a diplomat)

BOOK 3: The King's idea (The King had an idea about how to deal with the alarming Mr. Roosevelt)



All plays are copyright but no permission is needed for home performances. Author email: jonjayray@hotmail.com