Tingalpa is where it's at!

Tingalpa has long been one of Brisbane's lowliest suburbs -- notable only as a place you pass through on your way to the seaside at Wynnum.

But a miracle has happened.  Tingalpa now hath all that the heart desires, as Dr Johnson might have said.

It started with the IGA.  The IGA is a small supermaket that is much more convenient to get around than the huge Coles and Woolworths stores.  And it seems to have lots of good things and a friendly staff.

And it all took off from there.  It now even has a Sushi train.  And that, I think, is a prime marker of being in tune with modern international civilization.  Japan has lessons for us all.

And the Chinese bakery there is marvellous -- with bread like you had forgotten was possible -- and the Indian there does a Lahori curry that beats any other curry I have tasted.  And I have eaten  curries in India (plus Sydney and London).

And the latest thing is that they now have a Mexican there ("Chidos").  Anne and I went there last night and it was very good Mexican.  And, at the risk of being boring, I have tasted Mexican in Mexico.

Plus they have a Thai etc etc.

But they do have a very strange Australian bottleshop there.  If you knock on his door a few minutes after he has closed (at 7pm!)in order to buy liquor from him, he won't open his door.  Indians  and Chinese would regard him as a very strange creature.  I do too.

I suspect that he may be Scottish.  Scots can get very rigid about their customs.  And I speak as someone who wears the kilt on occasions!  And I have been to Scotland three times.  I have even done research there.  See here.

Diet

I am probably being repetitious here but I wonder if the young people know what we oldies went through by way of diet.

For CENTURIES the British diet consided of "meat + 3 veg".  The veg were potatoes  plus cabbage and carrots or beans of you were lucky

And the meat was somethinhg hacked off a dead animal --  such as steak or if you were unlucky sausages.  And if you were REALLY unlucky it was liver.

The vegetables had s**t out of  boiled out of them and the meat was fried to death

For my hospital admissions, I always go to the Wesley  -- Brisbane's top private  hospital.  But even there it helps to be one of the people.  You get  to choose your dinner if you are there in the morning but if you are an afternoon or evening admission you get the default dinner!  And it is very ethnic:  Australian ethnic.  Something might be  done with the smashed potatoes to make them more edible but that is about the  limit.

But somehow we survived.  Rather Paleo, I guess.  And I must confess that that I can still eat such a presentation  -- though not without amusement.  I recognize that it it is good if boring food.  If you ever go into an Australian/British hospital, you had better get used to it.

Cake tins and poverty

I have always been aware that my parents were poor.  My father was a hard worker so they always managed to put sufficient food on the table and kept a good roof over our heads -- but that was about their limit.  They rarely saved anything and doctor's bills were stressful for them.

And one of the indexes of that is that my mother would occasionally borrow money from me even when I was a child.  I got pocket-money of a florin a week (which bought about what $2 would buy today) and usually saved it in my moneybox.  Even when I was a kid I was not big on spending money on myself.  So sometimes I would have the equivalent of about $50 in my moneybox.  And that was enough for my mother to do her essential shopping.  I always got the money back so didn't mind.

Jenny remembers her father borrowing money off her too when she was a kid.  So maybe it was a generational thing.  But he used to pay her interest on his borrowings  -- which was fun for both of them.

But I have just remembered another poverty episode that I thought strange even at the time.  My mother did not have a cake-tin to keep her boiled fruitcakes in (You boil the fruit, not the cake).  Boiled fruitcakes are something of a tradition in Australia, particularly around Christmas time.  They are  often kept for a month or more and eaten only gradually.  So you needed a tin with a lid that sealed fairly well.

A popular source of caketins were tins of toffees and other candies that were often bought as gifts at Christmas times. They were tins of about 8" in diameter so were a good size for keeping fruitcakes in after all the contents had been eaten.  But my mother could not afford one.  So when I was about 6 or 7 she went down to our genial Chinese grocer in Innisfail ("Joe Charles") and asked if she could buy just the tin.  I was with her at the time and to my amazement he agreed.  He tipped the toffees into a big candy jar -- for sale as individual sweets -- and sold my mother the tin for some small sum.  Amazing.  Times were different then.  I remember wondering what the original contents of our caketin would have been like.

3 sisters again

Anne has 2 sisters and the 3 of them get together once or twice a year for a sisterly lunch or dinner, with an early January gathering being particularly customary  -- with customary male companions also being invited.

So last night the 6 of us met at Oliver's restaurant at Manly. It's a rather fancy place so I expected bad service but it was not too slow.

My hearing was a bit of a problem as the place had a tiled floor and was very busy with lots of chatty people.  I find it very difficult to hear people under those circumstances.   But I gathered with the men down one end of the table while the ladies were at the other end so the louder male voices got through to me fairly well in the end.  Colin had to lean over and shout in my ear, however, which he very kindly did.

Colin is 90,  It must be a sign of my own antiquity that I find myself dining with 90-year-olds.  We discussed various environmentalist issues and agreed that the Greenies and animal lib people go too far.  Why birds such as Galahs are protected while they are a real pest  -- with great flocks of them -- in Western Queensland really is hard to understand, for instance.  Surely trapping them for export should be allowed.  They're worth big money overseas.  And we all agreed that the Northern Territory should be opened up for buffalo hunting.

The food was good.  I had the lamb fillet, which was very tasty, but there was a rather small serve of it, which I had expected of such a restaurant.  The others had grilled fish.

We adjourned to Anne's place afterward for tea and coffee.  We could all hear one-another perfectly there so we chatted on for quite a while.

A small meditation: It has always amazed me that there seems to be an inverse relationship between restaurant prices and restaurant service. One would think that dearer restaurants would excel on service -- but it is the other way around. Service in expensive restaurants is almost always dilatory and snooty. You can wait a long time even to get a menu put in front of you. That happened at Olivers. I had to get up, find the menus, and distribute them to my table.

The food however arrived in a reasonable time but then there came the "issue" of paying for it. You would think that paying would be the last thing to be an issue but it was. I requested the bill but after it was not forthcoming I had to walk out into the kitchen to stir things up there. That did work. I got a bill. But then there was nobody to pay the money to! Nobody seemed to want it! I left it on the desk hoping that it would go to its proper place in due course! Amazing.

Have I gone over the top?

Yes.  I have gone over the top.  In my view there is nothing more beautiful than a child with golden curls and brilliant blue eyes.  And gorgeous Dusty is just such a child at the moment.  But my son Joe was such a child too.  And even I was.  Though I think my hair was more white than golden -- as I can still remember my father's friends addressing me as "Snowy".

So when I encountered a young mother outside Bunnings today who had THREE little blondies with her, I of course turned to water.

I was there to buy a bolt cutter (Don't ask) but Bunnings have a charity sausage sizzle outside their front door and I am a sausage tragic.  I can't go past them.  So I was stopped eating a sausage in bread there (with mustard) when a young mother rolled up with her 3 littlies,  One of them was about 4 and said:  "Mummy, Can we have a sausage?":  Obviously well-brought-up Australian kids.

The mother said:  "I don't know,. I don't think I have got enough money for that.  And she opened her change purse and was scrabbling around in it to see what she had.  I had finished my sausage by then so immediately got up, put my hand in my pocket and pulled out all my change and dropped it into the lady's purse.  She was a bit startled but looked up and saw me smiling at her so  said "Thank You".  I just walked on.

After I had brought my bolt cutter and left the shop I did however note that all the kids had a sausage.  I was most pleased.

I was wearing my blue singlet at the time so the lady would probably have seen what I did as just normal Ocker kindness.

I own a Tardis

A Tardis car to be precise.  As everybody knows, a Tardis is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.  It sounds impossible but Toyota achieved it years ago.

I am referring to my Toyota Starlet.  As everybody knows it is a very small, light car.  It was the smallest Toyota available for a while in the '90s and today even my Toyota Echo seems big and heavy alongside it.  Yet it can carry four people and has a big boot for luggage as well.

I bought the car off Anne mainly for Joe's use while he is in Brisbane.  She was upgrading to an automatic Corolla for the sake of her bones.  And she used to carry around in it a big bootful of all sorts of equipment needed for her work as a school nurse:  Audiology machines etc.  So she can tell you about the ample boot.

And when Jenny was driving Von & Co to the airport on 5th, she had to take the Starlet as it was the only way to fit in both them and their luggage.  I gather that they had acquired more possessions whilst here.   So 3 people plus Hannah in a kiddy seat got to the airport with all their luggage courtesy of the Starlet.

How does such a little car manage to be so big?  I suspect that only Toyota and Dr Who could tell you.

A jammy sendoff

For some reason, I have accumulated a great range of jams ("Jelly" in U.S. usage).  If I see what looks like an interesting jar of jam I buy it -- and people make jam out of all sorts of things these days.  The big problem however is that there is one sort of Jam I REALLY like:  cumquat jam.  I even have my own cumquat tree which provides me with the fruit for it.  So whenever I want to put jam on my breakfast toast or croissant, I reach for the cumquat and the other jams never get touched.  So when I found I had about 20 jams in my cupboard, I decided that I had to do something about it.  I put on a special jammy breakfast at my place this morning.

Cumquats ready for jam-making

Both Joe and Von were due to return to their present homes this weekend so I made it a breakfast sendoff.  I had some especially good fresh white bread sourced from a small local baker to go with the jam plus small croissants and raisin bread.  The fresh bread lived up to its expectations and both it and the croissants soon ran out.  And if people found a jam that they particularly liked they were given it to take home.  I greatly reduced my collection that way.

Present were Paul, Joe, Ken, Von, Simon, Davey, myself and Anne  -- plus littlies.  Suz and Russ were late arrivals but there was still raisin bread left so they did not miss out.  The kids had great fun with my Sao biscuits (cookies)  -- laying them as a row of tiles here and there on the floor and elsewhere, breaking them up into pieces and occasionally eating them.  Large cracker biscuits clearly have a lot to be said for them.



It was very hot, as it usually is at this time of the year but everybody seemed to think the breakfast was a fun thing anyway.  The temp at my place rose to 37 degrees C later that day  -- 98 degrees in the old money.  It was humid too.

Something that Anne pointed out to me is that the gathering was mostly male.  That was however mostly happenstance, I think.  I don't know why Olivia and Maureen did not come but Jenny was crook and Paul's household had family obligations.  Susan's family were staying there for a couple of days at the time.  And Susan's father, mother and stepmother are all lovely people whom you would not want to offend.  Somehow however Paul made his apologies and came to my crazy breakfast, without Susan but together with Matthew.  So we had a full complement of littlies running around.  And run they do.

Another recovered memory

Timmy was such a great little kid when he was a toddler that I often tell fun stories about the things he did.  One story that I don't think I have told before has just come to mind.

It was just after we had moved to Faversham St and all the gang were there.  Jenny was in the kitchen busy cooking and Timmy was talking to her -- about what I do not know.  But he was distracting her from her cooking so she told him to get out of the kitchen  -- which he did, standing in the doorway about one inch from the kitchen.  And he resumed talking to her.  So she said:  "I told you to get out of the kitchen".  He replied: "But I am out of the kitchen".  A little 4-year-old lawyer.  Jenny was much amused.

New year's eve

Jenny very kindly put on a party in her BBQ area at her place for a few of us even though she was not feeling very well.  It was basically for the twins with family plus Nanna, Anne and myself.

Simon did most of the cooking and made some kofta for us, which was very good.   Anne brought along a bowl of Liptauer for the occasion, which was much appreciated as a dip.  I asked Simon how come he does the cooking in his house and he replied that Von was so limited that he HAD to learn.  Apparently he was not much of a cook before meeting Von.

The kids had a great time running around Jenny's back yard with Dusty in particular being a ball of energy.

At one stage the ladies were upstairs so I had the two young fathers to myself.  I used the occasion to propagandize them about the importance of fathers to daughters -- something that is not always realized.  But I am sure that both Simon and Russ love their daughters anyway so I probably did not need to speak.  Von said later that Hannah is a Daddy's Girl and Russ involves himself very actively with his children so both girls should have it all.

At the end of the evening, I took Von upstairs and announced that I was going to tell her a secret.  She said she is good at keeping secrets.  There will be much curiosity about what the secret is but I doubt that it will leak out -- though I think she will have to tell her husband  -- but he doesn't say anything anyway (OK, I'm exaggerating -- a little).  It's just a fun thing.

UPDATE:

Anne stayed at my place overnight and helped us to welcome in the new year with a good breakfast the next morning.  It was fried pork chipolata sausages with plenty of fried onion, a fried egg and fried tomato -- plus toast of course.  It was a traditional English breakfast in other words.  Though I think she fried it all in olive oil.  I don't keep a fat pot.  Fat pots have far from died out in ethnic British circles but they are on the wane.

So the breakfast was delicious and much enjoyed despite it being everything that the food freaks deplore.  I have always ignored all food fads anyway but the latest thinking is that fat is good for you so I think I have the last laugh one way or the other.

A double celebration

For lunch today I went to a small do put on by one of Anne's nephews principally for his immediate family. Not much happened except that two little girls aged about 2 or 3 ran around all the time.  They had such a good time that it was a delight to see.

And the lady with the legs was there.  Her father was some improbable height so her long legs were to be expected.  And I was pleased that she obviously knows that they look good  -- as even at family occasions she keeps them well displayed.  She wore a very short skirt today.  She is, however, a perfectly amiable young lady.

And tonight I went over to Jenny's place for a BBQ.  Paul, Joe  and Von were meant to be the principal guests but Paul felt too knackered to come.  He has had a very active Christmas.  So present were Von, Simon, Hannah, Joe, Nanna, Jenny and myself.  We had it in Jenny's backyard.

Jenny cooked up a variety of BBQ meats plus lots of extras.  One lot of extras that I particularly liked were some sliced mangoes.

As I have become something of a cook myself in recent months, I noticed something that I might not otherwise have done.  I noticed that Jenny had given us a profusion of fried onion to go with our meat.  I deduced that Jenny must  have cut up a lot of onions to give us that.  So I said to her: "You must have cut up three onions for that".  She replied:  "Yes.  Three big ones".  Jenny enjoys cooking so she clearly has learnt important stuff.  And the importance of fried onions is hard to overstate

Joe did various gymnastics in the yard to entertain Hannah and that really got Hannah in.  She tried to imitate what Joe did.  She got pretty wound up.

I gave Joe a 75X telescope as a Christmas present.  I felt I should have given him one as a boy so I hope he still has some boy in him.  They were all planning to look at the sky through it when I left.

The Christmas that was

My Christmas celebrations began last Sunday with a visit to a Christmas carols service at Wynnum Presbyterian church, where Anne's sister Merle goes.

The selection of carols was excellent and they were well performed.  My only beef was that the minister inserted a long and boring sermon into the middle of it.  The sermon was about trust in God and may in fact have been well-tailored to the young people in the congregation but was too repetitious and old-hat for me.  Anne didn't like the sermon much either.

They also however put on a supper afterward which had quite good food -- including some Sushi.  I was going to say something clever to the minister about his narthex but, being old,  I couldn't quite  remember such a hard word.  So I made a comment about his transept which he didn't reply to at all.  Maybe he was wise.

And today, Christmas day, was a big gathering of the clan at Paul's place.  Anne and I arrived in my 50-year-old Humber Super Snipe at about noon.  Susan did a great job glazing the big ham and there was all sorts of other food.  Somebody forgot the bread, though.  I was sitting opposite Tracy's Simon at table which was lucky as he always has interesting things to say.

Being a bit crass, I said at one stage:  "Simon is being very well mannered, eating his drumstick with a knife and fork".  Simon shot straight back with a smile "British officer".  And indeed he is, though he is in the Australian armed forces these days.

He started out in the Royal Navy at age 16. Transfers from the Australian armed forces to the British ones and vice versa don't seem to be much trouble.  The similarities in practice are large.

As evidence of that look at the two pix below.  One is the redoubtable Capt. Mainwaring from "Dad's Army" set in WWII and the other is of me in Australia back in the 60's.  We are wearing the same uniform, now superseded I believe.  It was called "Battle Dress" and was nice and cosy for the cool English climate.





And Simon is no chocolate soldier.  Australia deployed him to Afghanistan 2 or 3 times.  There was some comment about it being bad to wear uniforms but since both Simon and I have worn our  country's uniform we didn't agree with that at all.

Simon, Ken and I talked quite a bit about ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.  Simon sees a lot of continuity between those times and now.

We didn't talk much about modern times, though I mentioned the tragic sinking of the Royal Oak at Scapa Flow during WWII. So many drowned children!   The commander of the base at Scapa Flow had made the most urgent representations to navy HQ about the harbour not being safe against submarine penetration and urging more barriers.  The navy ignored him.  So when a sub got in and sank the Royal Oak, who did the navy blame for the loss?  If you know anything about the British armed forces, the answer is obvious:  The commander of the base at Scapa Flow

We discussed various religions for a while and we all agreed that Warmism is a religious cult.

Paul has recently revived his swimming pool and all the kids had a good time in it.  The kids got heaps of presents.

Anne and I were both pretty tired by about 4pm so we left at that stage.   After I took Anne home I went home and had a big nap but I was back up again in time for the Queen's Christmas message.  I actually missed a couple of minutes of it as someone had switched off the power switch at the side of the TV.  It took me a while to figure that out.  There have been some little fiddle fingers in that room recently.

UPDATE:

I took some nice big slices of ham home from the party  (I bought the ham in the first place) so next morning I made up some big ham & mustard sandwiches, picked up Anne and went to North Wynnum to have  breakfast by the sea.  Anne bought a thermos for the tea. It was very quiet and we had great breezes so we really enjoyed it.

It was a bit of a drama buying fresh bread for the sandwiches as most of the bakeries were closed.  I finally got a very fresh loaf from a Chinese bakery at Tingalpa.

Dosas!

Everybody likes dosas and we have a good dosa restaurant near me so any excuse is a good excuse for dosas.  As I have done before, I took Von and Co. to the dosa restaurant as part of their welcome back to Brisbane.

It was a jolly occasion much taken up with the kids -- Matthew and Hannah particularly.  Those two walked to the restaurant from their mother's car holding hands!  Matthew is definitely in love -- and with such a good-looking girl to love you can understand it.

Hannah as usual acquitted herself well with the dosa  -- getting into it like an old pro.  Part of the attraction of dosas is the fun of figuring out how to eat them.  The ones we get are enormous.

After the dosas we went back to my sitting room and just relaxed over cups of tea.  I had choc chip biscuits as usual for Paul but he didn't get as many this time.  Others got into them as well.  At my place the kids provided most of the entertainment too.  Hannah and Matthew rediscovered the way my house is good for running around in circles.

Von was nicely dressed in a full skirt and a summery top but she always looks good anyway.  When she was a little girl Jenny and I used to say that she would look good in a paper bag.  Vonnie greatly disliked that saying as she thought that we might one day actually dress her in a paper bag!  I had the privilege of driving  Von from  the restaurant to my place in my Humber Super Snipe.  As Von remarked, it was a revival of the many drives I took her on when she was a girl.

The lovers

Pre-Christmas

This time of the year is of course a big time for socializing and I have got into that too

On Tuesday, Joe and I had lunch at the Phams.  We mainly talked about what he expects to be doing next year and talked about his interest in becoming a romantic novelist.  He has lots of options now that his Ph.D. studies seem to have ground to a halt.

On Wednesday (yesterday) Von & Simon moved from Ken's place to Paul's.  They don't like to impose on any one person for long.  Susan let me know about it and we arranged for me to come over that night for a chat.  Susan fed us some very good spring rolls.  We mainly discussed family matters but it was a good night.

Paul was a bit louder than usual.  I suspect he had been doing a bit of Christmas drinking.  But he keeps us talking, which is all to the good.  I talked to Von a fair bit.  We had a bit of a laugh about her food intake.  She is as slim as can be but Hoovers up any food around the place  -- just like Paul and Ken.  A lot of women would like to know how she does it.

Another thing we discussed: Jenny told Von recently that even when she was a little girl she said she wanted to marry a man who does the cooking.  Von has done exactly that, of course.  Being beautiful has its privileges.  But Von does most of the childminding and a lot of gardening. Their garden feeds them to a significant extent.

We also discussed that when the twins were around 10 or 11, they both wanted to "marry" me.  Jenny used to say: "But he's married to me".  But Suz would just wave that off. It was a fun time.

A "Welcome Home" dinner

For the first time in about 3 years we have both Joe and Von back with us for Xmas so I put on one of my usual dinners at my local Indian restaurant.  There must have been about 20 of us there, counting the littlies.

Dusty nearly made his escape at one point but I caught him in time.  He likes wandering about by himself. Hannah was there looking every inch a lady,  just like her mother was when she was a girl.  Hannah has got real model looks.  She just looks good all the time.  And still only aged 3!  Von had dressed her in a very fashionable-looking sundress.  Despite looking rather delicate, however, Hannah got into some hot curry in her usual way.  She has liked hot curry right from when she was very little.

The kids ran around shrieking a lot, which the family all liked to hear but I don't know how the restaurant staff found  it.  But I have been taking large parties there for around 10 years so I always get an appreciative welcome.

Paul was there without Susan as Matthew was crook so she had to stay home to look after him.  We sent her a takeaway curry so she would not miss out too much.

I talked mainly to Ken, Paul and Joe as usual and I conveyed to Ken Anne's appreciation of his taste in books. She reads whatever Ken gives or recommends to her.  Anne herself is still convalescing so could not come.  Nanna was missing too.  Apparently loud family gatherings have got a bit much for her.  At age 89 that is not too surprising.

On some occasions, a big gathering around a long table can be a bit restrictive in whom you can talk to but that is not the case with our gatherings.  We all know one-another of old so people swap seats and generally move around a lot.  George in particular must have got to talk to just about everyone.  George and kids are essential to a good family dinner in my opinion.

I lent the Toyota Echo to Von & Simon so I will be getting around in my big green Humber Super Snipe for a couple of weeks.  It goes quite well but is a bit awkward to park.  Joe is driving the Toyota Starlet so all 3 of my cars are actually in use for once.  I am a great fan of Toyota but it's the Humber that gets the admiration from others.  It is 50 years old so that accounts for a lot.

Some pix of the travellers below:

Lady Von and Miss 4

Joe, flanked by John and Hannah

Despite all the  glassware on the table, it was not a bibulous occasion.  Our family dos never are. Drunkenness would be boring.

A lunch and a birthday party

Last Thursday, Joe and I had a lunch together at the Phams.  He is just back from Canberra so we covered a lot of ground.  He has not made much progress with doing his Ph.D. and is now considering other options.  I have always thought that he had a greater talent at literary things rather than mathematics and that seems to be emerging.  He gave me a novel to read that he has just written.  I don't know much about the genre concerned but in my view it should be a goer.  A mainstream publisher would be unlikely to take it but the self-publishing options are good these days.  I also encouraged him to revive the novel he wrote in his early teens.

And today, Sunday, was the birthday party for little Sahara.  I gave Sahara a large pink soft toy of Peppa the pig which was immediately cuddled.  Sahara is now FOUR!  -- a great age.

There was a good rollup but I mainly talked to Simon and to Joe. I tried to interest various people in a discussion of Evangelii gaudium (The latest Papal document) but only Simon was interested.

Little Dusty looked gorgeous in a Hawaiian shirt and cowboy boots while Matthew had a well-fitting Hawaiian shirt on too.

The birthday girl plus dear little Dusty and devoted father Russ

A recovered memory!

I have a very poor memory of my own past  -- which is why I write a lot down.  I have a particularly poor memory for my earliest life.  But I have just now for some reason remembered something from when I was about 3 or 4.  I think it is my earliest memory.

At that time there were a lot of advertiserments in the newspapers and magazines which just showed the head of a lady  -- presumably advertising hats, cosmetics, soap etc.  They showed what sculptors call a "bust" of a lady -- a cut-off figure.

These used to upset me,. I used to cry over  these "broken ladies".  My mother used to try to explain it to me and she must have eventually succeeded.

Confessions of a clever clogs

"Clever clogs" is a derogatory British term for someone who escapes difficult situations with style or who keeps getting things right.  If you know anything about England you will not be surprised to hear that such people are hated and despised.  For good or ill, however, I have always been a clever clogs.  I regard that with a little pride but mostly with amusement -- so I thought I would note down some of the episodes in case they amuse one or two other people.

It all started in Grade 2.  Our "English" lessons consisted of the class repeatedly reading a story out of our school reading book until every pupil knew and understood every word in it.  And we could eventually all do that.  One kid would read one sentence and the next kid would follow with the next sentence and so on.

Then one day the teacher did a dastardly thing.  She asked us to close our reading books and tell the story as usual.  And all the kids could do that  -- except for me.  I had no idea what the next sentence was.  To the slack-jawed amazement of the other pupils, I was mightily praised for that.  The teacher realized that I was the only one who had actually been reading.  All the other pupils had simply been memorizing the story.

I was treated very warily by the other pupils from that point on. They clearly saw me as some sort of alien and mostly avoided me.  But I had never known anything else so it bothered me not a whit.  I was after all having a lot of fun reading.  For many years I used to borrow and read 2 to 3 books a week from the local library.

Then there was Grade 3. An episode there that lingers is when the teacher read out the "Little boy blue" poem.  I burst into tears at such a sad poem  -- again to the slack-jawed amazement of the other pupils.  I was the only kid that had understood the poem.  The teacher was much upset at my upset and we heard no more of that poem thereafter.

Something that occurred throughout primary school at that time were frequent spelling tests.  The teacher would read out words and we would have to write them down in correct spelling.  I of course always got 10 out of 10 for that, which again saw me looked at askance by the other pupils.  And when a new word popped up in our  reading, I always knew what it meant  -- which led to my primary school nickname of "The Walking Dictionary"

Another memory of those days was when we were doing parsing.  Yes:   Grade school kids at that time learnt grammatical parsing.  It is not even taught in High School these days I gather.  Anyway there came a day when the teacher (Mr. Madden) had a trick question for us.  He asked us to parse the word "Please!".  Slack jaws all round of course and even I had to think about it for a few seconds.  I promptly popped my hand up and said:  "Verb with subject and object understood".  I remember the teacher looking at me with some disgust. No-one was supposed to be able to answer that.  But he gave me an early mark anyway.

Something that only I knew about at the time concerned our school reading books.  At the beginning of each year we were all issued with a book that formed the basis for all that year's English lessons.  We would spend the whole year ploughing though about a quarter of the stories and poems in the book, trying to make sure that each pupil understood them.

I enjoyed the stories in our reading books and to this day consider them well-chosen.  They were mostly moral and sentimental stories and I still think well of morality and sentiment.

So from about  Grade 4 on I would sit down and read right through the reading book from cover to cover as soon as it was issued. I would do four times the year's work in one day, in other words.  Quite disgusting, of course.  I would even read through the prefaces and introductions, a strange habit I have to this day.

That did make lessons rather boring but I would amuse myself by always knowing the answers to the teachers' questions.  It would get to the point where the teacher would say:  "Yes, John. We know that you know but does anyone else know?"  He would then look around hopefully but often find all the other pupils with heads down.  So then he would call on me.  So I entertained myself in my own way.

I was also an occasional pesky question-answerer in High school.

One one occasion we were looking at an excerpt from Joseph Conrad that mentioned the "throbbing" of a ship's engine.  Our English teacher (Fastiere) asked what was meant by that.  I popped my hand up and said (approximately):  "That would be the triple expansion steam cycle at work".  Fastiere responded hastily: "Yes, yes, reciprocating engines".  The marine triple expansion cycle probably used by the engines at that time was apparently well beyond his ken so he rapidly changed the subject.

In High School, a much wider range of subjects was covered than in primary school.  So my general knowledge came more to the fore there. Again I always seemed to have all the answers and again it was noticed, so that my High School nickname was "The Walking Encyclopedia".

Throughout my schooling I encountered IQ tests fairly often.  We seemed to get one about once a year.  They were as fashionable then as they are unfashionable now.  The most predictive part of a IQ test is the vocabulary scale:  A list of words in increasing order of rarity --  where you have to pick the correct meaning for each one.  The last word on the list is so rare that only oddballs are expected to know it.  But I always got all of them right without effort.

Then one day I got a shock.  The final word on the list was one I had never seen before: "Inchoate".  And the derivation wasn't obvious either.  But I knew how English compounds are formed and I knew the use and meaning of the common English prefixes and suffixes.  So after a minute or two under my gaze the word emerged as meaning something like "unformed". So I ticked the answer "just beginning", which was of course right.

Note that I got the answer not from luck or a guess but as  a deduction from a prior body of knowledge.  That is how a clever  clogs works.  He doesn't know everything.  Nobody does.  But he has a set of strategies that enable him to figure out the right answer from the knowledge that he does have.

That was very evident in the mathematics questions of an IQ test.  I consider myself hopeless at maths but I did pretty well on the maths questions in IQ tests.  Why?  because most of the questions were just sequence detection tasks, which require only the simplest of strategies to work out.  Numbers are much simpler than people.

My best feat in High School, however, was completely unintentional.  The final junior German exam came up and, in my chronic absentmindedness, I forgot it was on.  I was however, something of a favorite of my German teacher (Leonard Gavrishchuk) so he sent another kid around to my place on a pushbike to remind me.  So I got on my pushbike to school and walked in half way through a 3 hour exam.  I imagine Gavrishchuk had to pull a few strings to get me admitted at all at such a late juncture.  Anyway, I finished with half an hour to spare.  I knew the answers so just had to write them down,  And I ended up getting an "A" for my answers, of course.  I still chuckle to myself about it.

But it gets worse.  I taught myself for the Senior exam  -- as an evening student.  Evening students were supposed to take three years to do it but I did it in one year.  I initially studied 4 subjects but later learned that you got judged on your best 4 subjects so it was advisable to sit 5 subjects.  So, just 4 months before the exam I started to study Italian.  I had not studied Italian before.  So in 4 months  as an evening student I did 4 years of full-time work.  I got a "B"! It was a crazy thing to attempt but I knew my strengths by then.

I think I will stop at that stage, though my Master's degree was amusing -- and I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation in 6 weeks.  It normally takes years.  My clever cloggery has never faltered.

A critic might say that if I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation in 6 weeks, it must have been pretty lightweight.  It was not.  I got about 10 academic journal articles out of it  -- which is about as good as you get.

But a germane question that somebody might reasonably ask at this stage  is:  "If you are so clever, how come you can't figure out your mobile phone?"  The question is a good one and the answer is a sad one.

I have become like a bacterium that has become resistant to  certain medications after prolonged exposure to them.  I wrote my first computer program in 1967.  That was at a time when there was no "off the shelf" software.  You had to write your own. And within a couple of years I was writing quite complex statistical analysis programs -- 5-dimensional matrices, anyone?  I ran the programs on university mainframes.  There were no personal computers then.

So I have participated in the tech revolution much longer than most people.  And I have got tired of having to learn how to work new stuff all the time.  I have learnt how to work dozens of electronic and electrical gadgets and most of that knowlege is now  useless -- as old gadgets are replaced by new ones.  So I just refuse to put in any effort to learn how to work new gadgets any more. I don't want my brain  cluttered with any more knowledge that will soon be obsolete.  Maybe I am just old.

Saved by Vancomycin

I am eternally grateful to a bacterium in Borneo from which Vancomycin is derived

On Wednesday I had a few small skin cancers cut out of my face.  As has been happening lately, however, some nasty staphylococci got into the wound and caused rapid facial swelling  -- which threatened to send me blind.  So I promptly took myself off to the Wesley for some infusions of lincomycin.  But that didn't work this time though.  The bacteria had probably become habituated to it.

So the infectious diseases specialist put me onto a drip of Vancomycin, which is something of a "last ditch" drug, though there are now a couple of alternatives to it.  It worked like a charm.  After two days in hospital, I am back home with the swelling almost completely gone.

I am getting to the stage where I will simply stop having anything on my face removed unless it is very aggressive.  I will become a permanent "Mr Blotch".  I am anyway.

Anne was unable to visit me as she can still barely walk after her recent knee replacement.  And Jenny is in New Zealand. Visitors would not have helped me much anyway.  I could have asked for Paul and Susan to come up but they are very busy with two little ones and a business to run.  But there was no need for me to bother them, anyway.

The nursing staff at the Wesley were as usual first class.  I took an overnight bag up to hospital but forgot a few things I should have put in it.  I think I will have a bag permanently prepared in future -- not a good aspect of being 70.  One of the nurses said I did't look as old as 70.  I have had so many bits cut out of my face that I have had a sort of facelift.

UPDATE:

I should perhaps have mentioned something above:  The Wesley is a relatively small hospital compared to some public hospitals.  It has only about 500 beds.  And as a very popular hospital, it is often stretched to the limit.  So I had to wait most of the day for them to find me a bed.  So I spent most of the day in a treatment room of the Emergency Dept.  But I was well looked after, getting an infusion of lincomycin as a first-stage response and  frequent and friendly attention generally   -- including coffee and sandwiches etc.

A prosciutto party

Woolworths have started stocking a particularly good (strong tasting) prosciutto so I thought I should introduce Paul and Susan to it before Woolworths destocks it.  Often when you find something you particularly like there it suddenly ceases to be available.  I am pretty sure the prosciutto is prosciutto crudo and it seems to be made locally.  A long way from Parma!

Paul, Susan and kids came over in the electric car at about 3pm.  We initially sat on my verandah.  None of us had had lunch so we got into a trayful of rolls with prosciutto and lettuce fillings that I had made up.  I put plenty of prosciutto on each to make sure Paul and Susan got the full taste of it.

Paul as usual ate up  -- so much so that he complained of an aching jaw at one stage.  Good prosciutto is pretty chewy.

After the prosciutto was disposed of we adjourned to my sitting room where Susan made tea and also cut up some mangoes for us.  It was ages since I had been  given diced mango so I expressed my appreciation.  I also had some choc-chip cookies on hand  which Paul got into.

We mostly talked about family matters, though I did at one stage explain to Paul what the West Lothian question was.

The kids were good.  Elise made no fuss at all and Matthew babbled on in his usual way.  He was wearing a rather swish Panama hat.  If he keeps that up into later life he will do well with the ladies.  He is very proud that he can say "Buddha".  It may be the first word he has learned to say clearly.  Pretty multicultural!  I usually have a Thai Buddha on the table when we dine on the verandah.  He gives us blessings  -- I think.  I also have a Ganesha up in my anteroom so I imagine I am well-stocked  with blessings.

I asked Paul if he wanted to plug his car in but he thought he had plenty of charge.  Since that time when he got a lot of criticisms for plugging his car in at my place he has never plugged in here again.  The criticisms seem to have got to him to a degree.  I have wiped them all now anyway.

Lincomycin to the rescue

On Monday, I had a rather large patch cut out of the skin on my forehead in order to remove some skin cancers.  From past experience, however, I knew there was a risk of facial swelling  after surgery on my forehead.  And that is no joke.  The swelling can close my eyes completely, leaving me blind.  The first time it happened I did lose vision in my right eye completely.

I have learnt from that however so arranged for Jenny to stay at my place overnight in case I woke up next morning unable to see. We had an Indian dinner that evening and Jenny admired my new crockpot.  And we had big chats about family matters



On Tuesday morning, however, there was no swelling so I thought I was out of the woods.  About 9:30am, however the swelling started so I arranged for Jenny to come back that night too.  By 9:30pm, however, the swelling looked quite bad so I got Jenny to drive me to the Wesley so I could get an intravenous infusion of lincomycin.  That was all a bit pesky but the Wesley staff were as ever first rate and I got prompt, attentive and friendly service. The visit cost me $200 but the decision was the right one as the lincomycin did hit the infection for six.  The swelling had already gone down a bit by next morning and at the time of writing on Wednesday evening, was largely gone.

More dosas

We all like dosas so welcome an excuse to have some.  I suggested a dosa lunch to Paul and Susan on a couple of occasions recently but other committments have precluded it.  Yesterday however it all came together and we arrived at the dosa restaurant just as the doors were opening for lunch.  The owner greeted us with a big smile as he knows me as a frequent diner.

As well as 3 masala dosas I ordered 3 pieces of meat samoosa plus a cheese and spinach naan for Matthew.  It was all first-rate when it came.  We decided that beer would go well so Paul went over the road and got a sixpack of Crown Lager, a premium beer.



Even though she is not much of a drinker herself (like Joe, her drink is MILK!) Susan specified Crown, probably because she knows that is what I mainly drink, on the odd occasions when I drink beer.  An observant woman!  And when the beer arrived, she organized the glasses for it!

After the lunch we retired to my place for a cup of tea, with choc chip biscuits to help.  Susan of course made the tea.  A paragon!

Matthew was kept busy with various toys brought along for the purpose and Elise just slept.  When she got hungry, she let out a  roar, however.

Paul had just seen a TV program about Scotland that morning which revived his appreciation of Scotland.  So we talked a lot about the place, its history and its present arrangements.  Paul was amazed at the generosity of its welfare system, all paid for with English money.  Even a university education is free to Scots, unlike England, the USA or Australia.