Letter Fron The Other Side; From Cynthia.
Medical Matters.
Dear Del,
My mind has been involved with medical matters these past few weeks. I suspect this will be so for some time and much of it you will not wish to know about. However I have found no matter what gruesome procedure is being contemplated by doctors, surgeons and the unfortunate patient, somehow humour even of the darkest kind is sure to be found.
I was sitting on the hard chairs of the doctor’s waiting rooms last week contemplating if I dared to touch the crinkled and worn magazines. Most of them were of no interest to me and as they were tired and tattered by the many hands which had turned their pages, I decided I would probably be risking being infected by the amount of dangerous bacteria which were crawling all over them.
So I kept my hands on my lap and relaxed as much as I could while envying the only person in the room who had the foresight to bring a book to read.
Seated near me were three very large women. Like everyone else in the waiting room I pretended I could not overhear their conversation. The longer we remained waiting, the louder and less censored their conversation became.
The group was an obese mother with her two obese adult daughters.
Daughter number one had evidently had some small procedure that day which affected her right knee which she constantly complained was ‘giving her hell’.
Also because of what had been done to her painful knee she had been required to fast. Food, which must never be far from her thoughts, was on this particular morning very much on her mind.
‘Oooohh I’m starving.’ she groaned.
‘What are you going to have for lunch?’ her mother asked.
‘Oh, maybe fish-n-chips, or Moroccan pasta.’
‘Why not a sweet and sour chicken?’
‘Naaah! That stuff makes me puke.’ The daughter pulled a face.
A lady sitting opposite me glanced up at me and raised an eyebrow. I replied with an eyebrow twitch of my own.
For the next half hour we sat listening to menu choices, all of them take-away food. The ebb and flow of the merits or dislikes and in some cases distain for the suggestions put forward by all three. A weekly women’s magazine was taken from the pile on the table and all of the recipes discussed at length and commented upon. ‘Yuk!’ Who’d eat that rubbish!
‘Ugh, nothing but vegetables and stuff. Not in my place thank you very much.’
The book was thrown untidily back onto the table and the discussion returned to the lunch menu and the evening menu.
I felt relieved not to be living under their roof as a lodger or elderly parent.
The decision seemed to have been finally settled with a frozen lasagne from the supermarket and a large helping of double choc ice cream. That is, until a forth member of the family walked into the room. She was younger but well on the way to becoming as obese as her siblings and mother. Her first question after showing them her latest tattoo and of course displaying it to the rest of us, was to ask ‘what are we having for dinner?’
The woman opposite me broke into silent laughter, the newspaper a man was hiding behind started to shake and thankfully I heard my doctor call ‘Cynthia!’
‘Thank you Mark.’ I replied and rushed to his room.
The second amusing time was when I was lying on my back in the hospital ward bored silly and wanting to be home.
The woman opposite me was to have an operation and her church minister was visiting her. Her doctor came bustling into the ward. He is a well known specialist, a marvellous doctor and inclined to be a little eccentric.
He is one of those men who still like to use a razor to shave his face. That particular morning he must have used a blunt razor because he had nicked his face a couple of times and put tissue on the wounds. Rather like the Norman Gunston character on our TV’s used to do, much to the bemusement of many of his guests.
The minister introduced himself to the doctor and they talked briefly. All the while I could see the ministers eyes focussed on the still quite bright red tissue patches on the doctor’s face.
‘Shall we pray together?’ he asked, not giving the doctor time to say ‘Yay’ or ‘Nay’ and he closed his eyes put his hands together and prayed for the patient’s full recovery and then very forcibly for the skill and steadiness of the doctor’s hands.
I lay giggling to myself for ages afterward with no-one to share my silly humour with until Teddy came in to tell me about his latest invention.
This one came about because his friend Barry broke his ankle and couldn’t get his wheel chair up the three steps to his front door.
It is made from three large (sack size) dog food bags, an old fan, some bits of steel and wood and all this has been cobbled together to make a platform which you stand on. The fan blows the bags up and raises whoever is standing on it up to a height which gave me vertigo, but allows Teddy to reach things in the garage which have been put up on the rafters etc. It works very well and when the power is turned off deflates very gently.
Obviously my absence allowed him to get on with important things in the shed. I hope the dogs were fed; they are still alive so they must have been.
We are going away again next week. I know we have not long had a break but this is for a twofold reason, one for us to relax and the other to seek a new home. We are thinking seriously of moving back to the country and will be travelling up to the mountains to see if we can find somewhere suitable for a couple of old folk who took themselves out of the country because it seemed sensible, but the country hasn’t taken itself out of them.
I can’t wait to see Mount Buffalo again. Unlike everything else it is unchanging and always beautiful in all its moods.
I know some of our friends will be exasperated with us as we have taken up more space in their address books than most with all our changes but one can’t live one’s life on ‘ifs and buts’ and worrying about what might happen. It is for living and squeezing everything you can out of it.
Until next time,
from your wandering ‘flower child friend’
Cynthia.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Letter From The Other Side, from Cynthia
POLITICIANS WHERE DO THEY COME FROM?
Dear Del,
Have you ever asked yourself where politicians come from?
There seems to be a pandemic of elections in the offing around the world at present and we are not immune.
We have the misfortune of expecting a state election and a federal election soon giving us all very little time to catch our collective breath and cool our addled brains after all the gabbled and garbled advertisements between them both. We will barely have the time to shred or compost all the mail-outs and leaflets which will be flowing into our mail boxes from politicians suddenly keen to make our acquaintances and assuring us they have our very best interests at heart and always have done. They stand smiling on our doorsteps like long lost relatives while dreaming of the coming moment when we would elect them to be the messiahs of our little part of the world.
It is a nightmare scenario.
I have in the course of my life spoken with a few politicians and seen them at work and in more relaxed circumstances. I have never warmed to any of them and whichever party they were representing had nothing to do with colouring my views.
They seem to be a separate species to the rest of us and I have been wondering where they actually come from.
I don’t know anyone who likes them, would like to be become one when they grow up, wants to marry one or cohabit with one or readily admits to being related to one in the presence of anyone over the age of three.
Is there a special humidified place where they are genetically constructed in a particularly formed womb which is only able to produce the politician breed? It is a puzzle.
Each one must be especially endowed with selective hearing to enable them to avoid unpleasant truths and questions put to them by mere mortals. All of which they can’t or won’t answer. Their skin must be much thicker than any human’s and their eyesight must be very special to enable them to see our sick and fractured world through eyes in such a way they remain convinced of their invincibility to keep it going without leading us all into complete annihilation.
This special eyesight also allows them to see into the future and tell us exactly the type of utopia we can all expect if we would only listen to them.
There are some REAL people from the REAL world who try to become politicians but of course they have little hope. Many of us recognise them and vote for them but the strength of the SPECIES POLITICIAN and those other REAL POLITICIANS backing them will inevitably win.
Should the unthinkable happen and a REAL person actually by some absolute fluke makes it into a parliamentary seat, they will inevitably be hunted. If they resist, their emotions and morals are sucked out of them and their body ejected out the door of the parliament by the SPECIES POLITICIAN to spend the rest of their lives as a sick and broken sub-human wandering the land.
What can we do about it?
I suspect that which has always been done….nothing.
No REAL human wants the job when they have watched what has happened to others. The pay is not comparable with private sector pay, the home life is negligible, the early death rate is high and everyone dislikes them and is willing to tell them how they should be doing their job. It isn’t a very good career summary really is it?
I suspect we shall all just moan our way through more of the empty promises the rosy outlooks, the dire warnings of doom if we vote from the other party and accept what happens in the way we usually do.
Other countries have revolutions and wars but live to regret their actions when the people they put in power turn out to be REAL POLITICIANS they hadn’t recognised and are just as awful as the ones they replaced.
So far throughout our short history Australians have gone about getting their way pretty well. We have done it without wars and revolution using our basic traits of tenacity, a will to survive no matter what our harsh environment throws at us whether it is drought, bushfire, plagues or as is happening at present, thousands of square kilometres of damaging floods. We have a very strong collective will to defeat any opponent from without or within and we posses what some people tell us, is an ironic sense of humour they find hard to understand. When coupled with a highly developed amount of inertia it is a difficult mixture to dominate.
As a nation we have been largely ignored by the rest of the world and allowed to get on with our own way of doing things. Our lack of respect for anyone pompous enough to try and tell us how to live is sneered at as we continue to do things our own way.
After a while the REAL POLITICIANS who are bred for speed-talking and debate find we have all gone to the football, cricket or beach and they have no one to talk to or debate with, leaving them to feel free to slink off out of the spotlight.
Teddy and I have a good supply of C.D’s and books for the coming tide of talking heads on the television and will do our law abiding duty and vote, hoping that just once it may result in something good or at least, not worse.
Happy walking on your beach Del,
from your incredibly cynical
‘Flower child’ friend,
Cynthia.
POLITICIANS WHERE DO THEY COME FROM?
Dear Del,
Have you ever asked yourself where politicians come from?
There seems to be a pandemic of elections in the offing around the world at present and we are not immune.
We have the misfortune of expecting a state election and a federal election soon giving us all very little time to catch our collective breath and cool our addled brains after all the gabbled and garbled advertisements between them both. We will barely have the time to shred or compost all the mail-outs and leaflets which will be flowing into our mail boxes from politicians suddenly keen to make our acquaintances and assuring us they have our very best interests at heart and always have done. They stand smiling on our doorsteps like long lost relatives while dreaming of the coming moment when we would elect them to be the messiahs of our little part of the world.
It is a nightmare scenario.
I have in the course of my life spoken with a few politicians and seen them at work and in more relaxed circumstances. I have never warmed to any of them and whichever party they were representing had nothing to do with colouring my views.
They seem to be a separate species to the rest of us and I have been wondering where they actually come from.
I don’t know anyone who likes them, would like to be become one when they grow up, wants to marry one or cohabit with one or readily admits to being related to one in the presence of anyone over the age of three.
Is there a special humidified place where they are genetically constructed in a particularly formed womb which is only able to produce the politician breed? It is a puzzle.
Each one must be especially endowed with selective hearing to enable them to avoid unpleasant truths and questions put to them by mere mortals. All of which they can’t or won’t answer. Their skin must be much thicker than any human’s and their eyesight must be very special to enable them to see our sick and fractured world through eyes in such a way they remain convinced of their invincibility to keep it going without leading us all into complete annihilation.
This special eyesight also allows them to see into the future and tell us exactly the type of utopia we can all expect if we would only listen to them.
There are some REAL people from the REAL world who try to become politicians but of course they have little hope. Many of us recognise them and vote for them but the strength of the SPECIES POLITICIAN and those other REAL POLITICIANS backing them will inevitably win.
Should the unthinkable happen and a REAL person actually by some absolute fluke makes it into a parliamentary seat, they will inevitably be hunted. If they resist, their emotions and morals are sucked out of them and their body ejected out the door of the parliament by the SPECIES POLITICIAN to spend the rest of their lives as a sick and broken sub-human wandering the land.
What can we do about it?
I suspect that which has always been done….nothing.
No REAL human wants the job when they have watched what has happened to others. The pay is not comparable with private sector pay, the home life is negligible, the early death rate is high and everyone dislikes them and is willing to tell them how they should be doing their job. It isn’t a very good career summary really is it?
I suspect we shall all just moan our way through more of the empty promises the rosy outlooks, the dire warnings of doom if we vote from the other party and accept what happens in the way we usually do.
Other countries have revolutions and wars but live to regret their actions when the people they put in power turn out to be REAL POLITICIANS they hadn’t recognised and are just as awful as the ones they replaced.
So far throughout our short history Australians have gone about getting their way pretty well. We have done it without wars and revolution using our basic traits of tenacity, a will to survive no matter what our harsh environment throws at us whether it is drought, bushfire, plagues or as is happening at present, thousands of square kilometres of damaging floods. We have a very strong collective will to defeat any opponent from without or within and we posses what some people tell us, is an ironic sense of humour they find hard to understand. When coupled with a highly developed amount of inertia it is a difficult mixture to dominate.
As a nation we have been largely ignored by the rest of the world and allowed to get on with our own way of doing things. Our lack of respect for anyone pompous enough to try and tell us how to live is sneered at as we continue to do things our own way.
After a while the REAL POLITICIANS who are bred for speed-talking and debate find we have all gone to the football, cricket or beach and they have no one to talk to or debate with, leaving them to feel free to slink off out of the spotlight.
Teddy and I have a good supply of C.D’s and books for the coming tide of talking heads on the television and will do our law abiding duty and vote, hoping that just once it may result in something good or at least, not worse.
Happy walking on your beach Del,
from your incredibly cynical
‘Flower child’ friend,
Cynthia.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Letter From The Other Side, from Cynthia.
Dear Del.
In a bid to save the small amount of sanity we have left, Teddy and I are going to have a few days away next week.
Our last two attempts at a break away were dismal failures.
During the first one Teddy caught the flu’ and coughed and sneezed his way to a Guinness Book Of Records title in four days his nose becoming ever redder and shinier while his body sweated and shivering in turn. He has always been prone to extended sneezing episodes and while I try as hard as I can, the peculiar contortions of his face when in the throws of the fit always make me laugh. The dogs just go out of the room as the mighty explosions issue forth but then they have better manners over such things than I do.
The second time we tried a holiday I booked a pet-friendly house in Ballarat. The owner assured me on numerous occasions the place was fully fenced and suitable.
I had stipulated an escape proof fence for the dogs and a single story building.
We did all the usual packing and preparations one does, drove ourselves and two very excited dogs all the way to Ballarat to find the place not only had a spiral staircase, it possessed less amenities than we have had when camping and the fence purported to be dog proof had a hole big enough to let a small moribund pony through it.
We looked about, swore a good deal at the false representations of the owner put the bemused dogs back into the car and drove home all the while composing an email which turned out to be one of the most irate emails I have ever written to anyone in my life.
Well, we may be silly but we are hoping this will be third time lucky.
Again we have booked a pet friend house. This time it is the original settler’s stone farmhouse on a four thousand acre farm near the Grampian Mountains. The farmer has six hundred acres set aside around two houses he lets out. I trust a farmer when he says a fence is dog proof because when you have a few thousand sheep and the bush has big wild dog problems, the fences have to be dog proof.
The glossy brochures say we will have lots of the usual wildlife and it will be interesting to see our spaniel, the city slicker’s reactions to kangaroos, emus, wombats and possums. I suspect our country girl; a cross breed German shepherd Basenji will not be at all interested unless the snakes which are very active in autumn decide to come into her area.
After last week’s storm we may even have water in the river where they can dog paddle.
However, after the last couple of debacles I will not get my hopes up too far as I have learnt over the years, disappointment in life is always lurking nearby.
Everything except our food is provided and if we keep putting food into our bags at the rate we are we shall need a refrigeration truck to follow us up there. We will be some distance from shops however and as Teddy is a type 2 diabetic and I have a few health issues I have to have investigated when we return, we both need separate diets. I have checked the size of the fridge and it seems to be adequate.
At the moment I can not eat bread, dairy and quite a few vegetables and fruit. I’ve found it is extremely boring to live on rice and not much else.
The upside is I can fit into slacks I haven’t pulled up past my knees for years.
Maybe while we are up there I can forget the specialist I have to see on the Monday after we return. I haven’t met him yet. If he is one of the pompous types some hospitals foster it will mean an ominous beginning to our relationship.
The dogs have almost as much in their bags as we do- food, toys, towels, treats, beds, various first aid things and grooming brushes.
Teddy will be taking THE TELESCOPE which seems to be accompanying us everywhere we go at present, plus he is packing a couple of fishing lines and his lap top will have to come of course because he plays chess with a dozen or so people most days. So he has his priorities set. I doubt if the idea of packing any changes of clothing or filling up the car with petrol, stopping the mail etc have occurred to him at all. The practicalities of daily life pass him by and holidays mean just deciding to go somewhere and getting in the car don’t they??
We shall be in touch when we get back Del, in the mean time we are going a-roaming where we can watch birds, smell the gum trees and get away from the telephone and the looming federal election.
Wish us luck on our third attempt in three years,
Love from your ‘flower child’ friend,
Hay, Ho, Hay Ho, It’s Off to play we go’
Cynthia
Dear Del.
In a bid to save the small amount of sanity we have left, Teddy and I are going to have a few days away next week.
Our last two attempts at a break away were dismal failures.
During the first one Teddy caught the flu’ and coughed and sneezed his way to a Guinness Book Of Records title in four days his nose becoming ever redder and shinier while his body sweated and shivering in turn. He has always been prone to extended sneezing episodes and while I try as hard as I can, the peculiar contortions of his face when in the throws of the fit always make me laugh. The dogs just go out of the room as the mighty explosions issue forth but then they have better manners over such things than I do.
The second time we tried a holiday I booked a pet-friendly house in Ballarat. The owner assured me on numerous occasions the place was fully fenced and suitable.
I had stipulated an escape proof fence for the dogs and a single story building.
We did all the usual packing and preparations one does, drove ourselves and two very excited dogs all the way to Ballarat to find the place not only had a spiral staircase, it possessed less amenities than we have had when camping and the fence purported to be dog proof had a hole big enough to let a small moribund pony through it.
We looked about, swore a good deal at the false representations of the owner put the bemused dogs back into the car and drove home all the while composing an email which turned out to be one of the most irate emails I have ever written to anyone in my life.
Well, we may be silly but we are hoping this will be third time lucky.
Again we have booked a pet friend house. This time it is the original settler’s stone farmhouse on a four thousand acre farm near the Grampian Mountains. The farmer has six hundred acres set aside around two houses he lets out. I trust a farmer when he says a fence is dog proof because when you have a few thousand sheep and the bush has big wild dog problems, the fences have to be dog proof.
The glossy brochures say we will have lots of the usual wildlife and it will be interesting to see our spaniel, the city slicker’s reactions to kangaroos, emus, wombats and possums. I suspect our country girl; a cross breed German shepherd Basenji will not be at all interested unless the snakes which are very active in autumn decide to come into her area.
After last week’s storm we may even have water in the river where they can dog paddle.
However, after the last couple of debacles I will not get my hopes up too far as I have learnt over the years, disappointment in life is always lurking nearby.
Everything except our food is provided and if we keep putting food into our bags at the rate we are we shall need a refrigeration truck to follow us up there. We will be some distance from shops however and as Teddy is a type 2 diabetic and I have a few health issues I have to have investigated when we return, we both need separate diets. I have checked the size of the fridge and it seems to be adequate.
At the moment I can not eat bread, dairy and quite a few vegetables and fruit. I’ve found it is extremely boring to live on rice and not much else.
The upside is I can fit into slacks I haven’t pulled up past my knees for years.
Maybe while we are up there I can forget the specialist I have to see on the Monday after we return. I haven’t met him yet. If he is one of the pompous types some hospitals foster it will mean an ominous beginning to our relationship.
The dogs have almost as much in their bags as we do- food, toys, towels, treats, beds, various first aid things and grooming brushes.
Teddy will be taking THE TELESCOPE which seems to be accompanying us everywhere we go at present, plus he is packing a couple of fishing lines and his lap top will have to come of course because he plays chess with a dozen or so people most days. So he has his priorities set. I doubt if the idea of packing any changes of clothing or filling up the car with petrol, stopping the mail etc have occurred to him at all. The practicalities of daily life pass him by and holidays mean just deciding to go somewhere and getting in the car don’t they??
We shall be in touch when we get back Del, in the mean time we are going a-roaming where we can watch birds, smell the gum trees and get away from the telephone and the looming federal election.
Wish us luck on our third attempt in three years,
Love from your ‘flower child’ friend,
Hay, Ho, Hay Ho, It’s Off to play we go’
Cynthia
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Cynthia On Neighbours.
Letter From The Other Side from Cynthia.
Dear Del,
How have you fared in the great lottery of neighbours?
Everyone I know seems to have at least one they would delight in seeing a ‘For Sale’ notice adorning their front yard.
One acquaintance of ours has a neighbour living opposite who seems to have developed a fixation about her small innocent dog which lives mainly indoors and is asleep by 8p.m. and not allowed out until 8 a.m. Her neighbour is convinced however that the small dog, one of many other assorted breeds and sizes in the vicinity is to blame for all the barking and disruptions to her sleep. She is firing off letters of complaint to the council every other week and the council officers dutifully come rapping on the door regularly. The officers at last seem to believe she has an obsessive problem of some kind which appears to stem from years back when their husbands worked together in the same bank.
Another acquaintance is robbed of her sleep by a party animal beside her. Her walls vibrate with the pounding and the heavy thump, thump of music combining with the raucous voices of the many unsavoury types who gather to booze and stomp their nights away until the dawn.
Yet another friend moved to Ballarat to be closer to her family. She settled into a pleasant group of single story units each with a lovely little garden around them. Ballarat is noted for its cool climate and lovely gardens.
My friend’s luck ran out with her neighbour. She is an elderly widow. After years of living on a farm her children settled her into the town unit but the old lady is still terrified of fires. Because of this fear she cuts every plant in the garden down to knee level. The problem is she doesn’t just cut her own plants she hacks everyone else’s too with her blunt old kitchen knife leaving them with the appearance a Beaver has moved into the neighbourhood.
It is a constant battle for my friend to keep her away from precious young roses, camellias and crepe myrtles which have already been reduced to stumps at least once since she has been there.
Teddy and I have decided after the most recent arrival in our court we have won the wooden spoon.
In the past we have had very difficult neighbours. One in the country threatened to bulldoze the local hall flat when he became enraged with jealousy; another would pick up his rifle when he had forgotten to take his medicine and begin to take pot-shots at anything moving in the paddocks behind our homes. No innocent bird, lamb, steer or cyclist riding along the disused railway track road was safe. The police eventually took both of them away.
We moved back to the town to find we had a woman living beside us who would spend hours talking about ‘Bobby’ her weasel faced son who lay about on her couch all day in some chemically induced haze and from whom she appeared to believe the sun and moon only existed to shine on him.
When I ventured into our back garden I would creep along crouching low to keep my head down below the fence level. No matter how hard I tried, she would sense I was out there and I would be assailed with the inevitable stream of “Bobby’s’ latest gormless doings. I came to detest the sound of his name and was at the point of seriously contemplating purchasing an army camouflage suit when we moved once more.
We’ve endured the type of character who feels free to walk into our house without knocking and during the 1960’s and 70’s a couple of terribly superior know all English migrants who complained about everything they found displeasing about Australia. The complaints were aired often. This behaviour usually stems from homesickness which can really only be cured by returning from whence they came. A relief for them and those of us they leave behind.
Times have changed but neighbours haven’t. Now we have a gentleman, a retired car salesman and who still tinkers with old cars to get them just sufficiently roadworthy to be put back out amongst the unsuspecting public. He takes up sixty percent of the parking in the court with his vehicles. Endowed with a salesman’s penchant for speed talking he is always willing and able to pass on the daily gossip bulletin to any unfortunate he can corner.
Our immediate neighbours on one side are sisters who have a major drinking problem. We are often woken in the middle of the night by the flashing lights of an ambulance, police or fire brigade. They don’t seem to care which one they call they just enjoy the fuss. Mostly it is for false alarms but occasionally the ambulance drivers take them somewhere to dry out and we have a certain amount of peace for a few days. We are becoming used to them because when they are sober, they are very pleasant; they just aren’t sober very often and it is a worry when we smell gas and we know they have passed out somewhere in their unit.
In addition we now have a family who in the three months since they arrived have turned their nice tidy house, a house supplied by the government, into a rubbish tip and a few of us suspect various items of our missing garden lights, birdbaths and garden ornaments could be found amongst the accumulation of objects littering their yard. The father decided to enjoy his weekend last week and setting the sort of example to his three sons I suspect he will set for the next few years, went on a drunken rampage along the road, tossing bins into gardens and kicking and jumping on the cars a few unfortunate owners had, in their naivety, parked on the street.
The police were called by at least three of us but of course they came too late to catch him.
I hoped I wouldn’t grow into the sort of old person who would think the world is going crazy but having thought about it overnight while listening to the drunken girls next door squealing and shouting as they frolicked in the moonlight on their back lawn, I think it is too late to stop myself. I do think our part of the world is going crazy.
As Teddy has said in the past many times ‘the whole world is mad except thee and me…and I tend to wonder about thee sometimes.’
I heard this week the television show ‘Neighbours’ will turn twenty- five this year. I’ve never watch a single episode of it but I wonder if it has followed the degeneration of our neighbourhoods faithfully or if it puts a nice shiny gloss on Australian life in the pretend neighbourhood the actors live in?
Where did our dreams of love and peace go? Maybe it is our decade which is to blame for this awful spiral of descent into such ugliness. Do you think it will ever be undone Del, I hope so?
‘All the world needs is love’, we sang. Bother that, we need more law enforcement, respect for each other and self control.
Love from perplexed ‘flower child' friend
Cynthia.
Dear Del,
How have you fared in the great lottery of neighbours?
Everyone I know seems to have at least one they would delight in seeing a ‘For Sale’ notice adorning their front yard.
One acquaintance of ours has a neighbour living opposite who seems to have developed a fixation about her small innocent dog which lives mainly indoors and is asleep by 8p.m. and not allowed out until 8 a.m. Her neighbour is convinced however that the small dog, one of many other assorted breeds and sizes in the vicinity is to blame for all the barking and disruptions to her sleep. She is firing off letters of complaint to the council every other week and the council officers dutifully come rapping on the door regularly. The officers at last seem to believe she has an obsessive problem of some kind which appears to stem from years back when their husbands worked together in the same bank.
Another acquaintance is robbed of her sleep by a party animal beside her. Her walls vibrate with the pounding and the heavy thump, thump of music combining with the raucous voices of the many unsavoury types who gather to booze and stomp their nights away until the dawn.
Yet another friend moved to Ballarat to be closer to her family. She settled into a pleasant group of single story units each with a lovely little garden around them. Ballarat is noted for its cool climate and lovely gardens.
My friend’s luck ran out with her neighbour. She is an elderly widow. After years of living on a farm her children settled her into the town unit but the old lady is still terrified of fires. Because of this fear she cuts every plant in the garden down to knee level. The problem is she doesn’t just cut her own plants she hacks everyone else’s too with her blunt old kitchen knife leaving them with the appearance a Beaver has moved into the neighbourhood.
It is a constant battle for my friend to keep her away from precious young roses, camellias and crepe myrtles which have already been reduced to stumps at least once since she has been there.
Teddy and I have decided after the most recent arrival in our court we have won the wooden spoon.
In the past we have had very difficult neighbours. One in the country threatened to bulldoze the local hall flat when he became enraged with jealousy; another would pick up his rifle when he had forgotten to take his medicine and begin to take pot-shots at anything moving in the paddocks behind our homes. No innocent bird, lamb, steer or cyclist riding along the disused railway track road was safe. The police eventually took both of them away.
We moved back to the town to find we had a woman living beside us who would spend hours talking about ‘Bobby’ her weasel faced son who lay about on her couch all day in some chemically induced haze and from whom she appeared to believe the sun and moon only existed to shine on him.
When I ventured into our back garden I would creep along crouching low to keep my head down below the fence level. No matter how hard I tried, she would sense I was out there and I would be assailed with the inevitable stream of “Bobby’s’ latest gormless doings. I came to detest the sound of his name and was at the point of seriously contemplating purchasing an army camouflage suit when we moved once more.
We’ve endured the type of character who feels free to walk into our house without knocking and during the 1960’s and 70’s a couple of terribly superior know all English migrants who complained about everything they found displeasing about Australia. The complaints were aired often. This behaviour usually stems from homesickness which can really only be cured by returning from whence they came. A relief for them and those of us they leave behind.
Times have changed but neighbours haven’t. Now we have a gentleman, a retired car salesman and who still tinkers with old cars to get them just sufficiently roadworthy to be put back out amongst the unsuspecting public. He takes up sixty percent of the parking in the court with his vehicles. Endowed with a salesman’s penchant for speed talking he is always willing and able to pass on the daily gossip bulletin to any unfortunate he can corner.
Our immediate neighbours on one side are sisters who have a major drinking problem. We are often woken in the middle of the night by the flashing lights of an ambulance, police or fire brigade. They don’t seem to care which one they call they just enjoy the fuss. Mostly it is for false alarms but occasionally the ambulance drivers take them somewhere to dry out and we have a certain amount of peace for a few days. We are becoming used to them because when they are sober, they are very pleasant; they just aren’t sober very often and it is a worry when we smell gas and we know they have passed out somewhere in their unit.
In addition we now have a family who in the three months since they arrived have turned their nice tidy house, a house supplied by the government, into a rubbish tip and a few of us suspect various items of our missing garden lights, birdbaths and garden ornaments could be found amongst the accumulation of objects littering their yard. The father decided to enjoy his weekend last week and setting the sort of example to his three sons I suspect he will set for the next few years, went on a drunken rampage along the road, tossing bins into gardens and kicking and jumping on the cars a few unfortunate owners had, in their naivety, parked on the street.
The police were called by at least three of us but of course they came too late to catch him.
I hoped I wouldn’t grow into the sort of old person who would think the world is going crazy but having thought about it overnight while listening to the drunken girls next door squealing and shouting as they frolicked in the moonlight on their back lawn, I think it is too late to stop myself. I do think our part of the world is going crazy.
As Teddy has said in the past many times ‘the whole world is mad except thee and me…and I tend to wonder about thee sometimes.’
I heard this week the television show ‘Neighbours’ will turn twenty- five this year. I’ve never watch a single episode of it but I wonder if it has followed the degeneration of our neighbourhoods faithfully or if it puts a nice shiny gloss on Australian life in the pretend neighbourhood the actors live in?
Where did our dreams of love and peace go? Maybe it is our decade which is to blame for this awful spiral of descent into such ugliness. Do you think it will ever be undone Del, I hope so?
‘All the world needs is love’, we sang. Bother that, we need more law enforcement, respect for each other and self control.
Love from perplexed ‘flower child' friend
Cynthia.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Letter From The Other Side from Cynthia.
Baby Boomers Take Blame Again.
Dear Del,
This letter to you is not the only one I have written this week.
Usually when politicians are making observations and pronouncements I try to stay calm but not this week.
This week we were told our country will have to work harder and people will now be required to delay their retirements for a further few years in order to pay the overburdened economy as it struggles to afford the ageing baby-boomers.
Evidently our population must explode and triple during the decades ahead.
I seem to be having my toes crushed by groups of young women pushing baby carriages wherever I go, so I think on the whole the fecundity of our young is quite sufficient thank you very much. Especially as I hear other people complaining about the over crowding of the schools and the amount of money parents are paid by the government for producing the occupants of the schools and prams by doing what came naturally to all the former generations who were never paid for the effort.
Our grandparents were told to ‘populate or perish’ following WW1, our parents and the thousands of immigrants who arrived during the 1950’s and 60’s made up for the years of WW11 and we were all the result.
Our most sincere apologies to our younger folk and to all the people who follow us, we didn’t set out to get older or really mean to, it just somehow happened as they will find in time when it happens to them.
A decade ago when we were still in the workforce we were being castigated by the then government into feel guilty for ‘taking the working places that the young people needed’. We were urged to finish careers with early retirement or made to feel so doddery that our working hours were soured by the decidedly unpleasant treatment of our upwardly mobile younger colleagues.
Much of the skilled work force, the teachers, the nurses and other professionals and tradesmen retired with very small pensions because the idea of superannuation or superannuation pension funds had not been introduced until we were half way through our working lives and therefore we had little time to build up a nest egg which would sustain us in our later years.
Now, once again it is the older ones getting the blame for the country’s woes and being forced to stay in work longer.
I suppose walking frames will be handy if we have to work as shelf stockers and walking sticks are useful if we need to become law enforcement agents of any kind. We could trip the bandits up instead of having to chase them. I hope they contemplate giving extra toilet breaks in consideration of some our aging plumbing problems.
I know I am exaggerating but only a little because I do feel aggrieved after working for almost forty-eight years, always paying my taxes and always putting a little of my spare time back into our community. Those who follow us will be forced to remain at work longer, supposedly by learning new skills.
It would be nice if some of our younger folk could put the time and effort into learning any skill at all. Perhaps they could start by finding what it is like to get out of bed before noon. The next logical thing perhaps would be to wash, not just their bodies but even their clothes. It might be an innovative and novel idea which could appeal to some.
Older people already form part of a vast army of volunteer workers in the community (which save the various government bodies an enormous amount) and many are still supporting, ill or physically disabled children or spouses. Which again saves the rest of the community taxes. Others our age of course have dissolute children who are too lazy or greedy to leave home and make a living for themselves.
Even Uncle Rodger helps the widows at the retirement village with their investments and tax problems and could at 94 still teach some of the young suits in the city quite a lot. Although, I have to admit I think the bank staff when forewarned by his deep voice booming along the pathway as he approaches their doors, quickly draw straws over which member is to deal with him. However I doubt that has much to do with his age it is a lifetime’s characteristic I think.
Once more our generation is being blamed for the hospital crowding. Nothing is mentioned about the lack of hospital funding and the duplication of health administrations.
There seems to be a bottomless pit of money available to build monuments to sport and the parliamentarians who authorize them, but when money is needed for caring for the mentally ill, the aged, the dental systems etc, etc it isn’t there because we oldies are evidently using it all up.
The unfortunate thing for us is we shall not live to see how these same theorists and decision makers who retire with enormous bonuses and pensions fair when they leave office as they age. Although of course, because of their guaranteed pensions, they will be able to afford to pay for lying about in private nursing homes on the Gold Coast…that is of course, if the Gold Coast hasn’t been washed away by the rising sea levels by then.
Oh dear, I’ll try to be cheerier in my next letter.
Your old grumpy flower child friend,
Cynthia.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Letter From The Other Side from Cynthia.
Dear Del,
The New Year has swept us along in vacation mode. The tourists and holiday makers arrived sporting their best tourist and holiday clothing. This naturally sets them apart and makes them immediately recognizable to the local residents. The shorts, the constant flapping sandals, the bikinis covered with gauzy little wispy shirts, the multicoloured hats and the modish bags and sunglasses, which probably cost more than an average mortgage payment, make them stand out before we even hear the rather loud and often rude comments they seem to feel free to express in public in our streets but would never repeat at home.
As the weeks pass we gradually become more and more frustrated by our favourite parking spaces being taken up by their expensive cars and the overcrowded shops where they idle about scattering sand and disconcerting the male shoppers as they try not to stare at the acres of flesh on show.
Some of us take a perverse and rather cruel delight in watching their skin tones change from rare through to underdone and eventually to crisp and burnt.
I have never understood the pleasure people seem to find in lying about on the beach slowly frying themselves and leaving it each day looking like freshly crumbed cutlets, or beef Wellingtons, as the sand sticks in layers all over their bodies.
Despite all the health warnings, many still think a suntan the most essential thing to take home with them.
I have a friend who volunteers at the local tourist centre and she is a fund of interesting and funny stories.
She loves working there because of the variety of people who come in for information but is constantly amazed at the difficulty some folk from overseas have in grasping the size of our land when they come from a smaller country.
Last week, a couple from Japan requested to hire bicycles. This wasn’t any problem even though it was nearly three in the afternoon.
After supplying them with the bicycles she enquired their destination and was dumbfounded when they said Canberra. As the cycles were supposed to be returned by 6 p.m. she tried to explain it wasn’t possible.
They smiled and using rather fractured English pointed at the map showing the seemingly short ride to Canberra from here.
Well, by comparison with a ride to Sydney, Darwin, and Perth etc it is because it only measured about an inch on the map! She tried valiantly to tell them it was a five hour drive on the freeway travelling at 110 kilometres and hour. They nodded vigorously and set off pedalling up the road despite her protests.
Somewhat crestfallen and not wishing to lose face by admitting their mistake but looking utterly exhausted, they returned the bicycles the following day.
The feast of summer sport has been very entertaining. Although defeating the Pakistan cricket team became a little boring until at last the twenty-twenty games brought forth a new and vigorous team which gave us a most exciting competition last evening. We won by a run but both teams were wonderful. I much prefer a real contest.
The Australian Tennis Open has been in full swing and here again a British player, freshly arrived from the cold northern winter, spent a day practicing in the sun without his shirt on and remarked on the day of his big game he felt as if his back was on fire. It seemed rather lax on the part of the management if they made no attempt to warn him of what he was going to suffer.
Mind you, I remember warning Teddy’s father about doing the same thing and he wouldn’t listen and suffered for a week afterward.
Some holiday makers were roused from their dreaming reveries by having to evacuate because of the new Catastrophic Fire warning which has come into force on days of high winds and over 40 degrees. It seemed to create more confusion than the old style of the generally held popular opinion of ‘run like hell when you see smoke.’
The problem is of course having experienced them; it is too late to run or drive even if you can see to drive anywhere and even if you know where you are going, fires don’t follow roadways or find fences any sort of barricade.
Perhaps we shall all become accustomed to it by next year.
Summer so far has been benign for us but other parts of the country have experienced many days above 40 degrees and still others were inundated with floods which were large enough to cover a few medium to small countries.
Teddy has a new project. After pricing retail solar hot water heaters he muttered about the house for a few days and eventually decided he can make one for us much cheaper.
He found heaven in the form of a scrap metal yard specialising in builder’s supplies and waxed lyrical about all the wondrous things he had seen there for quite an extended time.
At the moment we have in our yard what looks rather like a silver lined canoe and various pieces of copper piping.
The noise and sounds of industry emanating from his shed have been loud and a bit too constant some days.
On other days he has been toiling over small boards of wiring similar to the things you see come out of the innards of mobile phones and computers.
I have not asked too many questions…we have been married to long to make that mistake, as I know the reply would be very long, very involved and a little like Humphrey’s long-winded replies in the show Yes Minister after which the minister would ask for it again in plain English. I just nod wisely and make what I hope are encouraging sounds.
However, I did protest when he used a grinder which sparked so much it set off some of the house smoke alarms which in turn set both dogs barking madly and of course because he was wearing ear pads and he is deaf anyway, he couldn’t hear through the din of the grinder, the alarms and the dogs as I tried to make myself heard by yelling at him to stop.
Today I was enjoying a granny-nap which my doctor has advised me do more often when a toxic smell woke me. I opened every door and window and turned on the fans to clear the air.
‘Nothing to worry about at all.’ said my hero. ‘Just a malfunctioning and burnt out battery’
So much for quiet times and relaxing.
I hope the year has begun well for you Del and you have enjoyed some peaceful moments under your apple tree, think of me sitting under mine….in the fresh air away from ‘malfunctioning batteries’
From your ‘flower-child’ friend,
Cynthia.
Dear Del,
The New Year has swept us along in vacation mode. The tourists and holiday makers arrived sporting their best tourist and holiday clothing. This naturally sets them apart and makes them immediately recognizable to the local residents. The shorts, the constant flapping sandals, the bikinis covered with gauzy little wispy shirts, the multicoloured hats and the modish bags and sunglasses, which probably cost more than an average mortgage payment, make them stand out before we even hear the rather loud and often rude comments they seem to feel free to express in public in our streets but would never repeat at home.
As the weeks pass we gradually become more and more frustrated by our favourite parking spaces being taken up by their expensive cars and the overcrowded shops where they idle about scattering sand and disconcerting the male shoppers as they try not to stare at the acres of flesh on show.
Some of us take a perverse and rather cruel delight in watching their skin tones change from rare through to underdone and eventually to crisp and burnt.
I have never understood the pleasure people seem to find in lying about on the beach slowly frying themselves and leaving it each day looking like freshly crumbed cutlets, or beef Wellingtons, as the sand sticks in layers all over their bodies.
Despite all the health warnings, many still think a suntan the most essential thing to take home with them.
I have a friend who volunteers at the local tourist centre and she is a fund of interesting and funny stories.
She loves working there because of the variety of people who come in for information but is constantly amazed at the difficulty some folk from overseas have in grasping the size of our land when they come from a smaller country.
Last week, a couple from Japan requested to hire bicycles. This wasn’t any problem even though it was nearly three in the afternoon.
After supplying them with the bicycles she enquired their destination and was dumbfounded when they said Canberra. As the cycles were supposed to be returned by 6 p.m. she tried to explain it wasn’t possible.
They smiled and using rather fractured English pointed at the map showing the seemingly short ride to Canberra from here.
Well, by comparison with a ride to Sydney, Darwin, and Perth etc it is because it only measured about an inch on the map! She tried valiantly to tell them it was a five hour drive on the freeway travelling at 110 kilometres and hour. They nodded vigorously and set off pedalling up the road despite her protests.
Somewhat crestfallen and not wishing to lose face by admitting their mistake but looking utterly exhausted, they returned the bicycles the following day.
The feast of summer sport has been very entertaining. Although defeating the Pakistan cricket team became a little boring until at last the twenty-twenty games brought forth a new and vigorous team which gave us a most exciting competition last evening. We won by a run but both teams were wonderful. I much prefer a real contest.
The Australian Tennis Open has been in full swing and here again a British player, freshly arrived from the cold northern winter, spent a day practicing in the sun without his shirt on and remarked on the day of his big game he felt as if his back was on fire. It seemed rather lax on the part of the management if they made no attempt to warn him of what he was going to suffer.
Mind you, I remember warning Teddy’s father about doing the same thing and he wouldn’t listen and suffered for a week afterward.
Some holiday makers were roused from their dreaming reveries by having to evacuate because of the new Catastrophic Fire warning which has come into force on days of high winds and over 40 degrees. It seemed to create more confusion than the old style of the generally held popular opinion of ‘run like hell when you see smoke.’
The problem is of course having experienced them; it is too late to run or drive even if you can see to drive anywhere and even if you know where you are going, fires don’t follow roadways or find fences any sort of barricade.
Perhaps we shall all become accustomed to it by next year.
Summer so far has been benign for us but other parts of the country have experienced many days above 40 degrees and still others were inundated with floods which were large enough to cover a few medium to small countries.
Teddy has a new project. After pricing retail solar hot water heaters he muttered about the house for a few days and eventually decided he can make one for us much cheaper.
He found heaven in the form of a scrap metal yard specialising in builder’s supplies and waxed lyrical about all the wondrous things he had seen there for quite an extended time.
At the moment we have in our yard what looks rather like a silver lined canoe and various pieces of copper piping.
The noise and sounds of industry emanating from his shed have been loud and a bit too constant some days.
On other days he has been toiling over small boards of wiring similar to the things you see come out of the innards of mobile phones and computers.
I have not asked too many questions…we have been married to long to make that mistake, as I know the reply would be very long, very involved and a little like Humphrey’s long-winded replies in the show Yes Minister after which the minister would ask for it again in plain English. I just nod wisely and make what I hope are encouraging sounds.
However, I did protest when he used a grinder which sparked so much it set off some of the house smoke alarms which in turn set both dogs barking madly and of course because he was wearing ear pads and he is deaf anyway, he couldn’t hear through the din of the grinder, the alarms and the dogs as I tried to make myself heard by yelling at him to stop.
Today I was enjoying a granny-nap which my doctor has advised me do more often when a toxic smell woke me. I opened every door and window and turned on the fans to clear the air.
‘Nothing to worry about at all.’ said my hero. ‘Just a malfunctioning and burnt out battery’
So much for quiet times and relaxing.
I hope the year has begun well for you Del and you have enjoyed some peaceful moments under your apple tree, think of me sitting under mine….in the fresh air away from ‘malfunctioning batteries’
From your ‘flower-child’ friend,
Cynthia.
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