A MEMOIR OF SCOTLAND

A few recollections about my various visits to Scotland:

The most beautiful scenery I have ever seen was Scotland's Western Highlands. I have never been much of a one for scenery but this even got to me. The only thing in Australia that I know of which comes close is the road from Cairns to Port Douglas.

My wife and I made a detour to visit the Isle of Skye.



I was glad we did. It too was really beautiful. One morning I looked out the window of the bed and breakfast place in which we were staying and literally saw "a bright golden haze on the meadow" there.

After Skye, we drove further up the coast and eventually took a Caledonian McBrayne ferry across to Harris and then drove straight up the island to Lewis. When my wife and I got to the main centre on Lewis it was 11pm but still broad daylight and we had no trouble getting accommodation at a bed and breakfast place (i.e. a private home).

At the Northern tip of Lewis was a nice white sandy beach and I decided the next morning that a swim in Sub-Arctic waters would be worth a try. By the time I got in up to my knees I could not feel my toes so thought the better of it. Nobody else tried. I later did the same thing off a beach at Herm in the Channel Islands -- with similar results. I felt rather at home on Lewis. Everyone seemed to have skin that was as fair as mine.

On our way back South we stopped in Glasgow, where my wife had relatives. I got to know a fair bit about Glaswegians and really got to like them. I particularly liked their sense of humour. Billy Connolly's humour is in many ways simply an exaggerated form of typical Glaswegian humour. They are incredibly status-conscious, however. My being a Doctor went down exceedingly well! Education is, of course, the thing Scots most respect.

The most notable thing about Glasgow was that it looked as if it had just been heavily bombed. Whole suburbs were in rubble. But it wasn't the Luftwaffe that did it. It was smart-alec town-planners and Leftist social engineers. They bulldozed the "slums" such as the Gorbals. Beautiful old stone terrace houses which would have been snapped up for renovation in Australia were witlessly destroyed. They moved the slum-dwellers out to new estates such as Easterhouse which then also became pretty slum-like. I know. I later did a social survey there and saw for myself.

I did the social survey on my second trip to Glasgow. On that occasion, one thing I noted was that Scots are great lovers of ritual and "the done thing". They seem to love rules. They have a custom for every occasion. I went to a party in Glasgow at one stage and it was some occasion (Halloween?) on which "Apple Dooking" was practiced. You have to grab an apple with your teeth only while it is bobbing in a pail of water. Being a rather dour sort, I did not think much of the idea so said "No thanks". To an English person that would have been it. They would have been embarrassed to press me further. Not the Scots. In the most friendly way they simply insisted. They just did not understand the idea of not doing something that was customary.

That aside I felt very much at ease among the Scots. Australians are popular there. Scots see Australians as being "enemies" or "victims" of the English --- which is also how they see themselves. As I moved around Scotland it was interesting to see how my reception changed when Scots discovered that I was not English. It was a transformation: From correct formality to warmth. I think I slightly prefer the Scots to the English. I like their greater spontaneity. Though I appreciate English reserve too.

The only thing I dislike about the Scots is their ingrained Socialism. When Mrs Thatcher came to power in a landslide, Scotland actually at the same time swung away from the Tories. Still, Edinburgh is a lot more conservative than Glasgow (where 50% of the Scots live), so maybe I would enjoy living in Edinburgh if I could hack the climate. Glasgow has a reputation for ugliness which is undeserved. There are quite a lot of nice places in Glasgow.

When I was doing my social survey in Glasgow (mainly concerned with Scottish nationalism) I tried to look up various books on Scottish nationalism in the various libraries there. One I could not find anywhere. No library had bought it, I gathered. Because of funding limits, a lot of books are hard to find in British libraries, even University libraries. When I got back to Australia the book I had been seeking was just sitting there on the shelf at my own University of N.S.W. library! They could afford a book on Scottish nationalism that the Scots themselves could not. Wealth and poverty do make a difference and socialist Scotland certainly was poor when I was there.

PEACENIK VIOLENCE

One of the most revealing evidences of the dishonesty and hidden agendas of the Left is the way that "peace" demonstrations commonly erupt into violence (e.g. here). Leftists are clearly such violent people that they cannot restrain themselves even when it makes a mockery of what they claim to stand for. They truly are Stalin's heirs.

I have my own personal recollection of this. In the Vietnam war era I was a student at the University of Queensland and one of the very few students who outspokenly supported Australia's involvement in the war. As in Iraq so in Vietnam Australians fought alongside Americans. The Australian conservative government came up for re-election in the midst of the affair and the peaceniks made a huge effort to have it defeated at the polls. There were huge anti-government demonstrations of all sorts. When Prime Minister Harold Holt came to Brisbane I was one of his party members and so was invited to attend his Brisbane campaign launch. Various university Leftists known to me, however, forged entry tickets to get into the hall in which the rally was held and created such a din that the meeting was severely disrupted.

We few pro-war students decided to take our revenge for this. Next week the leader of the Australian Labour Party (A.L.P.) came to Brisbane for HIS campaign launch and we were there in the hall. As the party leader (Arthur Calwell) stepped up to the microphone and before he could open his mouth I shouted out in a very loud voice "All at sea with the A.L.P." Pandemonium erupted. The Special Branch of the Police had been tipped off that there would be disruption and were there to protect our freedom of speech but otherwise we would have been murdered. Half the hall jumped up and tried to get at us -- thus thoroughly disrupting their own meeting. Whenever they settled down we would just shout something again and restart them at enraged shouting back at us. The meeting became a shambles. The police pointed out to them that they had disrupted our meeting the week before but the Leftists saw no justice in that of course.

Anyway, after the meeting, the police escorted us across the road to the police station for our own safety while a mob of Leftists gathered outside waiting to get us as soon as we emerged. I don't know how long they waited, though, as the police let us out after a while through a back entrance that the Leftists obviously did not know about.

When the Leftists disrupted the government meeting they did so in no fear for their own safety and thought that they had a perfect right to do so but woe betide anyone who tried to do the same to them! In good Stalinist fashion their resort to violence when faced with opposition was immediate. Can anyone doubt that it is hate and not compassion that is their real motivation?

Incidentally, in the subsequent election, the conservatives were returned with a landslide majority.

THE BIRTHDAY OF A POET

Every year -- year after year -- millions of people around the world gather together to celebrate with great ceremony and merriment the birthday of a poet. And there is only one poet so honoured: Robert Burns. For people with a Scottish heritage it is one of the greatest celebrations of the year. And today is the day.

I do sometimes arrange a traditional Burns night on the 25th. -- getting into full Highland dress (kilt etc.), inviting friends over, having the haggis piped in, making the usual speeches (to the haggis, to the lassies etc) and making sure that there are plenty of tatties and neeps to go with the haggis. But not this year. I will however be dining on a Scotch pie, a Forfar bridie, tattie bread and clootie dumpling to finish.

There is however one essential that I never miss: to read, sing or recite some of the great words of the poet himself. So here is the greatest love poem ever written:

A Red, Red Rose

O, my love is like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June,
O, my love is like the melody,
That's sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonny lass,
So deep in love am I,
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun!
And I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee well, my only love,
And fare thee well, a while!
And I will come again, my love,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile!

And here is the greatest love lament ever written:

Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon

YE banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?How can ye chant, ye little birds,And I sae weary fu' o' care?Thou'll break my heart, thou warbling birdThat wantons through the flowering thorn;Thou minds me o' departed joysDeparted never to return Aft hae I roved by bonnie DoonTo see the woodbine twine:And ilka bird sang o' its Luve,And fondly sae did I o' mine.
Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose,Full sweet upon its thorny tree;And my fause Luver staw the roseBut ah! He left the thorn wi' me.

So if you have any Celt at all in you, listen to some of the great Scottish sentimental songs today and open yourself to them. If you shed a quiet tear or two over them, you have a Scottish heart.

"NIGGER BROWN"

Australians are generally a pretty cheerful lot and so long ago took with gusto to the old English whimsy of referring to a thing by its opposite: "Little John" was really a giant of a man and someone called "Lofty" will generally be unusually short. My father for instance was always addressed as "Bluey" by his friends because he had red hair. And an old friend of mine who is fair-skinned even though he was born and bred in India is sometimes referred to as "the black man" -- because he isn't!

There has been a continuing saga near where I live over a grandstand at a sportsground which is named the "Nigger Brown" stand. There has even been a case taken to the High Court by blacks and their Leftist supporters in an (unsuccessful) attempt to force a name-change. So why the odd name anyway? Because the stand is named after a revered local cricketer whose surname was Brown and whose nickname was "Nigger Brown". And why was he called that? Because of his deathly-white skin! Even a sense of humour can get you into the courts these days.

POLITICAL FOLLIES OF YOUTH

Tim Blair, Bernard Slattery, Aaron Oakley and others have been reflecting lately on how they and many other well-known Australian conservatives started out on the Left and for various reasons became fed up with it and moved towards the Right.

In the full knowledge that it leaves me open to the accusation that I have no "heart" I am pleased to say that I joined a conservative political party in my teens and have lived to see much of what I have always believed in (such as the folly and brutality of Communism) vindicated by time. In my case, the world has moved in my direction rather than vice versa. The 1970s were arguably the high-water-mark of Leftism but in 1974 I published a largish book in defence of conservatism!

There are many lifelong conservatives like me but few of them bother to talk about it much. Just as it often said that there is no anti-Catholic like an ex-Catholic, so it is that those who are most vocally anti-Left are usually ex-Leftists. I guess that they resent being conned and very commendably try their hardest to save others from the same fate. My motivation is that I have always seen irrationality and dishonesty as highroads to disaster.

Reference:

Ray, J.J. (1974) Conservatism as heresy. Sydney: ANZ Book Co.

A good joke

A cowboy dressed in a cowboy shirt, hat, jeans, spurs and chaps went to a bar and ordered a drink. As he sat there sipping his whiskey, a young lady sat down next to him.

After she ordered her drink she turned to the cowboy and asked him, "Are you a real cowboy?"

To which he replied, "Well, I have spent my whole life on the ranch, herding cows, breaking horses, mending fences, I guess I am."

After a short while he asked her what she was. She replied,

"I've never been on a ranch so I'm not a cowboy, but I am a lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about women. As soon as I get up in the morning I think of women, when I eat, shower, watch TV, everything seems to make me think of women."

A short while later she left and the cowboy ordered another drink.

A couple sat down next to him and asked, "Are you a real cowboy?"

To which he replied, "I always thought I was, but I just found out that I'm a lesbian."

THE RED "CROSS" AND CHRISTMAS

There has been a lot of rage in the blogosphere about the ban on Xmas paraphenalia in British Red Cross shops. Now I would never donate to the Red Cross because of their tradition of Antisemitism but I think that their explanation of this one is reasonable:

But chief executive Sir Nicholas Young said on Saturday it had always been the organisation's policy not to display materials of an "overtly religious nature" in shop windows

See here.

By the way, even though I am an atheist, I love Xmas, Xmas carols and Xmas day. Christmas symbols certainly do not "offend" me one bit. I will probably in fact attend the 9.30am divine service at Brisbane's marvellous St John's Anglican Cathedral on Xmas day because I love the old hymns and other Xmas music. And the Anglicans have always known how to put on a good show: Big ecclesiastical processions with lots of shiny stuff, tastefully magnificent vestments, smells and bells, anodyne sermons, Anglican chant etc. Great stuff!

(But the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches have the best hats!)

BAD BOY STILL

I suspect that I am seen by some as the bad boy of Australian conservative blogging -- too "extreme"! I think that I am unlikely to change, however. I have just been looking at a few things I wrote over a quarter of a century ago in my book Conservatism as heresy. Somewhat to my surprise, I find that I was pulling few punches then too. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 1 -- which is a reprint of something that originally appeared in Nation Review in 1973. I was discussing the now thoroughly laughable Zero Population Growth movement:

If any further evidence for the obsessional neuroticism of this movement were needed, it could be found in the amazing way it treats the entire world population as an undifferentiated, featureless gruel. Because the world population is expanding steadily, it is argued that we in Australia should therefore limit our numbers.

This is to regard Australian as being in the same situation as Bangladesh -- which we most evidently are not. If love of sweeping generalizations were the basis of comparison, the ZPG movement could well be compared with Hitler's Nazism.

Sound familiar? Lots of conservatives started out as Leftists. I don't think I have changed a bit.

ITALIAN FASCISM

I grew up in Innisfail -- a place that was 50% an Australian country town and 50% an Italian village. Since then I have always had an affection for Italians. Italian was even one of my matriculation languages (Ho studiato Italiano a scuola ma ho quasi tutto dimenticato). So I have always thought it in keeping that Mussolini's Italian Fascism appears to have been the mildest of all the many Leftist dictatorships of the 20th century. The Italian Fascist response to political rivals was not to torture them to death but simply to give them a large dose of Castor oil! Almost funny! Here is a link about another instance of Italian humaneness in the Fascist era.

A GOOD TRADITION

I went to a local Sunday market this morning and, as I walked in, was greeted by the lush sound of a Salvation Army brass band playing some wonderful Christmas Carols from our great Christian past. No multicultural rubbish there! Thank God for the Sallies!





As an expression of tolerance for different customs, languages, foods etc, multiculturalism is a perfectly sound idea. But when the obscene Left turn it into an attack on all that we hold dear it is a cause for anger.

MONARCHY

Being both a libertarian and a monarchist is an unusual combination. The only blogger that I know of other than myself who holds such views is Dave Trowbridge. I am pleased to see, therefore, that one of Britain's most prolific libertarian writers -- Sean Gabb -- has also just written a lucid defence of the British monarchy.

My only quarrel with him is that he underestimates the support for the monarchy in Australia. There are many Australians -- mostly older and female -- here who quite openly declare that they "love" the Queen. And if your old Mum loves the Queen, you are going to be pretty constricted in saying much against the monarchy! And in our recent constitutional referendum -- fought specifically on whether to have the Queen or a political appointee as Head of State -- two thirds of Australians voted to retain the monarchy. How the Leftist wreckers must have hated that!

I also put up a defence of monarchy (in general) about two-thirds of the way through my article here.

Merry Xmas! 2002

Below is the letter I sent out with my Christmas cards in early December

I am going to be much briefer with my life-update this year because this year I have discovered blogging! The definition of a blog: A personal website that is upgraded approximately daily -- an online diary, in other words. Some blogs (short for "weblog") are diaries of what is happening in the writer's life and some are diaries of what the person has been thinking. Mine is in the latter category. So my Xmas email this year has a very large supplement at: http://jonjayray.blogspot.com

There are a lot of links to my blog on other people's blogs so that means that lots of other people like reading my blog. That is mainly because mine is mainly about politics -- and politics is of interest to many people. It has always been a major interest of mine so reading other political blogs and writing my blog now takes up most of my day! I spend most of my day glued in front of my computer. I think it is a harmless pastime for a retired 59-year-old but I must admit that it seems to have taken over my life. I still go out for dinner most nights (generally with company) but other than that I hardly go out at all. I always was a bit antisocial but now I am VERY antisocial. And I hardly even watch TV now.

I also ended up having a total of 5 papers on conservative politics published during the year on "FrontPage" online magazine. It has over a million readers a month so surpasses even the big newspapers in reach -- and unlike newspapers, its reach is worldwide. You can find it at http://frontpagemag.com . I got heaps of interesting email out of it. The papers are:

LEFTISM AND THE POST-RELIGIOUS CHURCHES

MODERN LEFTISM AS RECYCLED FASCISM

ACADEMIC FAKERS

EUGENICS AND THE LEFT

LEFTIST RACISM

Joe

My son Joe continues to thrive. He was 6' tall on his 15th Birthday in July so is already towering over everyone around him. I gave him a faster computer for his birthday so he can play the latest games.

He starts sub-Senior at school next year so is now only two years away from university! He has enrolled for a whole host of demanding subjects -- chemistry, physics, top-level maths etc so he should get into the science faculties at uni easily. I am encouraging him to think of the biological sciences as a career. The best predictor of whether anyone will get a doctorate is whether his/her father has one so Joe should have an easy ride into an academic career. His school report cards continue to be every parent's dream.

I continue to be amazed and pleased at how much he is a chip off the old block. He gets a good nature and good looks off his mother (lucky for him) but the rest he seems to have gotten mainly off me.

The stockmarket was my major hobby until I got into blogging (I am still $150,000 ahead despite the recent market downturn) and Joe is mad-keen to get into it too. He even got himself a part-time job helping in a shop so he could save money to start investing with. He reads the financial press and often discusses the prospects of various companies with me. Since good stock-pickers are extremely rare (some of the worst being those who are professionals at it -- ask almost anyone how the money in their superannuation fund is going) Joe is lucky to have a good stock-picker as a father.

He continues, however, to be enormously interested in classical music -- as I am. I took him to a performance of Handel's "Messiah" at St John's cathedral again this year, which he greatly enjoyed. One of his teachers at school recently had a part in a big 19th century opera being performed here in Brisbane and tried to get kids from the school (Joe is still at Clairvaux McKillop Catholic college) to go along to see it -- and Joe was the only kid in the school who took up the offer! He has asked for a recording of Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen" for Xmas so I have got that for him -- all 14 CDs! He has been learning piano since he was aged 4 and has recently taken up singing lessons as well.

He has also now written his first novel and is working on the second. He knows that the chances of getting anything published are almost zero but it is just something he wants to do. So both he and I spend much of our day writing -- though on different subjects. What he writes is fantasy/horror fiction. I was literary at his age too but I only wrote poetry.

At home

My personal life is too complex at the moment to bear discussion but I am pretty pleased with it nonetheless. I continue to dine with Jenny (Joe's mother) once a week, however.

For my birthday in July, my old friend Jill gave me a Sunday lunch, I went to an Indian restaurant with a girlfriend on the Monday and on Tuesday Jenny cooked me one of my favourite dinners (Korean egg-rolled pork).

I am now firmly ensconced in my 10-bedroom "Old Queenslander" house at Woolloongabba in the heart of Brisbane. I have a separate flat with two large bedrooms to myself and let out the remaining rooms to tenants -- the income from which pays most of my bills. I recently had airconditioning installed in my part of the house so I am already enjoying that. I am close enough to the famous "Gabba" cricket-ground to hear the crowds roar when somebody hits a six.

I have had no significant health problems so far but my visits to the dermatologist for the purpose of zapping skin-cancers continue to be frequent. Growing up in the tropics with fair Celtic skin is not a good combination.

Paul

My stepson Paul had an eventful year. He and his computer business went bankrupt during the year so he promptly started a new one under the name "Floppy Dick's" -- with the motto "Where you won't get screwed". I kid you not. He has incredible good humour and enjoyment of life. He has always been one of the few who always get my jokes. His new business does seem to be doing well and he now has two shops and employs his father! He also got married during the year to a very nice and attractive young lady who, despite being of partly Filipino ancestry, is 6' tall!

SPOONERISMS

I am glad nobody fell into the trap of chiding me for saying "skinger of forn" in one of my recent posts. Though one lady who was the victim of a postmodern education did politely ask me what I meant by it. It is one of my favourite Spoonerisms. But I think the best Spoonerism is one attributed to the Rev. Spooner himself. He was dealing with a wayward student at Oxford and said:

"Sir, you have tasted three whole worms. You have hissed all my mystery lectures and been caught fighting a liar in the Quad. You will leave by the next town drain".

For those unfamiliar with British railway history, the "down" train was the train to London.

GOVERNMENT ILLITERACY

We all know how appalling governments can be most of the time but they are clearly getting worse and worse. I think it is indicative of the low level of care now being exercised by the Australian government bureaucracy that they do not even bother to get basic grammar right these days. The literature you get with your tax return forms from the Australian government this year includes a leaflet that offers in large letters on its front cover: "Get your tax back quick". Yes, I am not making it up. There was no-one in a vast government bureaucracy that knew when to use "quick" and when to use "quickly"! We have government by ignoramuses. No doubt they were all educated in government schools too.

MERRY CHRISTMAS! 2001

Merry Xmas and a prosperous new year! Yes, it is that time again! The Xmas card season has arrived. I am pleased that lots of the people I write to at Xmas seem to enjoy my letters. I actually try to make them as boring as possible (e.g. by rattling on about my son Joey) but they seem to be amusing despite my best intentions.

This time last year my son Joseph was a 5'10" tall 13 year old. By his 14th birthday this year (20th July), he had reached 5'11". It seems only yesterday that he was a tot. Now he is towering over everyone. Rather hard to get used to! Joey's mental maturity seems to be advanced too. He discusses things as diverse as anger management, the Emperor Nero, German grammar and the Big Bang with me. Recently, he mentioned the Epic of Gilgamesh (the human race's earliest known literary work -- from ancient Sumeria) and when I remarked that I had a copy of it he asked to borrow it so he could read it! How many 14 year olds would even have heard of the Epic of Gilgamesh, let alone be interested enough to want to read it?

And his musicality is progressing too. At the Xmas concert put on by his piano teacher late last year while he was still 13, Joey played the "Solfegietto" by K.P.E. Bach. After listening to a lot of boring stuff at the concert it was wonderful to hear suddenly the whirl of just the sort of complex contrapuntal music that I like coming from the hands of my own son. It is of course a difficult piece and Joe put a lot of practice into it solely because he liked it. I had no influence on what he chose to play at all. I didn't even know what he was going to play.

Despite the vast body of evidence for the overwhelming importance of genetics that is now available, I must confess that I am still a bit amazed by how much Joe is a chip off the old block despite the fact that he does not live with me and that I usually see him for only about an hour each week. Once when he was about 12, I said to him that maybe he should learn to play games like cricket, golf and tennis to help him fit in with other people. His reply was that he could not see the point of chasing a little ball around the place. That is of course exactly what I think but as far as I know I had never said as much to him. As with me, computers are more his thing.

The similarities between us can be very helpful to his happiness, however. Once when he was about 8 he said to me rather dejectedly that he was no good at swimming and that the only thing he could do well in the pool was the dead man's float. I said, "That's about all that I am good at too, Joe" and that cheered him up greatly. That I have similar eccentricities to his legitimates them for him. There is no doubt that fathers can be important to sons.

Joey did Grade 9 this year -- still at Clairvaux MacKillop Catholic college -- which he seems to think highly of. He seems fairly decided now that he wants to be an academic eventually. I explained that academics only work about 12 hours a week and get paid lots of money for talking about what they are interested in so he thought that sounded pretty good. He appears very bright so he has a good chance of getting there. He even likes Maths -- which is more than I ever did.

As a sort of Xmas present to myself last year (other people mostly give me socks or hankies), I had the floors at my 100-year-old timber house at Forest St sanded and coated with polyurethane. To my eyes the old wide floorboards in polished state really look beautiful. I enjoy such a floor practically every time I walk on it! A polished floor also feels a lot cleaner underfoot than carpet. Anybody who has ever pulled carpet up knows what filthy stuff it is. I also opened out the front verandah of the place again. Previous owners had enclosed it. When I pulled off all the fibro, I was pleased to find most of the original dowel railings still underneath.

Later (on 3rd August) I sold the house for a goodly sum -- hence the new postal address at Longwood St. above. More money to put into the stockmarket! My email address and mobile phone nos. remain the same, however. My new landline phone no. is 3891-1380 but the mobile is still the best way to get me. I have owned the Longwood St. house for many years and have lived there before but this time I got the floorboards sanded and polished before I moved in. It was a pretty rough floor to start with but the chap who polished it (David Smith) is very good at replacing dodgy boards so the end result was still first-class. It has 10 bedrooms so I let part of it out. It is a 1920s timber house and I very much like its central location. Woolloongabba is also now a rapidly gentrifying suburb. I may open out part of the verandah there too in due course. With lacework railings it would look really good.

At long last I managed to sell my big Ipswich boarding house -- on May 4th. It was a great relief no longer having to deal with the dregs of society all the time. The proceeds of the sale went straight into the stockmarket. What sort of person would have bought the boarding house do you think? Go on.... Guess ---- guess ... guess. Well I will tell you. It was an absolutely gorgeous looking Dutch woman. A real dream walking! You wouldn't see better on the cover of a magazine. Life has some strange twists and turns. Apparently she grew up in country hotels and does seem quite tough underneath a charming exterior so she thinks she understands the clientele and may therefore well make a go of it. She even spent $60,000 on doing it up!

A rather silly thing I did early this year was to buy myself a second car. I think it was just because I could not resist a bargain. A Chinese tenant of mine was returning to China after a couple of years studying here and wanted to sell his car for $2,000. As I knew that the car had been running well, I snapped it up. It is however a 10-year old Ford Festiva with a lot of minor dents and scratches etc in its panels so I doubt that he could have sold it for much more anyway. I did however spend $400 on getting its airconditioning going again so I find that very handy on hot days. Since installing new airconditioning in my existing car would have cost me about $2,000 anyway, one could perhaps say that I got the Festiva almost for free! I also found out that the trade-in value of my 1995 Daihatsu Charade was only $3,000 so I am the king of cheap cars these days. The upholstery of the Charade's driver's seat came apart recently but Cahoon the motor trimmer fixed it like new for only $50. Motor trimmers seem to be very clever and handy chaps.

I started buying company shares around the middle of last year with the expectation of only modest capital gains but in fact gained around $100,000 overall in my first year! Earning an average of $2,000 a week by doing nothing was a lot of fun! Though sharemarket gains are of course "paper" gains. They can just disappear overnight. For instance, on the last day of the 00/01 financial year I was $125,000 ahead but after the New York disaster my portfolio had dropped back to being worth only what I paid for it. Though that was probably pretty good in the circumstances. Lots of people did big dough at that time. Just a couple of weeks later I was back to being $70,000 ahead though.

A few days after the N.Y. attack, shares in QBE (an Australian insurance company with some exposure to New York) dropped from $10 to $3. So lots of galahs actually sold at $3! I hung onto mine and just two weeks later they were back up to $6! It must have been a lesson to those who sold at $3. Fancy selling shares on a scare and then seeing them double in value almost immediately! Much heartburn! And a lot of those who sold would have been wise-head superannuation fund managers and other "professional" investors. It is a great pity that managed funds generally do so poorly when so many average people pay them a small fortune to take care of their nest-egg. I always tell people to make their own mistakes rather than pay someone else to make them for you. If you buy into a range of blue chip companies you are unlikely to lose overall and you will most likely gain heaps.

Despite the odd setback, share gains make Real Estate look very poor. Funnily enough, a lot of the big superannuation funds went backwards over the same period in which I was getting well ahead. Even though people put money into their fund during the year, they found that their super was still worth less at the end of the year than it was at the beginning! Nasty! The funds must have had a lot invested in computer-related companies or in Japanese companies. The total value of listed Japanese companies dropped to just half what it was in the last 12 months. And some of the computer companies went broke entirely and even the big ones lost an awful lot. "Yahoo", for instance, went from selling at $200 per share down to $18 per share and even Microsoft halved in value. I had no shares in such risky companies.

Given that I did so well relative to many professional investors, I am rather kicking myself that I did not suspect earlier that I had some talent for picking good stocks. My investment strategy is in fact very conservative. Like many others, I have tried to learn from Warren Buffet -- the world's most successful investor. I try to pick big "blue chip" companies that do relatively simple, old-fashioned things well and pay a dividend of at least 4% of the share value: A very old-fashioned approach but it seems to work well.

Some of the shares I bought were lemons, however: Nothing as bad as HIH or One.Tel etc. but I lost a bit of money on AGL, PBL, Telstra, Goodman Fielder, News Corp, etc. Telstra shares have caused a lot of pain in a lot of people's pockets, of course. Fortunately, I had relatively few of them. And I bought Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp at $19, sold at $18 and saw it later fall to $12. Anyway, keeping track of my shares has now become one of my major recreations. I log on to see the prices a couple of times a day sometimes but I don't trade actively. I buy for the medium to long term. I am no day trader. Day traders nearly all go broke eventually anyway. If you have ever watched the way share prices jump around during the day, you will understand why. I rather hate weekends now because there is no share-trading then and so I cannot watch my stocks move!

On the cultural front, I was pleased to discover that Brisbane has an amateur archaeologist's group meeting at the Museum called the Diggings Club. At the first meeting I attended (in May) I heard a very interesting talk on the Phaistos disc -- a well-known puzzle to followers of Minoan (ancient Cretan) civilization. So in Brisbane one can even attend learned talks on arcane points of archaeology! If you should just happen to be interested in the Phaistos disc, it was the Fischer interpretation that was discussed. A modern History club also started up in August at the Museum and I gave the first talk there on Prince Otto von Bismarck (the founder of modern Germany).

The Friends of Antiquity club also continues to flourish in conjunction with the Classics Dept. at the University of Qld. and there were several interesting talks given during the year. At one of them a British archaeologist (John Tubb) gave reasons for believing that the Old Testament was almost entirely composed during the Babylonian exile rather than being written over many centuries.

My interest in academe has revived a bit this year. I have submitted a couple of papers (one now provisionally accepted for publication) and I also now have my own Website
(http://jonjayray.tripod.com) to make my past papers more available. It is even cached by Google.com so anyone in the whole world who does an internet search will now find my site if what it covers is of interest to them. There is even a recent piccy of me on the internet at: http://jonjayray.tripod.com/homepage.html

My birthday celebrations this year were once again extensive. On the Friday, Jenny made a Paella for seven of us which was much enjoyed. Jenny has always done a great Paella. And on the Saturday Geraldine and I with Jill and Lewis made the customary trip to The Clansmen restaurant for dinner. They are one of the few restaurants who can do duck well so that is what I had. Lewis was in good form and we had a lot of laughs. And it was alcohol-free too! It is a pity that The Clansmen was taken over about a year ago by a Greek, however. I liked it better when Mr Campbell was in charge -- despite his obvious liking for "a wee dram". And the Greek bloke went broke a few weeks after I had been there but was back in charge via a new company a couple of months after that so goodness knows what is happening there now. And on the Sunday, Jenny's son Paul had Geraldine and me over for lunch at his new house.

Jill and I are still the best of friends but we no longer dine together once a week. Geraldine and I dine out only occasionally. Often when Geraldine and I do dine out these days, we go to Lefkas Greek Taverna at Hill End. Nobody else seems to have starters as good as their Taramasalata and Haloumi. I think Greeks are best at running Greek restaurants.

In summer, Geraldine and I also occasionally have a picnic tea at various places -- including the park at the Figtree Pocket boatramp -- which is very cool and scenic of a summer's evening. Geraldine cooks the dinner at home and we take it to a riverside park to eat.

We celebrated Burns Night that way on 25th. January this year. Geraldine and I met Jill and Lewis at twilight at the Figtree Pocket boatramp park for our dinner. There are a couple of good picnic tables by the river there and it is a cool spot to go to at the height of a Brisbane summer. We did not get a haggis this year but I did don the kilt for the occasion and I read out a few of the more famous poems before dinner. I even sang "Ye banks and braes o' bonny Doon"! There weren't many passers-by but they did seem curious.

The day after that I was very pleased to take photos of some of my cousins twice removed. For around the last 20 years, all of my many Brisbane relatives on my mother's side have been meeting every Australia Day for a get-together over a barbecue lunch. From the beginning, they brought their children along with them. Most of those children are however now grown up and some have families of their own so they still come along but now bring their own children too. And those children are my cousins twice removed. And the little ones are of course a great delight to us all.

On Easter Sunday, Geraldine, Jill, Lewis and I went to St John's Cathedral for the sung Eucharist at 9.30pm with the Archbishop (later to be Governor General) officiating. It is a wonderful setting for a colourful ecclesiastical occasion and the music was great. Although they don't seem to believe in anything much these days, the Church of England can still put on a good show. Since Lewis is Jewish and the others of us are Protestant only by background, that suited us pretty well. After that we all went to nearby Mowbray Park by the Brisbane river for a two-hour picnic lunch. Luckily it was a sunny day.

I was quite inspired by the various interviews on TV with His Grace Bishop John Shelby ("Jack") Spong when he was out here from the U.S.A. in July. His is a very modernized version of Christianity so it is lucky that he is an Anglican (an "Episcopalian" in American terms). He would be too heretical for anyone else. At one point he said that he sympathized with the man who said: "I am not a member of any organized religion. I am an Anglican". I also liked it when he said that he did not think prayer should be like a letter to Santa Claus. I think he is brilliantly intelligent, very scholarly, very honest, very sincere and a true follower of Christ. If I were not a atheist I would probably have to be a Spong-type Anglican.

Despite that, however, I think his could only ever be very much a minority pastorate. The most successful diocese in communion with Lambeth is undoubtedly the Sydney one and Sydney Anglicans are unusually faithful to the original Church of England doctrines -- i.e. they are very heedful of the letter of the New Testament. If Anglicanism generally has lost its way, the huge Sydney diocese shows what it might have been. Where else do you find Anglican churches full of committed young people? A few old ladies in flowered hats would be a more usual Anglican congregation as far as I can tell.

In May, Geraldine and I went to a concert of sacred choral music at St John's Anglican cathedral. The program was headed by Allegri's "Miserere nos" so the place was packed -- and for good reason. The soaring stone arches of a big Gothic cathedral were the perfect setting (both visually and acoustically) for such music -- and with a big choir (the State & Municipal) and a first-class alto giving a top quality performance it was a peak musical experience. For my taste, Brisbane is an amazingly good place for classical music concerts.

Geraldine sold her big house at Figtree Pocket early in the year also for a goodly sum and had another one built for much less at River Hills. So both Geraldine and my old friend Jill now live at River Hills! River Hills is not at all a prestigious address like Figtree Pocket but who cares? Geraldine's new house almost overlooks the Brisbane river so that is pretty pleasant. Like Jill, the money Geraldine gained by her move she used to fatten up her sharemarket portfolio. We both like bank shares and have both done well out of National Australia Bank and Suncorp-Metway shares in particular.

58th Birthday

My birthday celebrations this year were once again extensive. On the Friday, Jenny made a Paella for seven of us which was much enjoyed. Jenny has always done a great Paella. And on the Saturday Geraldine and I with Jill and Lewis made the customary trip to The Clansmen restaurant for dinner. They are one of the few restaurants who can do duck well so that is what I had. Lewis was in good form and we had a lot of laughs. And it was alcohol-free too!

It is a pity that The Clansmen was taken over about a year ago by a Greek, however. I liked it better when Mr Campbell was in charge -- despite his obvious liking for "a wee dram". And the Greek bloke went broke a few weeks after I had been there but was back in charge via a new company a couple of months after that so goodness knows what is happening there now.

And on the Sunday, Jenny's son Paul had Geraldine and me over for lunch at his new house.

Merry Xmas 2000

The year 2000 seems to have passed without Armageddon occurring yet so lots of fundamentalist Christians who were expecting the end of the world will have to go back to the drawing board -- yet again. They have been doing it ever since the first century. Like the Judaism from which it sprung, Christianity has always basically been a Messianic and Chiliastic faith (i.e. the "end of the world" is always just around the corner) but that tends to get lost within the more established Churches.

This time last year my son Joseph was a 5'8" tall 12 year old. Now, at 13, he has reached 5'10, as tall as I am. One reason I have always liked tall women is that I wanted to have tall sons so my aims in that regard seem to have been attained. Joey's mother (Jenny) is 5'8" tall and her father was 6'1" tall so I suspect Joey will end up well over 6' tall. Great!

Height is a bit hard to predict, though. Joey's cousin Katie (daughter of my sister Roxanne) was born within a week of him but is 8" shorter -- even though her father (Stefan) is just under 6' tall. Although she is of normal height, however, Katie is well above average in good looks and quiet intelligence. She is the daughter I would like to have had so having her as my niece is pretty good.

Joey started High School this year -- at Clairvaux McKillop College near where his mother lives at Mt Gravatt. It has around 1,000 students. He seems happy with it. He likes being one of the crowd so going to a Catholic school suits his religious convictions -- not that he is very religious. He just likes to belong. As I was a Jehovah's Witness for a couple of years in my teens, I understand him. His main religion is still computer games.

I started teaching Joey computer programming during the year using the FORTRAN language. FORTRAN is still the main language for mathematical applications so it should stand him in good stead later at university and it is a good introduction to other computer languages too -- since most of them are descended from it. Joe was of course delighted to learn and picked it up much faster than the second-year university students I used to teach it to! The traditional role of fathers in teaching their children useful things has been much eroded in the modern world so I was pleased that I could fulfil that traditional role to at least some extent with Joe. Kids these days tend to know more about computers than their parents do so respect for parents can be rather eroded by that in many families. As I have been a computer programmer for over 30 years, however, I am in a better position there than most fathers.

Just before the end of last year, my personal life became rather complicated. I was jogging along nicely with the shapely and brainy Judy as my girlfriend when TWO former girlfriends (Dorothy and Geraldine) both indicated that they wanted me back -- after having pinged me off earlier on in the year. It's very nice to be wanted and since they too were shapely and brainy I had an interesting but confusing Christmas season. So what did I do for Christmas lunch? Spent it at Jenny's place with my good friend Jill (who is also Joey's Godmother) present there too. In other words, the man with plural girlfriends spent Christmas with none of them but spent it with an ex-wife

I also had the very great pleasure just before Christmas of getting a long letter from my very first girlfriend whom I have not seen for over 30 years -- Janet. We were soul-mates in the swinging 60s. She has been living in Paris for most of the time since and has been happily married for 25 years or so. She has three gifted children and at 51 thinks her husband is the finest man she knows. Isn't that great! Even in randy France, living happily ever after does happen. Studying French at University can have far-reaching consequences!

Anyway, it was no contest as far as deciding what woman I want in my life these days. I saw in the New Year with the quiet Geraldine and we have ended up very close. It was a bit pesky that she had a 2 week walking holiday (the Milford Track!) in New Zealand booked for mid January but we made the email run hot while she was there. Shortly after she got back we put on a Burns Supper on the traditional date (25th January) for a few friends. I got into full Highland dress and much Haggis was eaten. It was even enjoyed! I get it from a butcher who knows his stuff.

Geraldine is 53 and very fit. I am 57 and very idle. She is a Primary teacher by trade (teaching Grade 1 this year) and has an Education degree. She is 5'5" tall and slim with blue eyes and brown hair. Her maiden name is Trivett. "Right as a trivet", as they say. She is for me anyway. Do you know what a trivet is? Geraldine doesn't say a lot but there is a keen and ironical mind always at work there. As I am mostly pretty quiet too we understand one-another.

She is a Brisbane gal born and bred of the usual Anglo-Celtic stock. She has a mainstream Protestant background too -- basically Church of England but she went to Somerville House for her High School -- which is a very pukka Presbyterian/Methodist establishment. As I was brought up a Presbo, we share a common culture there -- not that either of us are at all religious. She had 3 children (now adults) in a long-term marriage that broke up many years ago. She was a keen bushwalker when I met her but my sedentary habits seem to have eroded much of that.

We also like a lot of the same music. I was most pleased when I found that she and I shared the same favourite aria from Bach's Matthew Passion -- "Mache dich mein Herze rein". We go to classical music concerts a lot -- which we both greatly enjoy. Geraldine particularly enjoyed (she called it "out of this world") a 2-hour rendition of part of Bach's Klavier Uebung done on the organ by Christopher Wrench at the Brisbane Conservatorium of Music. As someone who likes every note Bach wrote, I did find her response highly reasonable! Her favourite orchestral work however is not at all Baroque -- The Brahms second piano concerto. That is however a very dramatic and marvellous work so it is a not unsurprising preference in a former piano teacher. We are both however transported by the great Bach chorales -- "Wachet auf", "Wie schoen leuchtet der Morgenstern", "Jesu meine Freude", "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" etc.

We seem to go to something cultural most weekends. We go to the monthly concerts given by the University of Queensland Music Department at the Old Customs House. We go to the Friends of Antiquity talks given each month by the University of Queensland Department of Classics and Ancient history and we even saw a quite enjoyable amateur performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's "Gondoliers" at the Old Power House at one stage. And the year 2000 being the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, there were lots of great Bach concerts to go to: At the Conservatorium, at St John's cathedral, at the Old Museum etc. It just shows what a cultural desert Brisbane is doesn't it?

Speaking of music, while I am writing this, I am playing on my computer a CD of selections from the work of a composer who is still alive -- Phillip Glass. It is marvellous stuff. He is an American Jew. Nearly as good as Bach in my view. As soon as the CD finishes I will put it on again! I am pleased to say that Joey likes Philip Glass too. I imported some Philip Glass CDs directly from America during the year -- which seemed to impress Joey very favourably.

Jill and her partner Lewis made up a foursome to go with Geraldine and me to the big "Scotland the Brave" concert in May. Geraldine fed us all haggis with tatties and neeps beforehand to get us in the mood and I of course went in full Highland dress. It was a good concert but the only tempo the conductor (Colin Harper) seemed to know was "presto"!

Jill and I continue to dine together once a week --every Wednesday night. We have had a lot of fun with Shopper Dockets. Some of Brisbane's more expensive restaurants offer a free meal to anyone who brings in a supermarket cash register docket with one of their promotions printed on the back of it. Jill is very good at collecting such dockets so we have been eating at a lot of fancy restaurants for half price. So I would turn up at places like The Summit on Mt Cootha or The Tower Mill on Wickham Terrace dressed in jacket and tie with a beautiful and brilliant blonde lady on my arm and get good food with good views, good service etc and still have it cost me only $20 or thereabouts. Pleasant!

Another memorable dinner was when Jenny cooked a Parsee Dhansak for us all -- Geraldine, me, Jill and Lewis. It was exceedingly kind of her as it took about 3 hours to prepare --with the Kachumbar, green chutney, special rice etc as well as the Dhansak itself. A Dhansak seems to become the favourite dinner of anyone who tastes it.

I had big fights with Optus early on in the year. I had both my mobile phone and my landline phone through them. I always thought that nobody could be worse than Telstra but Optus proved me wrong. They took two months to put an STD bar on my landline phone. They paid me $315 compensation for that stuff-up though. Then I found that their system was breaking off a lot of my internet calls. They would not even acknowledge that problem. I finally emailed the head of their parent company (Cable & Wireless) in London about it. After 6 months of havering, they eventually gave me a $140 credit for all my broken-off calls. They are real bastards so you have to be very, very persistent.

I sold several of my properties during the year: my houses at Gordonvale and Innisfail (both near Cairns in North Queensland) and one of my Cairns houses. Real estate is getting to be too much of a hassle for me these days and the net income had become very low in relation to the funds invested. So I have put a bit of money into company shares (mostly banks) instead. And given that the stock market has been rising generally, the results have been pleasing.

I have gradually improved my management of my big boarding house at Ipswich. The major improvement came when I stopped accepting women! I know it sounds bad but most of my problems went when they did. Having women in the place just seemed to mean big fights (mostly drunken) between the tenants all the time.

My 24 year-old "stepson" (Jenny's son) Paul got engaged to his girlfriend Julie in September, much to everyone's surprise. Julie looked a dish and both of them seemed on top of the world at the engagement party. Paul got thrown into the swimming pool towards the end of the party, which sounds very Australian, but most of those who threw him in were in fact Chinese! Multiculturalism lives. Paul initially tried to get me to throw his 14-year-old brother David into the pool but I have always had a very big soft spot for Davey so I wouldn't. "But you used to throw me in!" Paul said, in what was obviously a fun recollection.

Geraldine's son Tom got the University of Queensland medal for Mining Engineering during the year -- which is a considerable distinction. I would find it a bore to have the mother of an Olympic medallist as a girlfriend but the mother of a University medallist suits me just fine.

I was very glad that I was not living in Sydney during the Olympics. I have never been able to see why it is so important that one person can run a fraction of a second faster than someone else. Running is now a pretty obsolete means of getting around, it seems to me. Brains, however, are more needed than ever before.

I got myself a new computer late in the year -- a 600mhz Celeron running Windows ME. My previous one was all of two years old, which was, of course, prehistoric in computer terms. The new one was still a very modest purchase, however, as processors running at over a gigaherz are now readily available. Ken Johnson (Jenny's first husband) supplied the new machine so I could be sure I would not get a lemon. Instead of putting a CD reader in the machine I specified a "burner" instead, so that I can both read and write CDs with the one device. Handy. I find rewritable CDs to be really impressive (when they work). I have two of them that I use just like floppy disks except that just one of them has the capacity of over 400 floppy disks! I have backed up a whole cupboard full of old floppy disks onto just 4 CDs! And blank CDs cost only a dollar. Information storage is a wonder of compactness and cheapness these days. I did specify a very fast (7200 RPM) hard drive for my new computer and it is amazingly better as a result. I also got a new internal modem with the machine that routinely does downloads at 52k Baud! 46k used to be the best I could get with my previous machine.

57th birthday

For my 57th birthday, Geraldine and I with Jill and Lewis made the customary trip to The Clansmen restaurant for dinner. I pre-ordered Chateaubriand for 4 as it is not usually on the menu and the cook made a superb job of it.

At another restaurant I sometimes go to (The Casablanca) I customarily order something not on the menu (North African Merguez) and the cook there does a great job of it too.

Diary of Another Day

Friday 23rd of June 2000 was a particularly good day. I awoke at 8.30am, which was late, as I had had trouble getting to sleep the night before and had ended up taking a Normison tablet. As soon as I got up, I spent about an hour on the Web looking at my email etc. as I usually did at that time.

I then rang a Real Estate agent to put my house at Forest St on the market. The land was zoned for home-units (or condominiums as Americans call them) and a big block next door had just been put up for sale so selling mine at the same time would give a developer a chance to consolidate a big site. So my land was worth more at that time than it would be worth at any other time. The property cost me $130,000 eight years earlier and was worth at that time about $165,000 by itself.

I had my usual breakfast of two bread rolls with cheese, lettuce and onions on them and the agent then arrived. He estimated that I might get as much as $220,000 in conjunction with the place next door. Conveniently located inner-city land had become very hard to find for unit developers. The price pleased me greatly.

I then went in to my Moorooka GP and had three skin cancers frozen with liquid nitrogen. Such treatments are painful for only about 15 minutes and they then heal quickly.

While I was there, Jenny rang to say she had a migraine so I went and picked her up from work and took her home to her place. I then read the papers for a while and left for my daily trip to the Ipswich boarding house at 12.45 instead of my usual 1.30pm as I had a prospective tenant who was in a hurry to get a room.

When I arrived at Ipswich I first went to the old Metropole Hotel and collected his rent off old Reggie (my longest-staying tenant) as he is a habitue there. I then went to the boarding house and my new tenant turned up promptly and took a room -- bringing occupancy there to an all-time high. I also collected a fair bit of money from tenants whe had got behind with their rent -- leaving me with no problem cases for the moment.

The electrician was also there installing 10 amp circuit breakers on all the power circuits -- thus making it fairly impossible for my tenants to use electric heaters and thus run up huge electricity bills for me. I was very pleased to have that job done and paid him $200 cash out of my pocket for it.

I then went to the Police Station and asked for Robert Fogarty (from the Aboriginal house 2 doors down from the boarding house) to be charged with trespass as he kept disobeying my warning to keep out. I took two Statutory Declarations with me and that seemed to make some impression on the Police.

I then went home, finished reading the papers, watched some programmes I had recorded off the TV the night before and then at about 5pm decided to write a FORTRAN program to track my share investments. That was of course a great pleasure and I had basically finished it by the time I left for G**'s place at 6.10pm.

G** gave me a very pleasant dinner of sausages and that great Northern Italian favourite -- Polenta. We went up to bed at 7pm.

We listened to some very good Baroque music during the evening -- including lots of Bach -- and I went home at 9.45pm. I then put the finishing touches to my shares program. A very fulfilling day!

Diary of a day: Seeing in the new millennium

G** arrived at my place at Forest St at 12.30pm equipped with picnic things. We drove to the Moreton Bay foreshore at Wynnum and had our picnic lunch under a shady tree on the Esplanade there whilst enjoying the view out to sea. The bright blue sky, the sand and mudflats in the foreground, the green sea in the middleground and the dark blue Bay islands in the distance made a pleasant scene -- with lots of birdlife, some sailboats etc. as well. We then went for a long ramble along the foreshore.

Afterwards we drove back to G**'s place and had a swim in her pool. Afterwards, we had a shower together to rinse the chlorine off. We got pretty friendly in the shower however so I ended up dragging her out of the shower and into the bedroom, throwing her onto the bed dripping wet and "having" her there and then -- which she absolutely loved.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in bed talking and listening to CDs of Albinoni and other classical composers played on the computer she had in her bedroom. G** then made us some very good spaghetti for dinner.

We then drove up to the top of Brisbane's very own Mt Coot-tha equipped with a Thermos and drank our tea whilst enjoying the always pleasing spectacle of the multitudinous and many coloured lights of the city of Brisbane spread out all around below us and into the far distance.

When we arrived back at G**'s place, we found that she had not taken her house keys with her. So I had the unexpected excitement of climbing up on the roof and through a bedroom window to get us in. We then adjourned forthwith to bed with much activity ensuing. Around 11pm, we had some chocolates to eat and I then went home in a pretty knackered state.

So we had two trips to scenic spots, much bedtime, two meals, several cups of tea, one swim and a roof excursion all in one day. Active but very enjoyable!

MERRY XMAS 1999

This time last year, my son Joseph was 5'3" tall. By the time he turned 12 this year (in July) he was already 5'6". Perhaps I am easily pleased but I rather liked having a 5'6" tall 11-year old! He now towers over his 5'1" Nanna and is also much taller than Suzy -- one of his adult half-sisters. He is something of a premature teenager -- his voice has cracked already and he spends hours talking to his friends on the phone -- but he is still quite jocular and cheerful so I suspect that he will end up the gentle giant type.

He has been learning piano since he was 4 but is no virtuoso. He still seems to enjoy it, however, and claims he does "heaps" of practice. I am also pleased that I now have a son with his own email address: Josephray@hotmail.com. Perhaps that is the modern day coming of age rite.

He has now finished up at Greenslopes Primary School after three years there. He was Dux of his school in the English language attainment test again but was only in the top 30% Statewide so it is obviously a pretty undistinguished school. For next year we have had him accepted to do High School (year 8) at Clairvaux McKillop College -- a large Catholic school at Upper Mt. Gravatt. I don't know that St. Bernard of Clairvaux is a role model I much admire but Roman Catholic organizations these days seem to be more bureaucratic than theocratic so St Bernard will probably not rate much of a mention despite having the school named after him!

As private school fees go, the fees for Clairvaux are pretty reasonable -- at around $2000 all up per year. The school does however appear to have a good name and it suits Joey's religious convictions. I rather hope that he does not end up wearing a long black dress and putting the letters "S.J." after his name but you never know. I do at least like the intellectualism of the Society of Jesus and clerical celibacy will probably become optional with the next Pope. I was very religious in my teens and still ended up a thoroughgoing sinner so it is all very early days yet. I am betting on the attractions of sin, myself.

Joey was however -- at his own request -- confirmed into the Roman Catholic faith on 4th June. He was baptised only late last year. He greatly enjoyed his preparatory studies in the faith and is now probably more of a Catholic than many of those born to it. He tries to say grace before dinner etc but sometimes forgets -- He then describes himself as a "forgetful Catholic". We have assured him that there are many of those.

Even though we are both unbelievers, Jenny and I were delighted to arrange his confirmation for him as faith seems to have a valuable disciplinary and protective role in the difficult teenage years. If we said he could not be a Catholic and he turned to drugs instead we would never have forgiven ourselves, would we? His confirmation ceremony was something of a family occasion at St. Bernard's Church, Mt. Gravatt with those present being: Jenny, myself, his sister Suzy, his Nanna Lena, his Godmother Jill, his Godfather Prof. John Henningham, John Henningham's wife Helen and my then girlfriend Cheryl Jorgensen.

Judy and I had another one of our breakups early in the year and I met Cheryl in March. She is a flautist, a schoolteacher and a Communist, among other things. A genuine Red in the bed! She is multi-orgasmic and wears a D-cup bra, however, so that tended to make up for ideological eccentricities. We got very much involved for a few months but the relationship did not last. I of course tend towards the Tory persuasion, so that was a slight problem. We were both very keen on classical music, history and literature and Cheryl has in fact had some success as a writer of fiction.

After Cheryl, I restarted my affair with another old girlfriend -- Dorothy. Dorothy has a higher degree in psychology and actually is in private practice as a psychologist. She is also very tall, very slim and very busty -- an unusual but entirely desirable combination from my point of view. Dorothy is however always complaining about something. She is a neurotic. I tell her how destructive that is but she cannot seem to help it. Perhaps her being a Pom has something to do with it ("whingeing Poms"). I have certainly had happier ladies in my life but we have finally got to the stage where she is just a friend now, not a girlfriend.

In October I took a short trip to South Africa. I had got to know an Afrikaner lady called Hester -- a Classical pianist -- on the Internet and seemed to get on especially well with her. She lives in Bloemfontein so I went there to meet her in person. It was interesting and expensive but not a success from a romantic point of view -- which was a considerable disappointment to both of us. I guess that going half-way across the world to meet a lady was pretty romantic, though. For "romantic" read "foolhardy"? I was in South Africa in 1979 under Apartheid and it is notable how much it has now gone downhill under black rule. I sure know how to be politically incorrect, don't I?

Recently, however, Judy and I have started an affair again. We first met over two years ago and it seems to have taken that long for us to sort out our differences! Perhaps we are both a bit pig-headed. After all the girlfriends I have had in the last two years, it is nice to be back with someone familiar and the fact that Judy has a higher degree in the social sciences and a great figure does not hurt either! I am resolved this time to do all I can to make her a happy lady. She too was a Communist in her youth but now dislikes both Aborigines and the welfare state! She was once a nurse working among Aborigines so her views about them are at least well-informed.

Judy had fairly short hair when I first met her but she has since let it grow to well below shoulder length and all that long soft blonde hair is most attractive, in my view. Too bad if it's not fashionable! Why so many women crop their hair these days I do not know. Both the Bible (1 Corinthians 11:13,14) and the human race's oldest known literary work (the Epic of Gilgamesh) say that women should have long hair and men all seem to agree with that. I suspect that cropped hair is often in fact a sort of anti-man statement.

Two things that I go to regularly are the Westside Music Circle and the Friends of Antiquity. The Westside group arranges classical music concerts in private homes with live performers and the Friends are associated with the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Queensland. They give an interesting talk each month on some topic in Roman or Greek history. The archeology of Pompeii and Latin Romantic poetry are two topics I particularly remember. I do not go to a lot of plays but Sheridan's "The Rivals" and Aristophanes' "Lysistrata" were fairly memorable this year. During Cathedrals week I also went to St. Stephen's Roman Catholic Cathedral to see a play based on the life of Hildegard von Bingen. It was actually a monologue but was very effective nonetheless. The best (most amusing) film I saw was without a doubt "Analyse This". It was about a psychologist who got tangled up with the New York "mob".

My favourite classical music concert venue is the Long Room at Brisbane's old Customs House. It is a magnificently restored and gracious old Victorian building and I seem to go there at least once a month. The building is now owned by the University of Queensland and it is their Music Department that puts on most of the concerts there. The Sunday morning ones are free.

I had only one bout of 'flu for a few days in midwinter but have been otherwise remarkably healthy during the year considering my idle lifestyle. I take no drugs or pills for my health at all. Even my blood-pressure is fine so I am unlikely to die of a heart attack. I did however do the right thing and had a scan during the year to see if I had any prostate problems. I was told that only 20% of men in my age-group have no prostatic enlargement but I am one of that happy 20%! The fact that I do not smoke, drink alcohol or use any psychoactive drugs (not even caffeine) may have helped there. It seems fair to me that wowsers should have better health!

I do however keep having to have skin cancers removed -- growing up in the Tropics was not a terribly good thing to do for someone with skin as fair as mine. So I may be pretty healthy but all that sun-damage has made me look even older than I am. When I was 55 people were telling me that I could easily pass for 60!

Business has been bad for me recently. My boarding house at Ipswich is not going at all well and is mostly more than half empty. All the defectives who live at Ipswich do not make a good customer base. They move in, steal from one-another, have drunken parties, fight with one-another and then move out again to get away from one another, leaving a mess behind. They are mostly on the dole and the first thing their dole money goes on is beer and cigarettes. From my experience at Ipswich, I would say that the poor are usually poor for good reasons. I have been trying to sell the boarding house for a while now but nobody seems to want to buy it. Funny that!

My ex-wife Jenny recently moved into a new house at Upper Mt Gravatt. She sold her old house for a lot more than the new one cost her so it was a good move financially and she likes the new house better anyway. It is also only a short walk from Joey's new school. It was cheap because its walls are made of fibro and anything with asbestos in it is mega politically incorrect these days, even though nobody even claims that fibro has ever hurt anyone. The new house has a big granny flat downstairs so Jenny's mother (Lena) has moved in -- which suits everybody. It gives Lena company and it helps to have someone keeping an eye on Joey after school while Jenny is at work. Jenny and I still normally dine together once a week.

Joey's speech has always been a bit unclear so we are going to have him "elocuted" next year. Elocution too is now politically incorrect and elocution teachers no longer appear in the Yellow Pages. They are now called "Speech and Drama" teachers. What a crazy world we live in! Thank goodness for friends and family.