A sociable week

I wouldn't normally choose to host dinner parties two nights running but sometimes things just work out that way.  And some very capable restaurateurs did the hard part anyway.

Croucher is in Brisbane at the moment visiting rellies.  Since he usually lives in China, such appearances have to be exploited for the purposes of remembering old times etc.  We have known one another since 1971 and have remained in frequent contact via the internet, so the opportunity of once again meeting in person was not to be missed.

We dined together on Tuesday, accompanied by another member of our old merry band, Henningham.  Henningham is an extremely jocular figure when his wife is not around so we did well to get him along in a solo state.  Croucher, however, was accompanied by his Cantonese wife. Anne and I were dining together the day after so Mrs Croucher was the only female person present.

I shouted the dinner as I don't travel these days.  So the least I can do is shout for those who do.  I offered to take us all to a local Chinese restaurant where you can get Chinese food you won't find in China but that was understandably treated as suspect.  Instead we went to my local Indian restaurant:  The "Bollywood", where the food is always good.  I shout lots of dinners there so I get very good service there.

Henningham wanted us to order dishes to share, which is a custom I do not normally honour, but I agreed anyway.  When it transpired that Henninghanm liked his curry mild and Croucher and I wanted  it medium, however, he suffered some revenge for that.  We ordered all the curries medium.  He survived without notable discomfort.

After the dinner we repaired to my place for tea and coffee and continued the deliberations.  We discussed many things -- from social class to IQ.  In his usual Sinophilic style, when Croucher was asked whether there are any class distinctions in China, he said:  "Of course not".  But he did row back a bit from that later.

I am a bit deaf these days but I am reasonably OK with male voices.  It is the higher frequencies that one loses in old age so I understand women rather poorly unless they are fairly close to my ear -- but male voices use quite low frequencies so I did not miss too much of what was said.  Mrs Croucher's contributions were however something of a mystery to me.

Then on Wednesday I shouted a dinner at the Kafe Meze in celebration of Jill's birthday.  Anne and Lewis also took part.  The food is always good there and we again repaired to my place afterward.  There was a lot of talk of travel and foreign places as Jill and Lewis are off on a cruise again soon.

A Saint's day was commemorated

In accordance with proper form I gave Anne flowers, a card and  chocolate on St Valentine's day yesterday.  Anne decided to cook so I took advantage of that by getting some Merguez out of the freezer.  And at Anne's request I also got a Greek Tourte for dessert.  The one I get is basically a chocolate trifle.

Anne supplied some Sydney rock oysters for starters and we washed it all down with my usual Seaview champagne.

We had it on the verandah, which is a pleasant venue of a summer's night and afterward I put on music by Schumann, Chopin and Sor.

So it was a high quality night across the board.

Friday update

Despite the lights coming back on on Tuesday evening, only one of the three power circuits available to me came back on -- which was rather odd.  So I got out a great string of extension leads to feed power to my computer from the one circuit that was working.

On Wednesday I decided to get to the bottom of the problem power circuits and by a bit of trial and error discovered that one of two paired circuits was the problem.  It was wet somewhere from all the rain and therefore flipping the circuit breaker governing the two circuits.  So by isolating that circuit I got a second circuit going, which was the one running my computer, fridge and freezer -- so I was happy about that.

But then my internet cable went off the air.  Telstra were apparently repairing some storm damage in my area so I had power  but still no internet.

Anyway it didn't matter a heap as I had a lunch at Anne's place to go to and afternoon tea with Paul and Susan after that.  I would not have been on the internet anyway.

The lunch was put on by Anne for the birthday of her sister Merle.  It was another "three sisters" lunch with partners invited too and I always enjoy such occasions.  Anne made a big lot of her champion ham and salad sandwiches for the occasion and there was  lots of other foods too.

Paul came over with Susan and Matthew about 3pm to finish putting all the old family videos on my computer.  We also had some chats about family relationships which seemed to be helpful to  Paul.  I heard later that he even took some advice that I gave him!  As advice is the world's most spurned commodity, I was impressed!

Anyway, the internet was still off when Paul left so I went over to Jenny's for about an hour to catch up with a few things.

On Thursday morning  my net access was still out and so was the light circuit downstairs. So I got into my car and visited various electrical wholesalers in a quest to buy a few more plug-in circuit-breakers, in case the light problem was at the board.  I visited 5 wholesalers but only three had what I wanted.  I ended up getting one breaker from each of three wholesalers  -- taking the last of their stock in each case.  Very strange.

Anyway my net access came back Thursday afternoon and has been OK since then.  So to celebrate the end of a chaotic week I took Anne to a good Chinese restaurant on Friday evening and ordered Peking duck.  It lived up to all expectations.

Big storms

Sunday and Monday (yesterday) were sub-cyclonic in Brisbane -- with big winds and pouring rain.  On Sunday evening, however, I just felt like fish 'n chips for dinner so went and got some.  The best fish 'n chips place I know at the moment is out at Manly, near where Anne lives, so it is a 20 minute drive.  I was one of the few on the road in the circumstances and I was nearly held up by some minor flooding across the road at one point.  But I got there and took the fish back to Anne's place to share.  I felt it was well worth the trip through the heavy weather.

And yesterday (Mon.) I woke up at 9am to find that the power was out.  I attempted to carry on blogging using my battery-powered netbook but the wireless dongle failed after only about half an hour.  I was rather displeased to find that my backup system had failed too.  But that's Telstra for you.

Anyway, I had a backlog of work I wanted to do on my geneology files so I got on with that for the rest of the morning.  The eventual product is now online  here.

When afternoon had arrived with no restoration of power, I rang  Jenny to see whether she had power,  She did so I went over there to do a bit of catching up on her computer.

Around 4:30, however, I went home to see if my own power had come on.  It had not.  But it did come on about 5pm so I caught up with a few things then.

Jenny had however invited me over for a dinner of chicken curry, which I was very pleased to accept.  So I went back to her place about 6pm and had an exceptionally good curry.  So I drove through heavy weather twice yesterday.  There was not much else on the road.  But good dinners are worth some trouble, I think.

Australia day

We had our usual Australia day lunch for my rellies on my mother's side today.

It was raining heavily all day so that may have been why the gathering was smaller than usual.

Christopher had a range of old family photos on display which sparked a lot of discussion. I was amused to see my father in what looked like a gangster hat.

Kym did the cooking this year and provided us with lots of good things.  As usual, I stuck to sausages.

It's nice to be in the company of intelligent people and I think my rellies fill the bill there. There was a small example of it today. I asked what is the difference between Swedes and turnips? That would floor most people but my cousin Shirley immediately trotted out a good descriptive answer.

Swedes are called rutabagas in the USA.  They are traditionally eaten with haggis on Burns night and called "neeps" (after "Napus", the Latin word for a turnip) in Scotland.   "Swede" is short for "Swedish turnip", though it's not actually a turnip!

Burns night

I held what I intend to be my last Burns night tonight.  I have been putting them on sporadically for around 30 years so I think I have done my bit.  The big problem is that 25th is sandwiched between Anne's birthday and Australia day and my social energies are not quite up to that any more.

Anyway, it was only a small gathering and we skipped most of the customs.  Jill and Lewis were there as well as Anne and myself.  Anne did a great job of catering the occasion and the haggis was much enjoyed by all.  I still managed to get into my kilt but just barely!


I enjoyed the occasion but I was nonetheless not completely with it:  I prepared some Scottish music to play but forgot to turn it on;  I forgot to run the Scottish saltire up my flagpole;  I needed quite a lot of help from Anne to get into my kilt and I even spilled my beer at one stage.  I was halfway through my first beer at the time (Fourex Gold, a medium strength beer) so I was not Elephant's Trunk.

I ate so much haggis, neeps and tatties that I had no room for dessert -- so I missed out on some clootie dumpling.  And the Tablet went untouched! A surfeit of good food.

Anne's birthday

Birthdays are of course a time for special dinners and chateaubriand is for both Anne and me a much appreciated dinner.  Probably because it is inevitably expensive, however, very few restaurants  offer it these days.  I used to be able to get it from both the Clansmen and Siggis but both those excellent restaurants are now only a memory.

With the help of Father Google however I was able to establish that there is ONE restaurant in Brisbane that still offers it:  One of the restaurants of the Hotel Bravo in Brunswick St, Valley. Their menu is here.

I was not very sanguine about them doing a good job of the dish but I booked anyway and we went along.  Below is what we got



To my surprise it was perfectly done.  Even the accompaniments were good.  And when I asked them to turn the music down, they did!  Service was good generally.

So we actually had a rather memorable dinner.  We were too full for desserts.

Mousetrapped

After 60 years playing  in London, Agatha  Christie's "Mousetrap" rather  amazingly came to Brisbane  -- so I had to go.

I am a bit deaf even with my hearing aids in so  I missed a lot of the finer points   but I understood enough to follow the main points.  With its evocation of a snowed-in London and mention of child abuse,  it could have been written in London yesterday

I did guess correctly who the villain was and there were many fine points of staging and dialogue that kept the audience amused.

An odd point about the production was that everybody shouted at one-another all the time  -- which is most un-English.  I think that contributed to my incomprehension.

I would have thought that amplification of normally-spoken voices would have been much better.  And supertext would have been a boon.  There were a lot of elderly people in the audience who also most likely had age-related hearing loss.

Another lunch with Joe

We again got together to finish off watching the family videos.  We lunched first at my Buranda haunt. During lunch and after the videos we had chats about various things, mostly secret men's business!

One thing I went to some length about was to tell Joe that the only ambition I had for him was for him to be happy.  I believe he will do well as an academic but I would think no less of him if he did not.

I once said to Ken that I didn't care if Joe earned his living as an academic or by playing piano in a Jazz dive.  To Joe's amusement, I told him what Ken said in response:  "That sounds wonderful!"  So Ken thought that being a Jazz pianist was at least as good as being an academic.  Joe and I agreed that Ken's view was as good as any.

We also talked a bit about my biography and the skim milk diet I went on in the 60s.  In my Psychology IV class at that time (1967) we had lectures from the very popular Prof. Butz Olsen (formally Otto Egede Budtz Olsen), a professor of physiology.  Prof. Butz liked to ramble a bit  -- which was part of his popularity -- and one thing he told us was that the liquid diet being given to American astronauts at that time had a very similar composition to skimmed milk.  He therefore had been living on skim milk for some months to try it out -- supplemented by a daily glass of beer and a daily glass of orange juice.  Plus some whole milk for the fat-soluble vitamins.  So Butz really was a lovable eccentric.

I told Joe that I had done the same for about 6 months and had bought a 56lb sack of powdered skim milk from the local South Brisbane milk factory for the purpose.  It was a very cheap way to eat and so I lived on about 60c a week at the time.  Joe is very interested in diet so took a keen interest in all that.

There is actually a video of Butz talking about his life here.  There is also a very brief bio of him here

A 95th!

Anne's mother has just turned 95 and is still mentally with it but physically frail of course.  Such an occasion could not go without celebration of course so we had a small party in the BBQ area of the nursing home late yesterday afternoon

The ladies all brought along their specialties for the party food and we had quite a good fruit punch to wash it down:  Anne brought  along one of her sandwich specialties  -- Hungarian open  sandwiches with Liptauer cheese spread.  Rather peskily,  Anne has to make her own Liptauer as it is not on sale anywhere in Brisbane that we know of.  Anne got it just right this time, however.

It was a very Presbyterian occasion -- no alcohol and no music -- which I entirely approved of.  Having myself once been a very strict Protestant, I am still at home with that outlook.

There were about 12 people present plus 3 littlies aged between 2 and 4.  It was a great pleasure to see the littlies doing what littlies do:  Running around like mad things.  They had a great time and we had a great time watching them.

Anne and her two sisters were present plus attached menfolk.  I talked mostly to Ralph as I usually do.  I think he is a real gent and is still pretty good at age 80.

I was a little bit hypnotized by one of Anne's nieces once removed. Zenia is a tall blue-eyed blonde university student with the emphasis on tall.  She arrived wearing short denim shorts that revealed what I think are the best pair of legs I have ever seen.  She could have stepped out of a fashion magazine. "Legs that go on forever" certainly describes Zenia.  I was pleased to see that she also seemed very self-confident and relaxed in the setting.  Confidence is a great asset and a pretty good predictor of strong mental health.

Lunch and videos with Joe

Joe and I had lunch at my usual haunt and we went back to my place to look at some videos I had made about 20 years earlier.  The first was a video of some bits of advice I wanted to leave with Joe in case I died when he was young and the second was family home movies in  which he was the star -- starting when he was about 6 months old and ending when he was 3.  There were of course some amusing bits and Joe got to see himself during a time that he had almost entirely forgotten.  He actually came out as a rather wise child  -- certainly a cautious one anyway.

Joe was far from the only one in the video and little Timmy came across as rather gorgeous and we both enjoyed Paul's early views on girls.

Pics from NZ

In the belief that some of the many  beautiful pics Von sends us from NZ might gain appreciation outside the family, I occasionally put some up on Facebook accompanied by my comments. Here are the latest:



My comments:  Little lambs are cuddly.  And they inspired one of the greatest poems in English -- by Blake.  But in no time at all you have a large SHEEP instead



My comments:  A little Dutch girl with her Dutch grandfather.  She's eating peas fresh from the garden.  In New Zealand.  Such a kind face. No wonder she loves her "Poppy".

Christmas

I got up too late to go to church.  Had a leisurely breakfast of croissants and jam with Anne instead.  I am rather nonplussed at how early most of the Christmas church sevices are.  There is a rather nice Anglican church just one block away from where I live but their Christmas service is at 7am!  Whom are they kidding?  At least it is 9:30am at the cathedral.  When I used to be a regular at Presbyterian services in the '60s, the morning service began at 11am!  Much more civilized.

I got to the family Christmas do at Paul's place at about noon and talked mainly to Joe.

The lunch was ham plus roast lamb plus roast chicken, all of which were good.

After lunch Paul skyped Vonnie in from NZ and we all had a chat with her. I missed seeing her at the do on 23rd.  Practically all the family were there except her.  So it was good to catch up.  I discovered that I had bought Hannah a bicycle with trainer wheels for Christmas, which she really liked.  I just tell people (mainly Jenny) to buy whatever they think fit as presents from me and I just pay, which is a very satisfactory arrangement for all concerned.  I have selected some great gifts that way!

The biggest excitement for the day (aside from seeing Von) was the dessert:  Trifle PLUS  Pavlova -- two of my favourites.

I found Timmy lying flat on the floor of the billiards room at one stage.  I think he had been bending the elbow a bit much.  But otherwise everybody just sat around talking.  It was a relaxing and congenial party rather than an eventful one.

About 3pm Joe and I left for my place and we had chats over a  cup of tea on my verandah -- discussing "secret men's business".  I was pleased that he seems to have no money problems.  He lives on his scholarship income without difficulty.  I have always been that way too.  We also discovered a few more parallels between our lives -- things that I did when I was younger and similar things that he has done recently.

Joe has taken a great interest in diet, health and fitness in recent times so he told me a bit more about that.  He seems to be  putting it into practice in a reasonable way.  He certainly looks fit.


Hannah on her new bike

Big Christmas lunch

Suz and Russell put on a traditional Christmas lunch today that also featured what has become a family tradition:  A secret Santa event plus a mystery present event.  Everybody brings along a wrapped $10 present for the latter event and people draw lots to select a present one after the other.   And presents can be claimed from  previous lot-drawers, which is always a high-spirited event.

And after that we had the kiddy present event, where only the little ones got presents.  For that I gave Sahara a "First Bible", which was a rather kiddy-proof collection of illustrated Bible stories.  Susan reminded me that I had given her a book of Bible stories when we sent her to the Catholic schoool in Gordonvale -- which she had good memories of.  So Saharah's "First Bible" got a good welcome.

Russ cooked some good ham and roast pork and after the present hi-jinks we had a variety of dessert offerings.  I plumped for the trifle as usual.

Simon was seated across from me at the dinner table with Joe and Paul also in close proximity.  Simon's British background makes him surprisingly politically correct for a military man so we had an interesting discusion when we somehow got into mention of Africans.  I made some observation about the high rates of African crime and Simon asked me to what I attributed that. I replied that it was ancestral, which agitated Simon a bit.  He had been told all his life that it was "poverty" that lay behind disruptive black behaviour and saw that attribution as a moral issue:  To see any ancestral influence was immoral.

I replied along the D.P. Moynihan lines that you are entitled to your own opinion but you are not entitled to your own facts  -- pointing out that every African population everywhere was poor and crime-ridden, regardless of the quite varied social and government arrangements under which they live.  So that can be seen as a problem regardless of your opinion of its genesis.

Someone had apparently told Simon that Brazil was an example of a society without racial frictions depite its large African and mestizo population -- but I pointed out that wealth and poverty are highly correlated with skin colour there too, with blacks at the bottom, mestizos in the middle and whites running things. That seemed to wrap things up for Simon

I am quite sorry that I appear to have distressed him but "facts are chiels that winna ding", as the Scots say.  And facts have the last say as far as I am concerned.  Paul was quite pleased that I just presented the facts in a calm and dispassionate way as he sees no moral issues in the matter either.


The festive table


Ava Marie was looking pretty in her red frock


Everybody loves Dusty but there's no love like mother love

Dinner with Joe

Joe mostly lives in Canberra so opportunities for us to get together for a chat are few.  Last night, however,  I shouted him a dinner at my usual Greek restaurant, including beer.  I think it is the first time I have had a beer with my son so that is a bit of a landmark.

He arrived at my place about 5:30 pm so before we left I took the opportunity to play him my latest audio discovery:  An immaculate performance of Beethoven's piano concerto no. 5 with Emil Gilels as soloist.  It reduced me to tears (of joy) when first I heard it.



Fortunately, Joe likes classical music too.  Here is another audio treasure I must also play him some time soon.  An amazing performance of Bedrich Smetana's "Vltava" by two Japanese ladies.



Amazing what you can do with a Steinway.  Joe is himself a pianist so he may have a particular appreciation of both above works.

Anyway, Joe told me a lot about his life in Canberra over dinner, which  I was interested to hear.  I offered various words of advice at different stages but, as usual, he had already arrived at similar conclusions by himself.  He and I are quite different in personality and appearance but the mental similarities are considerable.

After dinner we went back to my place and had a cup of tea with some Smetana selections playing in the background.  Joe asked me quite a bit about my recollections of times past and there were a few laughs in that!  I myself find it rather amazing that I wore platform heels in the 70s!

A Christening

Matthew is now a Catholic.  Neither Paul nor Susan are religious but Susan was brought up a Catholic so liked the idea of her son  following in her footsteps.  I also pointed out to Paul that religion can be helpful at giving direction to young people so, despite his own lack of background, Paul was quite happy to give Matthew that identity.  Ken has always been basically anti-religious but even he came along to the ceremony.  So Matthew had all four grandparents along to witness his introduction into the church.

Joe acted as godfather and a Filipina lady who is Susan's stepmother acted as godmother.  Both were very pleased to do so.  Joe became a Catholic by choice and religion was his best subject at school! Like a lot of Catholics he is pretty "lapsed" these days, however.

Matthew is only one-and-a-bit years old but he's more the size of an average two year old.  Having a 6' tall mother is responsible for a lot of that.  So when his godmother was holding him during the blessing, it was a bit amusing.  Like almost all Filipinas she is a little lady of only about 5' tall and Matthew looked quite a lump for her to be carrying.

The church at Kedron was quite nice.  It was modern without being too modern -- something that only Catholics seem to be able to carry off in their church designs.  Modern Protestant churches usually look horrible to me.  I like some old-fashioned dignity in a church building.

The service was conducted by a young priest from Vietnam.  There is such a lack of vocations in Australia that the church is now very dependent on clergy from overseas.

Matthew didn't much like getting the chrism put on his forehead but he liked the font.  He managed to get his hand in and have a bit of a splash at one point.  The priest poured quite a bit of water on his head (affusion), slightly to my surprise.  Most Protestants just give you a sprinkling (aspersion), I think (Baptists excepted, of course).

I gave Matthew about a dozen old boy's books as a baptismal present.  Paul wants him to be a reader and the old books have plenty of good yarns in them.  They are the sort of books I read as a boy.

After the service, we adjourned to Susan's father's place for a BBQ, where we got plenty of good food and had lots of chats. With Joe in town we wanted to hear from him and it was a good occasion to do so.  Joe has put himself on a "Paleo" diet and it seems to suit him.  There is no fat on him.  He also does gym, boxing, weightlifting etc so he is in very good shape physically.  Unusual for a mathematician, I think.

Someone asked me today about the difference between a Christening and a baptism.  And the answer is that "Christening" is the popular term for what happens when you take your kid to get baptised.  But a Christening actually includes two rites (a rite is a church ceremony):  The rite of Chrismation and the rite of Baptism.  Chrismation is when the kid gets the holy axle-grease spread on his forehead.  So most people are not aware of it but there is a difference in meaning between the two terms.


Receiving the affusion (He got a taste of the holy water)


With parents and Godparents


A strong likeness between Matthew and his maternal grandmother

A third car

At my stage in life, I don't like driving very much but I have somehow become the owner of 3 cars.  I have had the Echo since 2005 and that is what I mainly drive but I also have my 1963 Humber Super Snipe for Sunday driving

Anne has however just bought a new car -- a Corolla -- and the car dealer offered her only $500 for her 1998 Toyota Starlet, which rather upset her as she has found it a very good car.  So I upped the offer and bought it off her instead.  Fixing minor problems, re-registering it and insuring it however cost me a bit too  -- but not as much as I expected.

But in the end I think I got a good car very cheaply and have set it aside for Joe to drive whenever he is in Brisbane.  By my count that is 4 cars I have given him but the first two were on their last legs.  He never asks for things but he has an indulgent father.  It doesn't seem to have spoilt him.



Anyway, arranging the insurance and changing the registration took Anne and me most of the morning, which I had predicted  but certainly did not enjoy.  There must be a simpler way!  It's amazing the questions insurance companies ask and everybody knows about the long lines of people waiting to talk to government car registration agencies.

Joe, Anne and I had lunch together at my usual haunt before I handed over the car and Joe filled us in a bit about his life in the ACT.

Tonight I shouted Anne a dinner at a restaurant we like to make up for all the aggravation during the day.  They have very cold beer there, which drags me in rather often now that it is summer.  One of the food items I ordered was Nachos.  It came with a pink topping comprised of sweet chilli sauce combined with sour cream.  It tasted great!

A welcome home

Anne put on a lunch for the weary travellers just returned from the USA and UK -- Paul, Susan and Matthew

Anne made  some very good ham sandwiches to her own recipe which went down rapidly -- and she followed that up with some mini-Pavlovas topped with mango, cream etc.

We talked mainly about the big trip and Paul seemed to like Scotland best of all the places he visited.  We also talked about British public schools and the possibility of Matthew being sent to one in due course.

Matthew had of course forgotten me completely so seemed a bit scared of me at first but he soon got over that.  He had great fun with a pink balloon which entertained us all.  He sure is a little livewire.


But that was not the end of the day's social activities.  That night Joe rang me to say that officialdom required my birth certificate as part of his application for a passport.  I think they dream up these things just to make life difficult for people.  There was no such requirement for around 100 years so why now?

Anyway I scrabbled around and found a copy of the certificate and ran it over to Joe at Jenny's place.  And while I was there we all had a cup of tea and discussed family trusts, real estate, divorce etc.

Dr Cotter, the local doctor during my childhood in Innisfail

Probably the greatest misfortune of my life occurred at a time when I was totally unaware of it.

I have frequently-occurring skin cancers, far more frequent than anything my parents ever had.  White people growing up in the tropics do tend to suffer a lot from skin cancer  -- mostly BCCs and SCCs -- as fair skin of Northern European origin (particularly Irish skin) is not at all suited to the direct sunlight of the tropics. The grey skies of England, Scotland and Ireland are its natural habitat.

But my frequency of BCCs and SCCs is extreme.  I have at least  half a dozen procedures a year to zap the worst of them.

So how come?  How come I get them so badly?  The answer is rather clear.  In about the first two thirds of the 20th century lots of kids were given low doses of arsenic for various reasons.  One such preparation was "Bell's compound" cough syrup.  It appears to have originated in the USA but was very popular for a while in Queensland.  And its legacy years later, for those who had a lot of it, is arsenic-weakened skin that frequently degenerates into  cancer.

And I had a lot of upper respiratory ailments as a kids, largely due, I think, to the fact that I have a deflected septum.  I was not in fact given Bell's compound but rather Dr Cotter's own "pink mixture" which would appear to have reflected the popular wisdom of the day about the utility of arsenic in combating coughs and colds.  So the fact that I had a LOT of it has come back to haunt me.  The toxicity of everything is in the dose so for most people the arsenic probably did no harm.  It's only when arsenic builds up that the harm occurs.

So Doctor Cotter unwittingly harmed me.  He died in 1972 so it is too late to remonstrate with him now and he was in fact a distinguished medical scientist in his day.  He was in fact responsible for eliminating Weil's disease from the sugarcane industry. Seeing my father was a canecutter for a while Dr Cotter may well have also done me a great favour.  The biography of Timothy John Patrick Cotter  is here.  He was of Irish Catholic origins and an opponent of government-run healthcare.  As the bio notes, he was an early adopter of sulfonamides  and I do remember his prescription of "M&Bs"

Why don't all Greenies move to New Zealand?

I put this up on one of my daily blogs (Greenie Watch) but I thought perhaps it had a place here too:

New Zealand has a-plenty the sort of clean Green life that Greenies claim they want while also being a modern country where you can drink the water and speak English to everyone.  An excerpt from a private blog written by a mother who has moved to a small town in New Zealand:

"The vege garden is another place my and Simon's time disappears into -- as we plant, weed & fertilise our pretty vast garden in the hope of having a large enough crop so we always have access to fresh organic veges whenever we like.  It is an amazingly liberating feeling to have control of our food sources and we are learning more and more everyday about what it means to be a vege and fruit gardener.  Also stay tuned as my Roses have just started to flower.. They are BEAUTIFUL!!

Last Monday the Playcentre organised a trip to a farm which is owned by one of the Playcentre families.  The farm was HUGE and on arrival we all met and drove up to the cow milking shed.  We had a tour then headed to a paddock which contained some pigs and also a herd of calves.  There were great hay piles to climb and we enjoyed watching the calves being fed by a big trailer full of milk covered in teats for the calves to suckle.  We then had some morning tea near the farm houses and then fed some lambs.  Once that was done we headed to the farm owner's house and enjoyed a sausage sizzle and the kids played together in the large back yard and tennis court.  We also had a celebration for one of the boys who is turning 5 which means  he starts school.  Kids start school on their 5th birthday in New Zealand which I feel is a nice way to transition the kids into school."

And the little two-year old girl in the family loves the lambs her family has adopted (Below)



I don't think Greenies know what they want

Lunch with Joe

Joe arrived back in Brisbane yesterday so we had lunch together today.  I  wanted to tell him a few things that you only learn from experience about Ph.D. studies, so that he could cruise through his.  I also wanted to sort out a few things about my will and was pleased that Joe looked forward to inheriting the Humber.  We also talked about me selling my present house  as I should be able to make a better job of that than Paul and Joe would after my death.  So it was mainly a fairly serious conversation.

We lunched at my usual brunch haunt in Buranda