79) Retiremant

In October 2012 I retired from my job as a cleaner. I was 68 at the time, getting close to 69. I had thought about a year ago that I would work until I was 70 but I found that the work was just getting too much for me. I enjoyed the people I worked with and was glad to be of service to the elderly people who for health reason could no longer do their own housework or shopping. In May 2012 we became eligible to receive some benefits from the government as we had had our permanent residence status for two years so we went to the offices of Centre Link which is the department that deals with all matters concerning pensions and welfare benefits.  For the most part the people we spoke to were friendly and helpful but I think our situation was one that they don’t often have to deal with so they were not sure how to handle us. We were given advice on the way we should progress and forms to fill in. Then when we submitted the forms we were told that it was all wrong and that we needed to fill in different forms and re-submit them. We were advised to go on line only to find out that in our situation we could not submit our applications on line. We were told to phone the office and we would get one of those very frustrating answering machines that tell you to “press 1 if you want to change your particulars, press 2 if you want to report earnings” and so on and on. The only way to manage a phone call to them was to put the phone on speaker phone, stand it on the desk and get on with something else while the music played for half an hour or so. Then you would get a cheerful and friendly girl who would say that the only way to deal with your query was to call in to the office. As Jonathan, my husband had given up formal employment before me his application went a little more smoothly and he was sorted out first. Between the time he was getting paid and the time I was granted my payments I was obliged to report my earnings every fortnight. I could understand and accept that but it did cause a few problems. I was told by one of the ladies in the office that I had to report my earnings on the Thursday, not a Wednesday or a Friday, it had to be Thursday. I said “Yes that will be fine” without much thought and it was only a little later that I realised that the Centre Link office closes at 4 o’clock and Thursdays were the only day of the week when I worked a full day, starting at 9 o’clock and not finishing until 4.30 pm. It would not be possible for me to report on a Thursday. I would be away from home all day and to ring that office and wait for ages on my mobile phone was not possible and would have cost me an arm and a leg. I rang the office on an afternoon when I was not working and had time to sit on the phone for an hour or so. I was told that I could report on line at any time of the night or day so there was no problem.  I was given a password so that I could log in. On the next Thursday morning I got up especially early so that I could get on line and sort it all out. I got into the Centre Link web page and followed the prompts but it kept telling me that I was not eligible to report on line and that I must either call at the office or telephone them to report my earnings. I was very frustrated by this time and thought that they would just have to wait until Friday for me to call them after all what could they do to me, I did not think it could be a hanging offence. When I picked up my last client of the afternoon to take her shopping I was telling her how annoying Centre Link could be and she suggested that as soon as we had finished her shopping we should call at the office and she would just wait in the car for me. She did not mind if she was late getting home and I could just finish her housework a little later. I gratefully accepted her offer and went and stood in the queue for about 20 minutes to be attended to. The young gentleman who attended to me was efficient really seemed to understand my situation. He told me that as we were not actually getting an Old Age Pension but as we were both over pension age we were not able to report on line, don’t ask why that is a secret only know to the high ranking Centre Link staff and is not allowed to be revealed.   In fact the right hand did not seem to know what the left hand was doing. Somewhere in the Bible we are told not to let our left hand know what our right hand is doing but I don’t think that this is what Jesus had in mind with His teaching.

Eventually all the problems were sorted out and we were granted what is called Special Benefits not as much as an Old Age Pension but enough for us to live on if we are careful. We received our first payment in mid-September so I was able to put in my notice and I did my last shift on 8^th October. We will only become eligible for the Old Age Pension in another 8 years but we won’t starve meanwhile. Some of my clients who don’t fully understand our situation think this is very unfair so I just told them that it is not a problem we will just live until we are 240 years old like Moses so we will get our own back on the government. But joking aside we are very pleased to be able to retire and very thankful for what we are receiving.

I was a little sad to be saying Goodbye to the ladies I had been with for so long, some of them for more than 4 years, but I have kept in touch with those of them who asked me to. Being elderly and almost housebound they do appreciate a visit or a phone call.

78) My Teenagers

Two of my granddaughters are now teenagers, not children any more but young ladies in the making. I suppose every grandmother thinks her grandchildren are special but no grandmother was ever blessed with two like mine.

Claudia is the eldest, almost 18 now and in her last year of school. At the moment she is on a school trip to Borneo. Goodness only knows why Borneo?  All I could remember about the place was that many years ago David Attenborourgh went on a “Quest for a Dragon” in the rain forests of Borneo and as kids we would talk about the “Wild Man of Borneo” but I had forgotten what that was all about so I did a Google search and found that it should have been the “Wild Men of Borneo” who were a pair of exceptionally strong dwarfs who travelled with the Barnem freak show but that’s  another story. I don’t expect Claudia will meet any Wild Men there.

This will be Claudia’s last year of school as she will go into Year 12 when school resumes at the end of the month. She will be doing her High School Certificate and she has been selected to be the School Captain (Head Girl to all you non Australians). School Captains are chosen by a rather complicated process that involves both the staff and the pupils of the school so the one who is chosen must be popular with the other girls and also be bright and hard working  to find favour in the eyes of the staff. Claudia had a very good year in the class room as she came first in five of the six subjects that she was taking. The one subject she did not do so well in was Chemistry, she ONLY came SIXTH in that. She hopes next year to go to university and do a general science course. She has not made up her mind yet what she wants to do but she knows it will be in the science world.  This will be a great loss to the literary and artistic worlds as she has also always got high marks for English and Art. 

Lauren, her younger sister turned 15 last October and also is bright and beautiful. In 2012 she was among the finalist in the Junior Tropfest. Tropfest is the world’s largest short film festival. The junior section for contestants under sixteen has approximately 200 entrants. Shortly before the closing date Lauren decided to put in an entry. She produced her film all on her own, with no input from her family or friends. We were all very impressed when she was shortlisted, after all 40? out  of 200 entrants is an achievement. We had to wait about two weeks for the 12 finalists to be announced. The rules of the competition require that the entrants make a brand new short film. To ensure that the entry is brand new each year a new code word is issued. The code word for 2012 was Juice. The film did not have to be about Juice it just needed for the word Juice to have been used at least once in the production. This was just to ensure that the production was new and made especially for the    2012 Junior Tropfest. When the 12 finalists were announced and Lauren was amongst them the family were all very thrilled and eagerly awaited the finals. None of us had seen Laurens film yet and she had been asked by the competition committee not to make it public until after the results were announced so she would not show it to us. On the night of the finals the 12 films were screened on a large open air screen at the Domain in Sydney and sadly Lauren was not among the three prize winners. But if you go to http://tropfest.com/tropjr/ and look for Freshly Squeezed you will be able to see Lauren film. I am sure you will agree that maybe some of the other films were more ambitious than hers, they were mostly made by a team of youngsters whereas Laurens was done completely on her own. The idea, the animation, sound effects, filming, directing and producing were all her own so we think she did a great job and we are very proud of her. As sure as her sister is that she is going into the science world Lauren is sure that she is going the artistic route. She would like to study fashion design. I think she will do well at this as she already sews beautifully and is very artistic and imaginative.

Yes they are both very bright and talented, doing well at all their school subject and at sport too but more importantly they are both thoroughly nice girls. Well-mannered, polite, caring and beautiful. One day I will watch as Claudia is honoured for some great scientific work and Lauren is holding a fashion show to introduce her latest collection.

 Lauren and Claudia with their mother Sian. 

77) Candace

As I mentioned at the beginning of my last posting we have a new granddaughter. Her name is Candace Lisa and she was born on 24^th October of this year. She was 49cm long and her weight was 3.44kg / 7.584lb

She was a little slow to arrive; she came 12 days after the date that the doctor had expected her to come. The biggest problem though was, because her big brother had arrived three weeks early Lisa was sure that baby number two would follow the same pattern and be early too. So three weeks before her due date Lisa was mentally prepared for her arrival and ready to rush off to the hospital. So all in all she had almost 5 weeks of being ready to rush off to the hospital.

Candace was born in Gosford hospital. As Lisa and Dom had been living in Berowra when Nathan was born he was born in Hornsby hospital. But as they now live on the Central Coast they had to go to Gosford. During her pregnancy Lisa confided in me that she was disappointed not to be going to Hornsby once again as Gosford seemed rather old fashioned and dark compared to the bright modern Hornsby Hospital. But I am very pleased to say that after the birth she told me that she had been very impressed with Gosford as she had received excellent treatment from the medical staff. They had been very efficient and caring. Just goes to show you can’t judge a book by its cover or a hospital by it appearance.

This long awaited baby was born at 3.50 am on a Wednesday morning. Of course Dominic rang to tell us that she had arrived and that everything was fine. The next time we heard from him was at about 4.15 pm that afternoon to tell  us that he had collected Lisa from the hospital and they were all now at home. Apparently every new mother has to stay in hospital for 12 hours after giving birth so she had not been allowed to leave until 4.00 pm. But as soon as the clock struck 4 they were on their way.

As you can see from the photograph she is a beautiful baby, with a lovely mop of dark hair and a very pretty smile. She is a good and contented baby and does not give her parent too hard a time. Well not any harder than any new born does.

Nathan was very pleased with her arrival as she brought him a Buzz Lightyear toy. If you don’t know what that is I expect you are in the same age category as I am. (Some super hero from a Toy Story movie I think) He seems to be continuing to like his little sister even if she doesn’t present him with gifts every day. The other day he told his Mom that Candace was crying and Lisa replied that she must be hungry and went off to make a bottle. She came back to find Nathan trying to feed Candace a hot chip. That must surely be love, to share his chips with her. He is getting so big now; he will be three in February and is going to preschool for a couple of days a week in January. He has enough energy for a whole barrel load of monkeys and I wonder how he will cope with the discipline of school. He seems to be interested in everything; his favourites are things that have buttons to press and lights that light up, as they have both buttons and lights mobile phones and remote controls are definitely his favourites.He wants to know what things are, what they do and how they work. I took him for a little walk along our street the other day and he had to examine each letter box that we passed. He needed to pat all the hub caps of the cars parked along the kerb. The manhole covers were also inspected and he would have called in on each house if I had allowed it.

As they have both buttons and lights mobile phones and remote controls are his favourites. For his second birthday I was at a loss to know what to buy for him so I asked Lisa if she had any ideas. She told me that she had seen a toy lawn mower in a local shop and she thought that he would enjoy that. I was a bit sceptical, why would a child want a lawn mower but as I could not come up with any other ideas I went with that. It was a rather nice toy as it looked like a miniature Victa mower even to the logo on it and it had a string attachment at the top that made a lovely lawn mower noise when it was pulled. He was enchanted with it and spent the rest of the afternoon “mowing” the lawn. But the thing that amused us all most was that when he pulled the string to “start” his mower he would put his foot onto the body of the machine just as he had seen his dad do with his machine. I thought it was very observant of him and warned Dominic that he had better be very careful of everything he does and says as Nathan is obviously a little sponge soaking up everything he sees and hears.

  

76) Back Again

I have had a nagging feeling recently that it is about time I added to my blog, then I got a gentle reminder from some of my loyal readers J so I looked up to see when I last posted an entry. I was amazed to see that it was on 28^th Dec 2011. If I don’t get in an episode before the end of this month there will be no entries for 2012 so I had better do something about that.

 It has been a busy year with quite a lot going on, we have a new granddaughter, settled into our new home and I have retired from work so I have a lot of catching up to do.

 The actual move into our new house in Barry Street was rather traumatic. We had arranged for a removalist to take our furniture but we spent a great deal of time packing all our belongings into cartons ready for the big day. I thought it would only take about three hours although the gentleman who I spoke to on the phone said he thought about four hours. Eventually we were both wrong it took a whole five hours, starting at 7 am and finishing at noon. Even then the removalists only took the furniture and the heaviest boxes.  Jonny and I worked the rest of the afternoon bringing a few loads with our little trailer. By 6 pm it was getting dark, it started to rain and we were worn out. We packed in bought fish and chips for our dinner and sorted out the kettle so that we could have a cup of tea and our bed so that we would have a place to sleep. We were sure that the weather would be better the next day but we could not have been more wrong. When we woke the next morning it was raining heavily but there was nothing we could do about it as all our things had to be out that day so that we could do the handover to the owners that afternoon. As we were driving out to go and get our first load Dominic arrived to help us and it stopped raining, it started pouring instead. In fact the rain was so heavy that the next day on the news they reported that it had been the wettest September day in about 30 years. Dominic and Jonny worked hard bringing all the remaining things across from the old house; they got soaked to the skin every time and had to change all their cloths three times over. I cleaned out the old house and started to unpack in the new house. I was inside warm and dry all day. In the old house Jonny had had quite a bit of space to store his tools and equipment but in this new place there was only a single garage. When the garage was full the rest of the things just had to be dumped on the lawn at the back of the house, in the pouring rain, but there was no alternative. We would never have managed without Dominic’s help though; he spent the whole day with us and was a godsend. (Thanks again Dom) At least we had the comfort of knowing that the roof didn’t leak, with all that torrential rain we had that weekend there was not a spot of rain in the house, except for some that had run into the garage under the door.

When we first managed to sit at our dining room table for a meal we were pleasantly surprised at the view from the dining room window. The house across the road from us is built on a fairly large triangular shaped block as it is on the corner of the intersection with another street and the house is placed on the widest part of the triangle so it is not in our direct view line. What we see when we look out of that window is the narrowest section of the triangle which is just their garden. So we don’t look out on to other people and they don’t look out on to us. It gives us an illusion of being far away from everyone even if we aren’t. Admittedly not a stunning view like we had in Spoon Bay Road but very pleasant none the less. We are very grateful for that.

                                  

The inside of the house was a bit like a war zone. Boxes everywhere and no room to move. Although the house had been left clean it was still a very old house and left a lot to be desired. There were many things that needed doing but for the first two weeks or so I think we were just concentrating on putting everything in its place. There just didn’t seem to be enough room for everything. Moving house always makes me realise just how much stuff we have and I always resolve that I will go through it all and get rid of what we don’t need. Needless to say I never do.



75) Our Last Move ????????

Yes I know I have said that many times before but I really hope that this time I am right. If you have been following my story you will know I have had 15 different addresses and now I have one more. This last move was from Spoon Bay to Bateau Bay, only a matter of just over 4 kilometres but very hard and traumatic.

We have lived in Spoon Bay for 8 ½ years, since we first arrived in Australia in fact. We loved our home and it’s proximity to the beach and had no intention of moving but unfortunately the owners daughter and her husband were coming to live on the Central Coast and so our landlord asked us to vacate. They gave us three months notice and a very good reference. But that did nothing to ease the panic we felt. There is a shortage of reasonably priced rental properties here on the Central Coast and as we do not have unlimited funds we were very concerned. We realised that at our age we are more desirable tenants so we decided to go and “sell” ourselves to all the local estate agents. We went to just about every agent in the area, and there are plenty; we told them that we were the tenants that they had been looking for. We were too old for wild parties, did not have any young children to write on the walls or break the windows, we did not have any pets to soil the carpets or dig up the plants. Neither of us smoked and we were both only very moderate drinkers. What more could they ask for? While most of the receptionists were friendly and smiled at our cheek they said that they no longer kept lists of likely tenants as the demand was so great. They told us to go onto the Internet to a web page called Real Estate.com and check each day for the new listings. Or we could call in to the office as often as we liked to see if any homes had been added to the list.

Real Estate.com was a real boon. Goodness only knows how people who do not have Internet access manage. I suppose they are all sleeping on the street by now. I don’t know how anyone would have managed to call on all those real estate agents every day to see what had become available. On Real Estate.com we were able to list all our requirements and the computer would send us an email message when houses that were close to the requirements were listed.

We did not restrict ourselves as to where on the Cental Coast we wanted to live but we did require that the house had some form of garage or workshop as my husband has a lot of tools and equipment. He enjoys his workshop and we certainly did not want to get rid of all his stuff. When a likely prospect was listed the web page showed you a picture or two of the property and a short description. If you clicked on it you would be asked to please drive passed the house to make sure that you liked the area it was in and if you were still interested to attend a public showing on such and such a day at such and such a time.

We drove passed quite a few. Some of them were just about falling down, some did not have a garage but only an open carport and some were in areas that we would not like to live in. One of the first houses we looked at was in Terrigal, a very sought after suburb. The house itself was not at all bad but it was not fenced, was on a busy road and the garden looked like a nightmare. It was large and on a very steep slope. Not a lot of flowerbeds to maintain but the grass was of a very thick course type that would have been a problem to cut, it would have needed a brush cutter, it could not have been done with our mower and as tenants we would have been responsible for that. Even with all these faults we did think of applying for it but when we were told that they were only willing to give a six months lease as the owners had plans to demolish the house and build units on the land we decided to give that one a miss. Another house we looked at seemed suitable but it looked as if the neighbours might have been a problem. Their garden was full of rubbish – empty tins and bottles, refuse bags in a huge pile, broken toys and equipment – strewn around and two large aggressive sounding dogs and not a proper fence in between the houses. We were getting a little desperate by then so we made a note of the time and date of the showing and thought we might attend.

Before the day of that showing I saw an advert for a house in Bateau Bay at only $240 a week. I thought ‘at that price it has to be a dump’ and as there were no pictures of it I was sure it must be a dump. But when I looked at the address and saw that it was only a short distance from our house I told Jonny about it and said that I thought we aught to look at it ‘just in case’. It was listed as having three bedrooms, a garage and dual access to the property. We hopped into the car and drove down the street. It was an old house, there was no doubt about that but it did not look too bad. But wait a minute ‘where was the garage that they had promised?’ We couldn’t see any garage and without a garage or at least a large shed we could not take it. Just as we were about to drive away I remembered that the advert had said that it had dual access. There had to be a back lane, which is not very common in this part of the world. We drove around to the back and found the lane and worked out which house was the one we were looking for and lo and behold there was a garage after all. When we got back home again I quickly logged on to Real Estate. Com to find out the time and date of the public viewing.

At the appointed time we joined the queue of other prospective tenants in Barry Street. The road seemed full of cars and the line of people stretched form the front door down the pathway and into the street. People of all shapes and sizes, men and women, young and old, boys and girls, fat and thin all waiting for the viewing time to start. After a little wait the door opened and a young woman allowed the first five groups in to look around.

It was not the best way to judge a house, it was full of boxes and the vacating tenant’s possessions were in the throws of being packed. I noted that there were three bedrooms as promised that it did have a garage and that it was very old and in need of a fair amount of tender loving care. Not really my dream home but I knew the state of the rental market and asked the young lady from the estate agent how I should go about applying for the property. She told me that we had to fill in a form and that she would get me one from her car as she had already given out the 50 that she had brought with her. We heard one man telling the agent “I am going around to your office right now to put in these forms, I want this house and I’m putting in my application straight away”

I am a great believer in the power of pray and I had been praying since we were given notice that we would find a suitable house. When I looked at this old house I felt that we should apply for it but I was a little uneasy about it. Was there something better in the offing for us or were we meant to have this one? So I put it into the hands of the Lord, I prayed, “Lord if you want us to have this house please be with our application forms. If there is something more suitable and we should just wait then please don’t let us to get it”.

We took home our forms and spent the weekend filling them in. On Monday morning I rang the agents to find out when the forms had to be in by as there were still some documents that they required that I did not have yet. The young lady said “Please put your forms in straight away, you can get the other documents to me later. I have already had some applications in and I would like to settle this as soon as possible”. So I drove passed her office on my way to work to drop off the forms and she told me that we would be contacted with the decision within 48 hours. I got a phone call from her at 2.00 pm that afternoon to tell me that a decision had been made and that we had the house. I never did give her the missing documents.

Well now we have been in our new home for three months and I have to admit I really like it. It does not have the good view of our last house but we have open land in front of us so we do not feel closed in, the rooms are bigger and we have a much larger garden. Once Jonny has got it into shape we will have space to grow a few veggies and we have space to sit out in the sun.

Yes it was not a voluntary move but it worked out well in the long run. My prayers have surely been answered.

74) Wet, Wet, Wet

It has been raining, raining and raining. It must have been going on for two weeks now and I am really fed up with it. It is not too bad if I just have to clean houses but my work also involves taking people shopping or to medical appointments. Getting elderly ladies, who don’t move too quickly, to their destination on time and as dry as possible can be pretty hard. Last week I came home with my trousers wet to the knees a few of times. My husband wanted to know what I had been up to and was amazed when I said “Walking through puddles”. I know that sounds silly but what else do you do when the car park is under two inches of water. I know that it has not been nearly as bad as the floods in Queensland last year, just irritating and inconvenient. I don’t like driving in the rain, when the visibility is poor and the roads are covered with water and one can’t see the ever-increasing number of potholes that rapidly develop. It is hard on the council worker too. One day last week I was held up while a work gang shovelled gravel into a large new pothole, I thought it was a bit pointless as it was still raining hard. When I drove along the same stretch of road the next day the rain had washed away all the gravel and the hole was as big as before.

Driving in the wet reminded me of another time when I was driving in the rain some years ago. It happened when we lived in South Africa. We lived in a small village called Waterfalls in Kwa Zulu Natal and I was working in the next village called Hillcrest. One afternoon on my way home it started to rain, heavy rain that made visibility very poor and turned the road into a bit of a river. I turned on my windscreen wipers and slowed down to a crawl. The windscreen wipers worked well for a moment or two but then the one on the driver’s side went from left to right but failed to go back from right to left. It just went on and on and ended up laying along the side window of the car. It just lay there, immobile and useless while the wiper on the passenger side continued to flick back and fore just as it should. I pulled off to the side of the road, opened the window put out my hand and managed to get the offending wiper back on to the windscreen. Again it behaved itself for a moment but then went shooting off to the side of the car once again. I got out of the car and tried fiddling with it but I had no idea what was wrong with it and even less idea of how to fix it so all that was happening was that I had got completely drenched. The rain did not look as if it was ever going to ease and I was wet and cold and just wanted to get home and as I could not see without the wipers I decided to just drive with the window open and with my right hand out on the outside edge of the windscreen to stop the wily wiper in its tracks and make it go back from right to left again. I was completely wet already so that did not matter but it meant driving very slowly and the cars behind me were very impatient at being held up by my slow moving vehicle. So as not to cause too much of a hold up on the winding road through the sugar cane fields every now and again I pulled off to the side of the road to let all those who were in so much of hurry to get passed. Soon a police car came along and the two young policemen indicated that I should pull off again. They asked me what my problem was and I showed them what had happened with my wiper. They both looked at it but like me they could not fix it. They asked my how far I had to go and I told them I just needed to get to the first turn off in Waterfalls and I would be just about home and I was sure that my husband would be able to fix it. They obviously did not want to stand for any longer in the pouring rain so they told me to just follow them and they would get me back home. I got back into the car and they got into their police car. They started the engine, the lights and the sirens and we drove in tandem with lights flashing and sirens going and me close behind feeling a bit like a celebrity in a cavalcade. When they had seen me home they turned off their siren and lights and with a toot of the hooter they were on their way. How kind was that?

As I had thought Jonny was able to fix the problem quite easily and so no harm was done. I often wonder what people would have thought when they saw a little elderly lady, drenched to the skin and being escorted by two large young policemen. But I don’t suppose many people noticed it was me as the rain was much too heavy to see that far.

73) The Seniors Card

Do you get email messages about the joys of old age? You know the kind of thing :-

Kidnappers are not very interested in you. In a hostage situation you are likely to be released first. No one expects you to run--anywhere. People call at 9 pm and ask, "Did I wake you?" There is nothing left to learn the hard way. Things you buy now won't wear out. Yes, all these things are wonderful but the thing I like best about old age is my Senior’s Card.

Now that we are Permanent Residents of New South Wales we are entitled to this wonderful little card. It gives us all sorts of discounts on products, most of which we never buy so it is the excursion ticket that we love best. The first time we used our Seniors Card we took a train to Central Station in Sydney to meet up with some friend. We intended having lunch in town with them, as we had not seen them for quite some time. We were thrilled that our return tickets to Sydney and back had only cost us $2.50 each; before we had our cards we had paid $15.60 each so we were very pleased with the saving. Our friends suggested we catch another train into the shopping area of the city so that we could go for lunch. We thought that was fine and asked where we should get our tickets. They laughed at us and explained that the ticket we had bought at Gosford station was an excursion ticket and that would allow us to travel by train, bus or ferry anywhere in NSW for the whole of that day. Wow! What a bargain! That day, after lunch and a stroll around the shops we caught another train to Circular Quay and had a cool drink in the shadow of the Opera house and the wonderful Harbour Bridge. At the end of our day out our friends boarded a ferry to take them home and we went back to Central Station and caught a train home to Gosford. All for $2.50, who could complain about that?

Now that we have discovered this benefit we use it whenever we can. We have visited museums and other places of interest and we have taken trains and ferries and buses. We are learning our way around the system and don’t look quite so lost any more. The people of Sydney are usually so friendly and helpful. If we stand at the corner of the street with our map in our hands trying to decide if we should be turning left or right someone will usually stop and offer to help us find our way. Once when we were outside the Maritime museum and wanting to get back to the station we asked the driver of a bus which bus would take us to Central but he could not tell us. A gentleman standing behind us said “I am going to Town Hall which is the station before Central if you want to come with me and just get off at the next station I will show you the way”. It turned out that the gentleman was a volunteer guide at the Maritime museum every Monday and so we went with him and got to our destination.

Entry to the Maritime Museum is free of charge and is very interesting, we need to go back again some time to see the things we did not have time for on our first visit. We also need to re-visit the Power House Museum. This one is not free, there is a charge of $10 each but our magic Senior Card gets us in for $6 each and it is certainly worth the $12 we spent. It is a museum of science, technology, design, decorative arts and social history so there is plenty to see. One of the things that really interested my husband Jonathan, was the Boulton and Watt engine. It was made by engineer James Watt and entrepreneur Matthew Boulton of Birmingham, England. It was installed in Whitbread's London brewery in 1785 and was used there for 102 years, powering equipment for grinding and lifting malt, stirring vats, and pumping water and beer. Professor Archibald Liversidge, a trustee of the Museum, was in London when the engine was taken out of service and asked that it be donated to the Museum. It arrived in Sydney aboard the sailing ship 'Patriarch' in 1888. The engine still works and we watched as a young man started it up and let it run for a little while so that we could see it in motion.

Another attraction for us is the Pyrmont Bridge in Darling Harbour. It is the world's oldest surviving electrically operated swingspan bridge. The current swingspan bridge opened in 1902 and replaced the first Pyrmont Bridge which began operating in 1857. The swingspan allows access for vessels that are too tall to travel under the bridge. It is now closed to vehicular traffic and just the monorail and pedestrians travel across it. Jonathan as a boilermaker can appreciate the skill in its making, even though it is made of wood, and can spend hours just examining it.

There are so many other things that we would like to see in Sydney and with our Seniors Card it is all possible. We want to visit the Houses of Parliament, the Art Gallery, the Botanical Gardens and take ferry rides to the northern suburbs.We really do appreciate our cheap fares and are very gratful to the New South Wales government for them.

72) They Walk Among Us

Australia, like many other countries I suppose, has a problem with graffiti. I am sure that the authorities have tried many schemes to combat it but it still persists. One of the schemes they have tried is to make it illegal for anyone to sell spray paint to anyone under eighteen. Of course once they did this the young offenders just turned to stealing the cans so that they could continue to paint their signatures in the most inaccessible places they can find. You see their “art” high up on buildings, on bridges and overpasses and I am very puzzled about how they managed it. Oh yes, quite easy if you have a team of helpers, a crane or a cherry picker, scaffolding or a very long ladder. But how do they do it quickly and unobtrusively without the police catching them red handed. (Or blue handed, or yellow handed, or green handed or which ever colour his signature may be)

Last week I went into a hardware store to buy a can of spray paint for my husband. As I walked in the gentleman behind the counter immediately asked if he could help me. I asked for a can of black epoxy spray paint and he walked towards the corner where all the paint was stored (without even asking me for proof that I was over eighteen). He reached to the top shelf and asked, “Did you want Gloss Black, Satin Black or Flat Black?” And I had thought that black was black, how silly of me. I replied that I did not know and said I would phone my husband and check. While I was on the phone to Jonathan he attended to another customer and so when I knew which Black I required I tried to get it off the shelf but it was too high for me. I went over to him and apologised to him saying that I just couldn’t reach the top shelf. He said he understood as he had to stretch to reach that shelf and he was considerably taller than my 4’10” ins. I asked him why the spray paint was not under lock and key as it is supposed to be by law so that young graffiti artist could not steel it and he told me that the graffiti artist did not use this kind of paint. He pointed out the cheaper paint safely behind a metal grid with a large padlock on it. He said “They just use that sort of paint, this stuff is too expensive for them”. I looked at him hard to see if he was trying to be funny but it was pretty obvious that he was deadly serious and so I asked him what on earth did the price matter if one was going to steel it. And he just blustered “Oh I just do what the paint company tells me to do, it’s not my decision” Yes, they walk among us.

71) The Clean on Dirt

The other day I heard Katherine Ashenburg being interviewed on the radio. I have never heard of her before, she has written among others a book called “The Dirt on Clean”. It is described as An Unsanitised History. It tells of how people through the ages have dealt with or not dealt with their personal hygiene. From a Roman who spent two hours a day in a public bath of various temperatures, scraped his skin with a small rake and ended his ablutions by rubbing oil on his skin. To the seventeenth century French aristocrat who would change his shirt once a day and apply perfume to hide his smell and that of everyone around him but never, never immersing himself in water. Different cultures have different ideas about what is required to make oneself acceptable to you family and friends.

Ms. Ashenburg seems to have done a great deal of research for her book and hearing her talk of it has made me want to read it and so I am on the lookout for a copy. Another point that was brought up in the interview was how many doctors in Northern America are now thinking that we have for the most part over done the whole cleansing thing. Not only do we bath or shower at least once a day but we use strong soaps and detergents to wash away our dirt, our aroma and maybe even our immune systems. There are people who believe that the rise in asthma and allergic reactions is because we have no natural immunity any more, we have washed it all away. My mother had told me when I was a child that “You’ll have to eat a ton of dirt before you die” so a bit of dirt has never really bothered me, particularly good clean dirt like soil. In our house if food was dropped on the floor it was picked up, wiped and eaten. And we certainly did not adhere to the ‘3 seconds’ rule. I don’t suppose we had ever even heard of it. I can see the sense in sterilising babies’ bottles but once an infant is crawling around on the floor and putting his grubby hands and anything else he can find into his mouth I feel that sterilising is rather superfluous. I remember a young mother that I was in hospital with when we both had our first babies. We would visit each other when the babies were small and she was still sterilising his bottles when he was about a year old. Poor child was always sick, more than the usual runny noses that toddlers always seem to have but coughs and all sorts of other infections. Whereas my son was never really sick, he was just a toughie. I suppose he had to be tough to survive a mother like me. I read once that the high rate of polio after the war was because we had learnt to be clean but we had gone too far and had no resistance to the polio virus. I don’t know if that is true but it would not surprise me.

Someone on the radio programme about Katherine Ashenburg’s book mentioned a doctor who believed that if we just stopped the washing at the wrists we would be much better off. He said that keeping our hands clean is necessary to stop the spreading of germs but he thought that if we left it at that we would be healthier.

When I see the huge assortment of products we use to keep ourselves clean I can’t help wondering what happened to the good old bar of soap and a face cloth. One product to wash our hair another for our face, another for our body and yet another for our hands. All to ensure that we don’t have a “problem that our best friend would not tell us about”. I think that personal hygiene products could very well be out done by household cleaning products. Things that kill 99% of ‘all known household germs’. Oh dear should I now be worrying about all the ‘unknown household germs’? Things that sterilise, sanitise and deodorise, that take away that dreaded smell of cooking. Burnt food is not too pleasant a smell but what is wrong with bacon and onions frying early on a Sunday morning or a cake in the oven or that wonderful evocative smell of fresh bread. I feel I should be trying to make my kitchen smell inviting not trying to get rid of all the smells. Beware! It’s all a great big con by the manufactures who just want to sell more and more products and get richer and richer. Everywhere I look I see evidence that the world is going crazy. Or maybe I am just getting old.

By the way, I have manage to find a copy of The Dirt on Clean from a wonderful Web page called BetterWorldBooks.com for $13.77 postage free. As our local book shop wanted to charge me over $40 I will be happy to wait the few weeks that it will take to arrive from America.

70) Floods

I’m sure that you have seen the news of the tremendous floods in the State of Queensland. It is just too hard to imagine. How much water is needed to fill up homes to the roof and not just a few houses but hundreds.

Queensland is called “The Sunshine State” and they do normally have lovely weather but they have had widespread drought over the last few years so when it started to rain and rain everyone was happy. The reservoirs were filling up and the water tables were being replenished. Farmers looked forward to a bumper croup and were rubbing their hand with glee. Who can blame them as they have been through some pretty hard times and were hoping to pay back some of the debts that had piled up during the years of drought? Once it started raining it just couldn’t stop.

I looked it up on the Internet and see that Queensland is 1852642 square kilometres or 715309 square miles and we were told that three quarters of the state was affected by the floods. Some homes just had the water lapping at their doorsteps but others had water up to the roof and some were even swept away with the rush of water. Cars were overturned and immense damage done to the roads and the infrastructure. No one knows the full extent of the damage and so the cost of the repairs is still not known. The government is helping where it can, with grants of immediate cash for those who have had to evacuate their homes with just what they could carry or in some cases just the clothes on their back. There are many places where the public can donate cash to the victims and many millions have been collected already.

Maybe not as spectacular but just as heartbreaking are the floods in Victoria where 51 towns are affected, involving at least 4000 people and about 1700 properties.

Since we have lived in Australia I have been impresses with the SES volunteers. They are the Special Emergency Service and they do a great job in all sorts of emergencies. They assist the public in cyclones, storms, floods, earthquakes, cliff rescues, landslides and any other emergency you can think of. They give extra backup to the firemen and the police. Over this time of the floods I have seen them in action over and over again and I think they are great. We have seen them going into fast flowing water to rescue people swept away by the roaring water. They do a wonderful job and I am very glad to hear that the police are now prosecuting people who foolishly drive through flooded roads that have large “Road Closed” notices on them. They have been warned and warned over again but they think they know better and take a chance. The rescue squads have to risk their own lives to bring them back to safety. Obviously they cannot just be left there but I feel that it would be justice for them to be ignored. Why should all the volunteers put their lives at risk to save people who have knowingly and deliberately put themselves into those dangerous situations?

We’ve watched on television as the people of Queensland have rallied around to help with the clean up. Armies of people young and old being bussed into the affected areas to help shovel up the mud and try to make life a little easier for those poor people. I have been amazed at the progress that they have made. Yes, there is a great deal to do yet but they are working wonders.

One thing that always puzzles me when there is a disaster of any kind any where in the world. The leaders of the country tour the area to see the damage for themselves. I always think that it must take money, resources and manpower to bring in these people, to show them around and to protect them too. I can’t understand why they go or why the victims of the disaster want them to. What on earth good can it do? Surely they could just watch it on TV and send money, equipment and personnel to help and not tie up valuable transport and men showing them around. Obviously this is not the usual way of thinking though, as I have seen many news reports of places where the leaders did not go out to see for themselves and the public have complained bitterly. I remember how George Bush was severely castigated because it took him a little while to visit the flooded town of New Orleans. My reaction would have been “Stay home Mr. Bush, just send us your money”

Another awful thing about these Australian floods is just how few people were insured. Some of the homes were built on land that had been subjected to heavy flooding in 1976 so the insurance companies refused to give the owners flood cover. That’s fair enough, those people knew they were not covered and understood the risk. There were many other people who believed that they were covered for flooding only to discover once the muddy water had destroyed all there possessions and damaged their house that their insurance company is quibbling about the definition of the word ‘flood’. Did the water come from a downpour of rain or from the rising of the creek? They are now promising to hold a commission into the definition of floods so that this will not happen again, but what about those people who have paid their premiums for years believing that they were covered and now will get nothing as their furniture, appliances, clothes and personal possessions are trucked away to the refuse tip.

It also amazes me that through all of this ‘life goes on’. People in New South Wales go to the Christmas Sales and those in South Australia play cricket. People in Darwin hold a market and in Tamworth they hold their usual country music festival. I know that stopping all our activities will not help mop up the water but I feel rather guilty that I can do so little to help.

69) Christmas 2010

Well here we are in 2011, can you believe it? Looking back on 2010 one thing that strikes me is that I sadly neglected my blog last year. I want to do better this year but I won’t promise anything. I will just say that I will try.

2010 was an eventful year for us. We were granted our Permanent Residence in Australia and we welcomed a beautiful new grandson into our family. The first event hardly made any difference to our everyday lives, except that we now have our Medicare cards and have access to the health service. People have remarked that it would make a big difference to our lives but as we are hardly every ill it has made no noticeable difference but it is good to know that we will get assistance if we should ever be sick and that although we are not yet able to take out Australian citizenship we have been accepted to live here permanently and unless we do something really horrendous we will be allowed to stay. That is reassuring.

The second event, the birth of our grandson Nathan Dominic, has made a great deal of difference to our lives. He is a beautiful child, so happy and friendly. He is now the centre of all family gatherings, everyone vying for a turn to hold him. His cousins, Claudia 16 and Lauren 13 think they have been given a real live baby doll and love to play with him. He really made my Christmas this year. For a change the whole family came to our house, we usually go to my son Jace and his wife Siân but we decided to be different this year. All the old ladies who I care for kept telling me that it would be special as it was his first Christmas but I was not so sure. I thought he would love the wrapping paper but I did not expect him to be old enough to really enjoy Christmas.

I appliquéd his name on a bath towel for him and bought him a little suit. Both good practical presents and I really wanted to give him something impractical but looking around the toyshops just made me feel very despondent. Everything just seemed too big or too silly or too cheaply made. I was beginning to despair of ever finding the ‘right’ toy for him. A few days before Christmas I dragged Jonny off to Toys R Us, one of the largest toy shops in town. We walked up and down the aisles, examining shelves and shelves of toys. Some were too old for him, some were for girls, some he already had, some were way out of our price range and some were just ridiculous. Then Jonny spied it - a little engine. It was make of plastic, which we had said we did not want, it was battery operated another thing we did not want but it was noisy, which we had said we wanted. When one pressed the top of the funnel it played a little tune, whistled and chugged and lit up as it moved forward. We were enchanted and decided that if Nathan did not like it we would give it a good home.

When his Mum unwrapped it for him on Christmas day, his eyes just lit up and as it chugged cheerfully along the ground he was off after it, trying to catch it up. He was having such fun with it. That really made my day. I suppose he will grow out of it pretty soon but just seeing his look of delight when he first set eyes on it was worth all the tea in China. Now I have to start looking for something that will get the same reaction for his birthday at the beginning of February.

68) A Mugs Life

A couple of weeks ago when I turned on my radio first thing in the morning I heard the tail end of an interview with Prince William and Kate Middleton on the occasion of their engagement. I sighed a little sigh and thought “We will have nothing else on our news bulletins for the next few months” The next item on the early morning radio show was the Financial Report. Most of this just goes over my head and I only left it on so that I could listen to the weather forecast that would follow.

In the studio in Australia a financial expert was talking by phone to a financial expert in London. They talked of Bulls and Bears and Inflation, deflation, recession and all sorts of other things that I only have a very feint understanding of. Before signing off the Australian expert asked “And what about the news of the engagement, will this make a difference to the British economy? The British expert seemed a little surprised at the question and hummed and hawed a bit. The Australian said, “Surely it will make people feel a bit more positive, more ready to go out and spend money, happier and more relaxed, what about all those souvenirs?” The British expert said “The only economy that that is likely to benefit is the Chinese economy”. It did give me a little giggle but it is sad that all those mugs and plates and bunting will be ‘Made in China’ and it made me think of our ‘most travelled mug’

While we were in South Africa Jonny was a regular blood donor. In South Africa you were able to donate blood every three months and so at the end of the year if you had given your full four pints you were given a little token of their appreciation. One year Jonny was given a mug with the Blood Donors logo on it, a good useful gift.

Not long ago as I washed the dishes I noticed that on the base of the mug it was printed ‘Made in China and Printed in Canada’. So that mug had been shipped from the factory in China right across the world to Canada where the South African Blood Transfusion Services logo was printed on it. It would then have been shipped off again to South Africa and presented to Jonny for giving four pints in one year. It joined our collection of assorted mugs and was packed with our belongings when we came to Australia, bringing it back to almost where it started. I don’t know how long it’s round the world trip took, I don’t think it was a very fast one but a pretty long one for a little mug. I think as a family we are rather “well travelled” but maybe the mug out does us.

Talking of mugs reminds me. The other day I was making a mug of coffee and saw that there was a warning on the box. “Hot drinks are Hot”. Oh well, it was packaged in Thailand so maybe it had lost something in the translation.

67) My own Petard

Do you ever feel that a particular word or phrase is especially your own? Or maybe they just have strong memories that bring a smile to your mind when you hear them. ‘Hoist by your own petard’ is such a phrase for me.

One day my Dad asked me to deliver some groceries for him. I had not long since passed my driving test and was still at the stage when I would do any chore that gave me a chance to drive. The car was a Vauxhall Victor station wagon and with the rear door open I loaded the boxes into the back of the car. I was busy and not taking much notice of what was going on around me so I did not see a family friend walk up behind me. I am pretty short so when I had finished I had to stretch up high to bring the door down. The friend behind me could not resist it and stepped forward and tickled me. Of course my reaction was to pull my arms down, (I am very ticklish) but I did not let go of the car door and as the man behind me was taller than me the door hit him on the head very hard. I had not intended to hurt him and did feel rather guilty about how badly he had been hurt. He told me, as he mopped his bloody forehead, not to worry about it after all he said, “I was hoist by my own petard” I had never heard the expression before and asked him to explain what he meant. He told me that it meant to be blown up by ones own bomb. I have had a soft spot for that phase ever since but always take it to mean ‘to be bashed on the head by a station wagon door’.

Yes, I have always thought of this as especially my own, but when I ‘Googled’ it just now I discovered that it was used by Shakespeare who gives the line to Hamlet in 1602

"For tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his owne petar".

Isn’t it amazing the things one can learn from the Internet.

66) Puffed Sleeves

When I posted the last edition of my blog “Red Wellington Boots” my son Jonathan suggested I should add a photograph. I took a couple of me wearing the said boots and some of the boots alone. I had to admit that the photos of the boots minus me were better than the ones of me in the boots. Not a very flattering thought I admit but it reminded of me of times when I would go clothes shopping and find that some items looked better on the hanger than they did on me. Some things no matter how attractive just don’t suit some people and there is nothing that can be done about it.

When I was in my mid teens everyone, just everyone was wearing gingham check dresses with scooped necklines, tight waists, wide skirts and large puffed sleeves. They were very “fashionable” and as a very clothes conscious teenager I just had to have one. I persuaded my mother to come with me to look for the perfect dress. Our first port of call was a dress shop called Dorothy’s. It was a favourite shop of mine and I knew they would have the kind of dress I wanted. The lady who served us, (yes that was in the days when one would be served in a dress shop) knew exactly what I wanted. She escorted my mother and me to one of the changing rooms and went off to bring me a dress. The dress she brought was perfect, it had small blue checks with broider-anglice lace at the neckline and at the edge of the lovely, oh so fashionable sleeves. It was love at first sight on my part and I could not wait to try it on. The assistant discreetly withdrew to allow me to change into the dress. Mom helped me zip up the back and I turned to admire myself in the mirror, I was sure I was going to look gorgeous. Mom and I looked for a few moments at my reflection amazed at what I looked like, it was terrible. For some reason those sleeves that looked so good on so many of my friends looked hideous on me. Well maybe not hideous - just hilarious. We started to giggle and by the time the sales assistant returned to see how I looked we were in stitches, all but rolling on the floor in laughter. Then to make matters worse the assistant said “Oh Madam does look good” and she was rather put out that we just continued to laugh. She was determined to prove her point and collected all the other assistants in the shop to come and see “how good Madam looked”. They trouped passed one by one, peeped through the curtain and commented on just how “lovely” I looked as I started to change back into my own clothes and Mom and I wiped the tears of laughter from our eyes. We managed to get out of the shop without being down right rude to the staff but I did not think I would ever be able to go back to that shop again and keep a straight face while I bought something.

Writing this has reminded me of how different buying clothes was in those days. It was just the beginning of the mushrooming up of the large chain stores and we still went into clothes shops, asked for what we wanted and a staff member would look for it and bring it to the change room. If you asked for a summer blouses in white with long sleeves she would bring a few that would fit that description. If you did not like any of these she would hurry off and bring a few more. If none of what she had to offer suited you she would start on the cream ones and then the pale blue ones and you knew that there was no hope when she began showing you short sleeved red ones. It was often hard to get out of the shop without buying something and so one had to be very strong willed. At least in those days if the dress you had tried on did not fit you could ask the lady to bring you one in a different size and would not have to get dressed again to go back into the shop and change it yourself. Yes, we were certainly “served” in clothes shops back then but I think I prefer to be left to browse through the racks of merchandise and pick out what I think I might like to try on. I would much rather be ignored by the staff than be fussed over and have them try to pressure me into a purchase that I don’t really want.

By the way I did go back to Dorothy’s a few years later, I bought my wedding gown there. Mom was with me then too and we had a lovely time as I tried on all the beautiful gowns before I made my choice.

65) Red Wellington Boots

I have a pair of bright red wellington boots. I don’t often wear them as my husband refuses to be seen with me when I do. They are very useful to wear when I go and do my bush regeneration duties around the lagoon near our home. Particularly when, like yesterday we have had a great deal of rain and the ground is soft and muddy, (great for pulling out the weeds but rather messy.) Some of the other people I do bush regeneration with tease me a little about my bright red boots but, as they admit, they will never lose me and I say I could hide away from them in the strawberry patch undetected if I want to.

There is a little story behind my boots. When we were living in Durban Jonny met up with an old school friend from his days in Kitwe, Northern Rhodesia, named Ian. He often came to visit us and they spent many happy times remembering the “good old days”. Ian was between jobs when he first contacted us but shortly after that he got a job in a factory that made rubber boots. On one visit he was telling me about his new job and the products that they manufactured. I laughingly asked why they did not make adult wellies in red or blue as I had only seen them is children’s sizes and would love a pair of bright red ones and he promised to find out why.

The next time I saw Ian he told me that he had asked the factory manager about the adult coloured wellies and he had been told that they had made them at one time but had discontinued the line, as there was no call for them. Apparently woman had no desire to wear bright red boots. I said I thought that that was a pity as I thought that they could cheer up a dark rainy day and we had a laugh and forgot all about it.

A little while later Ian arrived with a large plastic bag and said that they had been having a big clean up of some old storerooms in the factory and he had come across a pair of bright red wellies in my size and the factory manager had said that he could have them. So I got my red wellies free of charge.

The name of the factory was something like Neptune so all their products had style names with a sea theme. Things like Dolphins, Starfish, Coral, Mediterranean, Shark, and the style name for Red Wellington boots was ‘Marina’. So my boots have ‘Marina’ embossed on the soles. I really think that that is something else; I bet even Paris Hilton does not have her name embossed on the soles of her wellies.

64) Fat and Thin

I have always had a bit of a weight problem. My baby photos show what we always called a “Bouncing Baby”- round and cuddly but with the warning signs of my life long battle. Chubby babies are quite cute and even plump little girls are not too bad but once I got to be a teenager I wanted to be slim like my friends. Everyone told me “Its just puppy fat, it will go away soon” but when it showed no sign of melting away I felt I had to do something about it and started cutting down on my calorie intake. Meanwhile my elder sister Dulcie was the exact opposite and did not put on any weight. She was the one my mother worried about though and I remember that she was taken to the doctor for his advice on how she could gain a little weight. He told her to eat fatty foods and drink a bottle of stout every day. That could have been enough to make a plump teenager hate her elder sister. She would sit at the table complaining that she did not want to eat what had been put on the plate for her and I would sit beside her with my half a tomato and one lettuce leaf and think very unsisterly thoughts about her.

At Christmas one of our uncles used to give us a box of chocolates each. They came packed in a large flat box with a very pretty picture on the lid. I wonder if they still pack chocolates like that. The pictures would be of cute kittens, puppies or flowers, sometimes they were little thatched country cottages or lovely country scenes, real ‘chocolate box art’. We would put them into the cupboard of our dressing table and I would pretty quickly devour all of mine. Once mine where finished I would take a peep at Dulcie’s box and they were hardly touched. She had so many left I was sure that she would not notice that one was missing. I think I would end up eating more of hers that she did. Much later I confessed to her that I had been stealing all her chocolates and she said that she had known all the time, but as she was not very interested in them she did not complain. I suppose our different weight problems come from our different attitude to food (chocolates in particular). I have always loved my food and often eat too much but Dulcie was a much more dainty eater.

Once she was married and expecting her first baby I used to tease her saying, “Once the baby is born you will get fat like me” but she didn’t. So when baby number two was on the way I said “This is it, this is the thing that is going to make you fat” but I was wrong once again. I was wrong about the effect Baby Three and Baby Four would have on her slim frame so had to resort to another tactic to tease her. I told her that when she got to 40 she would suddenly start to spread and soon she would be as large as a bus. But when her 40th year rolled on to her 41st I had to change my threat and so decided it would have to be her 50th year that would make her as plump as me. 50 turned to 60 and even 60 to 70 and I was still looking for a sign of a broadening in the beam, but there is none and I have just had to admit that there never will be.

I have learnt over the years to control my weight a little better and so I don’t think I am fat anymore but it is a continual battle and I have to watch what I eat or I would be the one to be as large as a bus. Whereas Dulcie still seems to have no problem staying slim and I have just had to learn to forgive her for it but I can’t help wondering why with the same genes and the same upbringing we can be so different.

63) Medical Examinations

Our medical appointments were scheduled for one week ahead at 1.30pm and 1.45pm so this meant that I had to take the day off from work. I rang all the clients that I was due to visit on that day and they were all very understanding and willing to make new arrangements for their cleaning to be done and they all wished me well with the medicals.

From the Internet I had found out exactly where the office we were supposed to attend was. Luckily it was not far from the Central railway station so we only had a short walk. We arrived there about five minutes before the time of our appointment and went up to the fifth floor in the lift. Medibank, who are the company who carries out all the medical tests for the government have the whole top floor of the building so when you take the lift and press button 5 the doors open directly into their waiting rooms. It was a very large room full of people. I took one look and thought we would be there for ages, my heart sank. Most of them were obviously foreigners, Chinese, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Japanese, Indian, Indonesian, with a few that looked Greek, Italian or French and one or two that just had that very British look. We joined the queue at the counter feeling glad that we had at least downloaded our forms from the Internet and that they were already filled in. There were six young ladies dealing with the queue so it went quite quickly and it was not long before it was our turn. The attractive young lady who dealt with us looked like a Filipino and when Jonny asked if it was always as busy as this she said “you should have been here at 11 o’clock, it has quietened down now” She checked our passports, took our photographs, completed the forms and relieved us of our $556. She answered all our questions and assured us that it would not take too long for us to be attended to. Then she told us to take a seat and that we would be called soon. And she was right - we sat for about five minutes watching people being called into the different doors that led off the reception room and then it was our turn. A young African nurse called us and we followed her to a back room where she weighed us and measured us. She did and eye test and looked into our ears. Then she asked us to produce a urine sample and ushered us back into the waiting room. After another short wait we were called into a different side room. There we were told by an Irish girl to remove our jewellery and tops and put on a black gown. An Indian man called us and x-rayed our chests. Back once again to the waiting room and after a short while we were called by a Chinese nurse who took our blood and sent us back to our seats. Then came the longest wait, about 15 mins as we waited for the doctor. It was amusing to hear the people being called, names like Bing Ling Cho and Wong Tang. The doctor who examined us was a young Australian lady. Well I expect that all the staff were Australians but they certainly had different ethnic backgrounds, what we call a multi ethnic society. The doctor took our blood pressure, listened to our chests, peered into our eyes, ears and mouth and tested our reflexes. She was very friendly and explained anything that we wanted to know. She said that everything was fine, she did say my blood pressure was a little higher than Jonny's which surprised me as I have always had low blood pressure but she assured me that it was within their parameters so not to be concerned about it. So after 1 ½ hours it was all over and we were out on the street again.

It was all a bit like a sausage factory but admittedly a very efficient sausage factory – everyone knowing their job and getting on with it. It can’t be very easy to have to deal with so many people during the day and still remain smiling and friendly but they managed it.

62) Visas

If you have followed my blog from the beginning you will know that I have moved many times in my life. I have lived in 16 different houses, 7 different towns and 5 different countries and come to think of it 3 different continents. I hope and pray that I don’t have to move any more. I am happy were I am and have no desire to move on.

We came into this country 7 ½ years ago on a Temporary Business Visa and shortly after we arrived we applied for an Aged Parent Visa so that we could stay here with our children and grandchildren. We had to produce our Police clearance certificates, have a medical examination and pay a fee. We were told that we had been accepted and put onto the queue with many other people who were, like us, waiting to be granted Permanent Residence Visa’s. Although it was never promised, it was implied that it would take about 4 or 5 years and we were given a tracking number to enable us to watch our progress on the Internet. I think if it had been an actual queue, like one outside a cinema it would have gone way up the street and around about 20 blocks and we would have been tempted to say “We’ll come back some other time” but this was not the cinema it was our visa so we just had to wait it out.

From information I found on the internet we knew that this year (July 09 to June 10) the government intended to process 600 Aged Parent Visas and when I checked on the list on 15th March we were sitting at number 520. As we had been number 1150 at the end of June, that meant that 530 had already been processes in this current year. We only expected 70 more to go through before the end on June but that meant that if they intended to process another 600 next year we could expect to receive our visas some time in early 2011. But on March 22nd we received a letter from the Department of Immigration and Cultural Affairs telling us that they intended possessing our visa and could we please get new police clearance certificates, have more medical examinations, ask our sponsor to deposit a large sum of money into their bank and fill in another lot of forms.

Of course we were very pleased that things were beginning to move and set about to fill all the requirements. On the Internet we were able to find a list of cost for the granting of police clearances. There were three different price levels – one if it was without fingerprints, another if the applicant supplied a copy of their finger prints and a third if the police were to take the finger prints and process them. Only one problem with that - nowhere on the form could we find out if we needed to have a “With fingerprint” or “Without fingerprint” document. We found a place on the Internet that said, “Fingerprints only need to be taken if the class of clearance being applied for has been legislated to require them” but no where could we find a list of ‘classes that had been legislated’ for. It took many phone calls and being told by an answering machine to “Press button 1, 2 or 3” for us to assume that we did not need the fingerprints but it was not 100% clear so we just filled in the forms and sent them off with an enclosed cheque, sure that they would soon let us know if we were wrong.

Then came trying to make an appointment for our medical examinations. The letter from Department of Immigration had given us a telephone number to call. I phoned it and the friendly answering machine told me that if I wanted I could book an appointment on line. That sounded good to me, as I am not very partial to answering machines. When I went on line I was informed that if I needed to book more than one medical examinations it would be better to do it in person as the internet could not book two appointments together and I could end up with my two appointment on two different days, which of course would not be convenient. There was a phone number to call, a 1300 number, which is usually a national central exchange. The operator was bright, friendly and very willing to help. We decided on a date and time and she began taking my details. She asked “Why on earth do you want to come here for your appointment, I am in the Brisbane office, you surely don’t want to come this far for a medical examination?” I explained that I had rung the number given to me on the Internet but somehow I had got routed through to the Brisbane local office. She told me that she was new on the job but she would find out the number of the Sydney office so that I could call them to make my appointment. It took her a little while to find someone who could give her the information she was looking for but eventually she found the correct number – the same one I had called originally obviously I needed to listen to the end of the answering machine’s list of options. Back to the phone, listen to all the options and “hold on to speak to an operator” and I managed at long last to speak to the correct person and to make appointments for both Jonny and myself to have all the medical examinations required for us to satisfy the Department of Immigration requirements.

With the help of my computer I was able to find out where the medical centre was situated, what time the trains ran and to plan our day so that it could go without a hitch, but I will tell you more about that next time. .

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61) Nail Polish

Isn’t it strange the things that go through your mind while you are waiting in the queue at the check out till in the supermarket? The other day while I was waiting to be served by a pretty young girl I saw that her nails were painted deep purple. I did not think it looked nice and thought to myself “Why doesn’t she paint them red?” and that got me to thinking ‘why do women paint their nails red’ After all red nails are just as unnatural as purple ones.

Later in the day I did a bit of investigation on the internet and found that Chinese woman have been painting their nails since at least 600 B.C. and that the colours red and black were used by the royalty. The Egyptians also used colours to signify social order, with red being at the top. So although it was still not clear to me why ancient women chose red maybe modern women by choosing red were just trying to prove that they were from a high social class.

Nowadays varnish comes in many many colours but I still remember the first time I saw blue, yellow, green and black varnish. I had a dear aunt called Amy who was attractive and full of fun. She also had beautiful nails. They were long and always perfectly manicured and painted red. Then she went on holiday to Italy and while she was there she discovered that Italian women were becoming very adventurous with their nail colours and so she brought home four or five different shades. She was, at the time working with us in my father’s, (her brother’s) café and she would come to work each day with a different colour on her fingertips. I remember one day just before she was about to go home someone asked her a question about her nail polish and to demonstrate some point or other she removed the colour from one finger and repainted it will a completely different colour. Then realising that she was going to be late for her bus she just ran off like that. She told us later that a man sitting beside her on the bus had spent ages looking at her hands before he got up the courage to ask her why not only were nine of her nails blue instead of red but even more puzzling was that the other one was yellow. She told him some long story about being a member of some secret organisation on a par with the Mafia but she did not think that he really believed her. He might have thought that she was a little mad though as he went and sat in another seat. But it did give her an idea for some more fun. After that she would often come to work with a different colour on each nail.

When it comes to lips one can at least see why we chose to paint them red. After all most of our mouths are a pinkish colour and as that colour tends to fade with age so I suppose that we paint them red to make ourselves look younger. Although I don’t think it always works one can understand the logic but I can see no logic for red fingernails.

60) Cars for Sale

Here in Australia one often sees cars parked alongside the road with a sign on them to indicate that they are For Sale. It is a tribute to the honesty of the Australian people. One would not be prepared to do that in Africa, if the car was there when you returned, which is unlikely, it would surely be minus it’s wheels, battery and anything else that could be removed. It might not be risky to leave your car parked for a few days in the hope that you can find the right buyer for it but I don’t think I would like to take the risk of buying one this way, surely there can be no guarantee on what you are getting. The signage on the vehicles varies greatly. Some people go to a great deal of trouble printing it out on the computer and even having a row of little tabs with their telephone number printed on them so that prospective buyers can tear off the tab if they don’t have a pen on them to jot down the number. Then there is the other extreme, signs that are made of an old scrap of cardboard, with the lettering starting large on the left hand side and getting narrower and narrower as it goes right and the writer realises that there is not going to be enough room to fit it all in. I really don’t like to see the abbreviation “4 Sale” I suppose I am old fashioned but I think it is just so lazy and sloppy. There are other people who think the same way as I do I’m sure as the other day I saw a little old car parked alongside the road and the seller obviously wanted to do things properly. He had made quite a good sign, hand done but with care and had spaced his letters well so that he did not have to squash them all in together at the end. Just one thing spoiled it; the sign read FOUR SALE.

59) A New Baby

Just over two weeks ago my youngest son Dominic and his wife Lisa presented us with a beautiful grandson. I want to write a wonderful article about babies but I cannot think of anything to say about them that has not been said many, many times before.

Our new grandson was in a great hurry to get into this world, he was expected to arrive on 19th Feb but decided that 2nd of Feb would be a much better day for an arrival so he caught us all a bit on the hop. Both Lisa and Dominic had gone off to work that morning and although they both say that they did think, “What if bubs comes today?” it was not a very serious thought, just a passing one.

Lisa has worked as a nanny for a family for about 12 years and although she is not really needed as a nanny any more she still works there doing the shopping and other housekeeping tasks, one or two days a week. She was bringing the shopping into the house when she realised that baby was going to make an appearance. She phoned Dominic at work and he went to collect her to take her to the hospital. She told me later “I didn’t put all the shopping away, but at least I did put all the cold stuff into the fridge” (What a conscientious girl). They went to the hospital but were sent home, as it was too early for her to be admitted. By about 5 o’clock that evening she knew that she was ready to go back to the hospital. We have heard a number of news stories recently against hospitals who have refused to admit an expectant mother and then baby was born in a taxi, a toilet or by the road side and Dominic was determined that they would not be sent home. He was ready to lay down on the hospital floor and kick and scream and have a temper tantrum to make sure that she was admitted this time but it was not necessary, she was admitted and our beautiful grandson arrived just before 8.45 pm. He weighed in at 2.75kgs (6.06 lbs) and was 51cm (20 inches) tall. He is called Nathan Dominic.

One can’t help thinking of how different having a baby is today than it was when I gave birth to Nathan Dominic’s father. Then fathers were not encouraged to be with their wives during the birth. It was assumed that father would faint and just get in the way. He was supposed to keep out of the way in the hospital waiting room. Now new mothers are sent home as soon as possible but in those days they were expected to stay in hospital for almost a week, at least until baby had recovered its birth weight. Nowadays Mums are given so much more information and helped with their new infant than we were and for the sake of the poor babes that is a great thing but I think the biggest difference is the equipment.

The first and biggest change is disposable nappies. I accept that they must be causing a huge problem in the landfills of the world but I am sure that if they had been available in my days I would have used them too. Those terry-towelling nappies were such a problem. Not only to wash but also to change and keep in position. They needed to be held together with large safety pins and there was always a chance that the pin could prick the baby. I remember many times when I could not find the pins and a huge search would ensue before a clean nappy could be put into position. Once babe started to toddle the nappy would spend most of it time slipping down to the knees and must have been very uncomfortable for the poor infant. Now the disposable variety keep baby dry, comfortable and tidy.

Young Nathan’s parents have bought him a great gadget in which he lays and is electrically rocked gently to and fro. To get the same effect we had to have a cot on rockers and we needed to put our foot on the rocker to move it back and for or to put the baby in it’s pram and wheel it back and fro. I got into the habit of rocking the pram most of the time even if baby did not need rocking to sleep. If I stopped to talk to someone when pushing the pram it was natural for me to rock it back and forth. I did not realise that I was doing it until one day as I stood chatting to a friend in the supermarket I was amazed to find that I was rocking my shopping trolley back and fro. (Trying to get the groceries to sleep????)

Another hi-tech gadget that Dominic and Lisa have is a camera over Nathan’s cot. I have seen intercoms before but this one is really state of the art. Dominic tells me that it is linked to their TV and to the remote control. While they are watching TV they can remotely turn on the camera and check on the TV screen how their baby is. I expect that they will just use it to watch him instead of watching the commercials on TV. When Jonathan was a baby Jonny had an electronics kit that he could build various things with. One of the things he could build was an intercom. Obviously way back then it just transmitted sound but Jonny had fun building it and he placed it next to the cot and went into the next room waiting to hear any noise that Jonathan might make. A little while later we heard voices coming through the speaker, voices that were obviously not Jonathan. After listening for a little while we realised that somehow we had connected to the police car wavelength and what we could hear was the conversation between the police station and the police cars. We could not get the intercom to work the way we intended it to, we always got the control room sending the police car to investigate a crime and the reply of the men in the car. We knew that it is illegal to listen into the police wavelength so we had to dismantle the gadget. Yes things have changed since then.

One thing that will never change though ‘Babies are Beautiful’. I believe that God made them beautiful so that human beings would want more and more and that once we had them we would be besotted with them and would nurture and care for them until they were able to care for themselves. He wanted us to fill the world that He had created and you can see by the number of people in the world today it was a great idea, in fact maybe too good an idea.