Monthly Archives: June 2012

Queuing for Cod- Liver Oil

29 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by in Uncategorized

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Queuing for nice Spoonful of Cod-liver Oil.

June 27, 2012

After the war many children In Holland went through children colonies (Kinder Kolonies). The aim was for children to be given their good health back again. The Dutch Government’s aim to give good health and hygiene to children dates back to the 1890’s when many children were put into State run homes and given better care than within their own poverty stricken families.

This scheme really took off after the war when thousands of undernourished children were put into those homes. I was one of them after a doctor thought I was too skinny. My grandkids still get a good laugh when I tell them how people used to bump into me and say, “Oops, I didn’t see you”. “Your arms were like sticks, Gerard, like this, and my mother would hold up her finger, together with the encouraging, and you used to cough so much.” I had bronchitis almost permanently. I was send three times to different children colonies for six weeks each time.

The general aim for those post-war children colonies was to make them gain weight. Not an unreasonable aim in my case. Weekly weigh-ins was one routine strictly adhered to. A letter would be send to the parents with the good news of weight gain or perhaps not, when no weight was gained. My memories don’t include the finer details of any arrangement of those that failed to get heavier. Anyway, the idea was sound. Another routine was the weekly change of underwear together with a hot shower; again a pretty reasonable affair considering whenever the need for a ‘number two’ arose, a request included having to ask for toilet paper from the leader. It must have been in short supply.  There was very little generosity in giving the required number of sheets. One had to ‘row with the given oars,’ was a popular saying of the times.

While the aim was for children to gain weight, it was also necessary for them to be given rest. Rest to recover from years of famine and hunger. This rest was generally in the afternoon between 2 and 3 pm and on stretchers. For a reason that was never explained, rest and sleep was only allowed by laying on your right side. We had one group leader whose job it was to look out for any recalcitrant trying to sleep on back or wrong side. She also happened to have a loose arm and would give you a good smack around the ears followed with the word, “please”, if you had disobeyed this one sided rule. Of course, I was never smacked at home but smacking was far more common in those days and I suppose those young women only gave back what was given to them. Even so, it was particularly painful and not just because of the pain. Children would often be wracked by homesickness, yearn for their mums. A smack with ‘please’ afterwards wasn’t exactly pedagogically a child friendly or wise thing to do at those times but what can I do now? Another form of therapy was for bed-wetters to give them an extra our between the wet sheets. Teach them a lesson.

However, the best of the lot was that after the afternoon rest you were made to queue for the daily spoonful of cod-liver oil. (levertraan)This ritual involved opening your mouth wide and a large spoonful would be shoved in there. Many children would develop an aversion to anything fishy for the rest of their life. I was most fortunate that I had developed a taste for anything that ended up in my mouth. Even a wooden stick would be welcome. My hunger and lack of food a few years earlier made me an addict for anything oral for the rest of my life. Show me food and I’ll show you determination.

After the ladle of cod-liver treat, a new queue would have to formed, and again with mouths wide open we would be given two pills of vitamin C. You were given time to swallow and had again to open your mouth wide in case you were cheating and spewing them out when away from scrutiny. Day in, day out, for six long weeks!

No matter with all those efforts, my weight-gain was measured in ounces rather than pounds or kilos. Before the ‘weigh-in’ we were told to drink copious amounts of milk or even water. Of course those grams added up and the rapport to the doctor was nicely blown up.

In many cases, the efforts in weight gains were mainly in vain. The heartbreak of being without mothers was so overwhelmingly felt, especially in those afternoon rests. I can still hear not just my own sobbing but also of so many other five and six year olds. All the spoonfuls of Cod liver oil and all the vitamins could not make up for the lack of mothers. When I was visited by my mother I ran after her when the visit came to its inevitable end, I promptly lost a kilo in my hand-knitted underpants and without those sheets of toilet paper as well. I could not care anymore.

Readers will be pleased to know I am still on the slim side. I am as fond of food now as then and apart from brown underpants-like vegemite can eat anything. Even now I keep a bottle of cod liver oil in the fridge, just in case.

Old habits die hard.

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The Late Great Aussie Moore – Chapter 3 Eureka Days

28 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in Neville Cole

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The Diggings

By Neville Cole

The beautiful English home on the hill that had been my grandfather’s pride and joy was gone. All that remained was the stone hearth and chimney that my father rebuilt and tended to as if it were my mother’s earthly tomb. The years that followed, my brothers recalled, were unrelentingly difficult without a hint of a woman’s touch. Although my father still had money remaining from his father’s glorious golden days, we, his kin, lived as feral outcasts in a one-room miner’s shack by the tapped out stream at the bottom of the hill. My father brought a goat to replace the mother’s milk my colicky lungs cried out for and later he purchased a few hundred head of sheep and turned my brothers into unwilling shepherds. The parties, gaiety, and gatherings of neighbours ceased and we became known collectively as the “wild Moores of Ballarat.”

My father turned quickly to drink as his only consolation. His chief bursts of productivity coming once a year at shearing time when he worked almost around the clock until all the wool had been clipped and bagged. Then he would be gone, sometimes for weeks at a time, to Melbourne to sell his measly wares for the best price he could muster. But later, on quiet evenings in the shack, before the spirits turned his heart as dark and cold as a mid-winter storm, he would tell us stories of his father Samuel, the lucky Moore from Kilmarnock.

Kilmarnock

 “Your grandfather came from the land of Robert Burns and Walker’s Kilmarnock Whisky,” he would always start as if the jug in his hand was drawing the story from the depths of his soul. He was the luckiest man who ever lived,” he would add with the bitterest of smiles. “He turned his back on the land of the true Moores and laid plans to come to this godforsaken plot as soon word of Edward Hargraves’ find at Ophir spread across the globe. Of course, by the time he made it to these shores, Ballarat was the center of the universe and the lure of golden riches drew him here as surely as the sun holds us all in orbit. He was barely twenty years at the time with little education and no discernable skills but he soon learned he had a nose for gold to go along with his limitless yearning for adventure. He was also the unsung hero of the Eureka stockade, lost to history, but were it not for your grandfather we may not be now be living in a free Australia. For you see, it was your grandfather who saved the life of one Peter Lalor.”

How my grandfather Samuel came to the rescue of the first outlaw to make it to parliament is a story of reckless bravery and frankly impossible luck. It all began soon after his arrival when he fell in, quite literally, with another young Scottish miner named James Scobie. The two met, as most miners do, at a hotel when Samuel stepped between James and the hotel’s proprietor, a Mr. Bentley, during a confrontation over an apparently unpaid tab. Samuel was knocked unconscious and woke up later outside in the dirt being tended to by a grateful James Scobie. Now you may think that was a rather unlucky beginning to what I proposed was a story of remarkable luck; but taking a billy club for a stranger can tend to forge a quick friendship and James and Samuel became mining partners shortly thereafter and thus my grandfather began his trek down the often hazardous path of the gold miner in earnest.

James Scobie was a fine miner but as pig-headed as the day is long. He and Samuel continued to frequent the Eureka despite the constant threat of bodily harm from Mr. Bentley. As the months and years passed, Samuel began to suspect that the reason for their almost nightly visits to the Eureka was due to more than just a taste for whiskey and rum; he noted that James attentions often fell upon the proprietor’s comely wife, Catherine. These attentions, Samuel recognized most likely accounted for Mr. Bentley’s simmering fury every time this usually free spending and frankly mostly trouble-free customer walked through his doors.

Lucky for him, Samuel was not with James as he wandered past the Eureka hotel during the early morning of October 6, 1854. If he did it is quite possible he too would have been found face down in the dirt with a fatal battleaxe wound to his head. Samuel attended the hasty trial that took place that very afternoon when the local magistrate acquitted Mr. Bentley for lack of evidence, even though witnesses saw Mr. Bentley on the street with three other men and a woman at the time of the murder. It was noted that a woman, believed to be Catherine, was heard to exclaim “how dare you break my window.” It would not be until many years later that Samuel would wonder just what caused James Scobie to break Catherine Bentley’s window at two o’clock in the morning. At the time of the trial all he could think of was revenging his good friend’s death.

It was Samuel that took the lead ten days later when a reported 10,000 miners took to the streets and burned down the Eureka hotel while James and Catherine Bentley fled for their lives. Again, due mostly to luck and partly to his quiet, unassuming nature, Samuel was not among the nine miners arrested over the next few days for starting the fire.

The miner’s anger turn quickly to political revolt and Samuel too was present at Bakery Hill to vote in the resolution “that it is the inalienable right of every citizen to have a voice in making the laws he is called on to obey, that taxation without representation is tyranny“. The group also resolved that day to secede from the United Kingdom if the situation did not improve.

The mood of the Ballarat miners reached its feverous peak on 16 November 1854 when Governor Hotham appointed a Royal Commission on goldfields problems and grievances. But as history has shown us, authority rarely bows out of a bad situation gracefully and Commissioner Rede’s response the governor was to ignore the grievances and instead increase the police presence in the gold fields and summon reinforcements from Melbourne.

The Oath

How Samuel avoided arrest and death during those revolutionary days can only be attributed to pure luck. After all, he was one of the first of the miner’s to pledge open rebellion and burn his mining license and he was among the mob that surrounded arresting officers conducting a license search the very next day. He was present at the unfurling of the rebel Eureka Flag and part of the mob who swore the oath of allegiance to it. “We swear,” they spoke as one, “by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties.”

Eureka Stockade

The tragic events of the battle of the stockade have been well documented; it is now known how what had at one time been a force of 1700 men dwindled to a mere 150 miners on December 3rd, 1854 when most of the miners at the stockade returned to their tents under the assumption that the Queen’s military forces would not be sent to attack on the Sabbath.

Samuel was one of the 150 who remained when a party of 276 police and military personnel under the command of Captain J.W. Thomas approached the Eureka Stockade and a battle ensued. The ramshackle army of miners was hopelessly outclassed by the well-trained military regiment and was routed in about 10 minutes. But it is his actions during that 10 minute battle for which Samuel ought to be legend; for it was he who hid Lalor, arm shattered by musketshot, under a pile of timbers. Samuel then somehow managed to stay nearby undetected while the victors removed the dead from the stockade. He could see blood trickling from beneath the pile of slabs where he had Lalor hid; but while soldiers, keen to capture Lalor were still in the stockade, Samuel dared not make a move. That is, until the last of soldiers had left. Then he quickly stepped back into the fray and smuggled Lalor away, put him on a horse, and sent him off to eventual safety.

Now, I’m not here to pretend that it was an easy escape for Lalor. We all know well that over the following weeks he had to survive several near captures and undergo two amputations before he would be truly free; but the fact remains that, without my grandfather, Samuel Moore, he never would have survived the stockade. Without my grandfather, Samuel Moore, the near 50 year trudge to independence that followed would have surely been without one of its most passionate and influential leaders. For the lucky Moore from Kilmarnock it was just one of a hundred such times during which he tempted fate and won. If only my own father had just one tenth of his father’s good fortune my early life would have been quite different indeed. Then again, perhaps luck, like many other genetic traits, tends from time to time to skip a generation.

Glass eating, compliments Werner Von Braun’s V2 Fest

25 Monday Jun 2012

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Glass of Cordial (Ranja) biting after the War.

June 21, 2012

Glass of Cordial (Ranja) biting after the War

When during the last bitter winter of 1945 food had run out there was an angel in the shape of a helmeted German soldier, still billeted below the footpath in our street, who must have felt remorse or became overwhelmed with the futility of it all, and gave me half a loaf of black bread. I was almost five years old. I walked upstairs to our home at number 18a Roderijsche Straat, Rotterdam which wasn’t far from where the German soldier was dug in and gave my mother this piece of black bread. During that last hopeless winter known as the ‘Hunger Winter of 1945’, many in Holland died of starvation, and, as is so often the case, most were just children and the elderly. In search of food, people would walk tens of kilometers to trade valuables for food at farms. Tulip bulbs and sugar beets would be eaten. It is estimated close to 20.000 people died of starvation. When the war ended many young children were treated at special children colonies to restore them back to good health. I was one of them.

I don’t think anything ever exceeded the euphoria in our family as at that time we had that half loaf of glorious bread. It was a luxury for our hungry family.

The memory is inedible and on par with another one, much more gruesome, of which my grandchildren can never get enough of. They insist on me regaling this dreadful tale over and over again. Children seem to love dreadful macabre tales.

This is the tale: While Rotterdam was bombed at the beginning of the war, the early and still primitive rocket science of the Germans had not yet progressed to anything remotely accurate. The Werner Von Braun V2 rockets meant for England just used to come down willy-nilly anywhere including in our already bombed out city of Rotterdam. They would swoosh over very low with a high pitched manic scream and frighten sleeping children as nothing else ever since. One of them came down somewhere near us and exploded. People were hanging out of windows, shards of glass everywhere and I found myself walking with my mother. She was holding my hand. A man came hobbling down the ruin of a blasted house. There was red colour oozing out of him. He was holding one leg under his arm. He was bleeding from the stump where his leg used to be…………. End of tale! Good night children…go to sleep now. No mucking up! They slept like angels.

Some two years later after life had become more normal but with food and staples still on stamps, my dad decided to take me and two brothers on a day’s outing. We took a train to the south-west somewhere and while my memories are vague being so young, I remember looking out over an endless grey mud flat whereby the colour of wet clay and sky matched at the very end of where I looked. There was no horizon. Dad had promised, after viewing this grey landscape for enough time, a glass of orange drink at a cafe. It was called ‘ranja’ in Dutch.

Of course, no fizzy drinks were available then and all soft drinks were cordial mixtures. The promise of a ranja drink is what I looked forward to so much, the first cordial in my life. The thought of that drink filled my mind as soon as dad’s promise was uttered. I had tasted sugar cubes at the children’s colonies prior to that event, and that was already an enormous experience that I would relish for hours afterwards. Life was so much worth living for now.

After we were all seated at this little café that overlooked this grey flat clay landscape the ‘ranja’ duly arrived in their glasses. This was the moment whereby I would taste a heaven on earth. I put the glass and its edge into my mouth but became so overwhelmed by the occasion, determined never to let this moment of supreme joy ever pass, that my teeth lashed onto the glass with such vehemence that a large piece broke off and remained clamped into my mouth. Oh, the sadness of it. I remember the immediate sense of failure and together with my wrongly assumed payment by my father for the broken glass to the café holder, burst out in inconsolable grief. The day was ruined and I so wished my mother had been there, but she was home in Rotterdam and dad wasn’t as good in the art of consoling little boys.

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Blue-Eyed Soul

22 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by in Algernon

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Playlist by Algernon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEkB-VQviLI

You’ve lost that loving Feeling – The Righteous Brothers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy625sZAHN8

Good Lovin’-The Rascals

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-7QSMyz5rg

Green Onions –Booker T & the MG’s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MK8F5BHvgE

Gimme Some Lovin – The Spencer Davis Group

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUFxj59Fa9o

What is Hip-Tower of Power

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65EoK4OelZU

Lowdown – Boz Scaggs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSHY1_ux8rs

Young Americans – David Bowie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRgr9h2iO40

Sara Smile – Hall & Oates

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvmpfTQTbZY

Cut the Cake – Average White Band

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVzAH0FtNwg

Church of the poison mind – Culture Club

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlCCva6rr-s

Speak like a child – The Style Council

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7E2a3efr3w

Missionary Man – Eurythmics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG07WSu7Q9w

Holding Back the years – Simply Red

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua_ODg0FmzQ

Mel Torme – Comin Home Baby

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCkm1ZAQQPY

Footie – Wigan’s chosen Few

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp4339EbVn8

Son of a Preacher Man – Dusty Springfield

The Great Aussie Moore Chapter Two: The Fire

22 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by in Neville Cole

≈ 14 Comments

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Melbourne before the storm

By Neville Cole

The summer of 1901 was unreasonably hot and windy and, though I need not add this, excessively dry. This was especially difficult on my slowly recovering mother. Doctor Lockett did finally arrive on the morning of my birth to attend to my mother. He praised Mr. Webb for his surgical efforts but nevertheless administered a dose of opiate and did what he could to clean the wound and stop the bleeding. He wanted to have my mother moved to the new hospital in town but she would not hear of leaving her family and instead my father hired a Chinese nursemaid from the goldfields who was known for working miracles with injured miners.

I, of course, was too young to remember any of this – being but a mewling and puking babe at the time – but during a recent visit the State Library in Melbourne I happened upon some articles written over the summer of my birth.

HEAT AND GALES the headline read and DUST STORM IN THE CITY; but the one that struck the clearest chord simply noted LOSS OF LIFE AND PROPERTY.

The Argus scribe wrote on February 7th, 1901 that shortly after 6 o’clock “one of the most violent dust storms that has ever been experienced in Melbourne swept over the city, and came as a fitting climax to a day of almost unprecedented heat.” He described the “rushing, mighty wind” as seemingly “converting the city into a gigantic railway train, rushing with headlong speed into a tunnel.” He also wrote that storm formed an “impenetrable grey wall causing vehicles to come to a standstill, and that the trams, after endeavoring to maintain snail’s pace motion amid the incessant clanging of warning bells, finally gave up the attempt”. But perhaps the most telling description I read pointed to the fates of innocent bystanders caught up in this furious whirlwind: “Luckless pedestrians clutched their hats and made for the nearest portico or doorstep, or clung to verandah-posts, burying their faces in their hands to escape the blinding cloud of dust and pebbles. The tornado swept through the metropolis in a few minutes, warning messages of its approach being sent over telegraph wires from places it had just left, though, as a rule, the recipients had no time to make use of the warning given to them.

1901 fire

Melbourne was smothered by dust that day but spared the flame. We country folk were not so lucky. We had not only hurricane force wind and dust but also faced fires travelling at a terrific rate in front of that wind. Account after account in the Argus noted the devastation.

In Lower Byeduk, for example, “three houses alone stood out of the original fifteen. Nothing was saved, not a stick of furniture, and women and children, who had dashed out of their houses, just in time to save their lives had to stand by and see a mass of flame lick up their houses. People,” he went on, “with clothing burning, rushed to the creeks and dams, and many stood therein, while with hurricane force and cyclonic speed the fire swept past them actually singing their hair.”

While engaged in the act of reading these accounts I could not help but to imagine my dear mother, still partially invalid from the trauma of my birth sitting by me in my cot trying to formulate an escape from the fiery darkness that raced toward her like a headlong train.

No one ever told me an exact account of that day; but from snippets I did take in it appears that even in the days leading up to the great fire my father was often heard to curse his own father’s name. “Who but an arrogant fool,” he was said to exclaim, “would build his house on a hill instead of next to a cool and comforting stream?” What man would rather watch over his dominion than allow his family to live in comfort and safety?”

All of which is to explain why my father and my two young brothers were down by the creek in the heat of the day on February 7th. They were gathering water to cool my mother’s brow. The flames I am told blew up suddenly and without warning from the valley behind our house. By the time, my father even saw the smoke, the wind and dust was on top us and we were blanketed within that impenetrable wall of grey. It is not known what took place inside the house and I certainly don’t recall a thing but, as my brother told it, my father took off toward the flame but became disoriented in the wind and dust; and then, when the storm had passed as quickly as it arrived, out of the maelstrom staggered the Chinese nursemaid clutching me to her yellow breast.

My brother’s watch in silent horror as my father ripped me from her grip and beat her to the ground with back of his free hand. The Chinese girl, Clarry once whispered, managed to heft herself to her feet and ran off into the falling ash that was already decorating the plain like some snowy English Christmas scene. Like my mother, the Chinese girl was never seen and rarely spoken of again.

 

Euro-Neuro with Greek Tragedy

22 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by in Gerard Oosterman

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Greek Drama with Euro-Neuro

June 18, 2012

Greek Drama with Euro-Neuro.

The unity of Europe with a common currency was a dream that was destined to become a nightmare. It was conceived in good faith but the genes were so diverse and far apart that the result could not have been but a mule, neither a horse nor a donkey, a sterile disambiguation at best.

The United States of America has at least a common language and common culture. Going from north to south there is a common architecture, language and common goals. Through work and credit card they hope to ‘make it’. A simple philosophy of materialism that more or less, (lately a bit less,) that has stood the test of time. And with Hollywood and Gridiron thrown it they have somehow achieved a kind of unity that by and large seemed to have worked for its population.

Just look at Europe and its diversity. The question should be asked; why this need for commonality? If anything, its diversity should have been encouraged and maintained instead of it artificial made homogenous with the push of the Euro.

The Greeks should have been allowed to remain the architects of democracy. Let them sit around cafes, it worked very well in the past. There is a need for the Greeks to do their own thing.

What would a common European culture be like? Should it be like the British, a hotchpotch of chasing something forever obsolete with their love of complicated tradition and dislike of the new? Should it be the simplicity of the Scandinavians or the thriftiness of the Dutch?  Or should it embrace the German method with its icy emphasis on order and meticulous organizational qualities? Perhaps the French way, with its food and love of fashion and truffles. Spain with paella. Oh, Portugal with its deliciously char-grilled sardines. Unforgettable.

The different work ethics, the different languages and above all the different cultures cannot make for a united Europe with all ambitions and its entire people being the same. Europe should celebrate its diversity and share the good but not at the cost of differences.

Years ago, train travel on the Continental express Genoa- Stockholm was an unforgettable experience, not least with all the pass-port controls and different currencies. Why did we ever think this needed weeding out? What is the benefit of this Euro efficiency when it all ends up being boring and monotonous? What are we alive for? Remember the custom officers (Douanes)? They all wore different caps and showed such different idiosyncrasies. Some would look you in the eye and try and determine levels of honesty, or, if capable of smuggling rare cheeses or African diamonds. Other would just nod and walk on. In Genoa you bought a small bottle of wine and half a chicken passed through the train window for 500 lire. In Germany, a Brodchen mit Kase or Bock-wurst.

What’s the point of going to Greece or any European country and not use a different currency? I went to Melbourne last week-end and ended up landing in a different kind of Sydney. Not one Iota of difference. I could just as well been in Perth. The same Harvey Norman frontages, the same large car parks with Big Macs golden arches. The sameness of a stifling all encompassing ennui of dreary monotonous architecture. Is that what the Euro-Visional behavioral architects envisaged? Surely not!

From Rambo Amadeus;

Euro skeptics, analphabetic, try not be hermetic. Euro-Neuro, not be skeptic, hermetic, neurotic, pathetic and analphabetic.

Forget all cosmetic, you need new poetic etc.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHnqF5PLP2w

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Father O’Way on the State of Oregon

21 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in Mark, Warrigal Mirriyuula

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Story by Hung One On and Digital Mischief by Warrigal Mirriyuula

Hey. Hi. How are you? Sandy here, you know Sandy O’Way your local parish priest. Look I’ll cut to the chase. I need to get my word count up otherwise the Bish will kill me so I will be chucking in a few more words in this article, you know, like, words, words and more words. Wow, 50 words already, who said I’m an idiot.

Anyhoo, look, by the way that’s my second look, the Bish wants me to report on the State of Oregon that is about to be played between two teams, how interesting [groan].  But look, hey my third look, why does the Bish want to know about a state in America but look, okay, let’s take a look.

The State of Oregon is the 33rd state of the USA with a population of almost 4 million.

[ Okay. Stop right there Sandy. Hung here, look, I told you State of Origin, you know, football and the big decider coming up on the 4th July. You know mate I would call you and idiot but that would be an insult to idiots, now get on with it.]

Bloody hell. Did Hung get out of the wrong side of the bed or what but look I was enjoying the story so far. Now I have to write about football, ewww, yuck.

So look, hmm another look, I slip some security guards some suspicious white powder that they think is drugs but is really talcum powder to get an interview with the coaches. Boy, I can’t wait to see the faces of those stupid guards when they start sticking talc up their noses.

The two coaches are Ricky Poofart for the New South Wales Blues and Mal Meningitis for the Queensland Morons. I start with Ricky.

“So Ricky” I ask on the front foot just to let this guy know that I am a footy expert “Who’s going to win the upcoming game of Collingwood versus Manly?” That will stump him.

“Well I’m sorry Father but those teams play in different competitions” Ricky informs.

“Oh, so there is more than one competition?” I ask not knowingly.

“Well yes Father. Collingwood play Aussie Rules but Manly play the real game, Thugby League.” Ricky informs.

Darn. I was hoping for some inside information so I could make a killing down at FabSportsBet. I’ll throw another curly one at him. “What about the clash of the Saints, you know, Saint George verus Saint Kilda?”

“No Father. They are separate games with separate rules. They play on a big oval and we have referees and they have umpires” informs Ricky.

“Yes, yes, of course” I twaddle looking for another gag. “Yes, Ricky, I hear you are ecstatic about the umpires, oops, I mean referees?  I probe.

“It’s always their fault that we lose” Ricky spurts, on his feet now and frothing at the mouth. He grabs me around the throat “The referees are always wrong and we are always right that’s what makes them so wrong and us so right and if we lose it’s rigged” spews Ricky.

“Look Ricky, chill man. So you are called the Blues. I love the blues, you know George Thorogood, Stevie Ray Vaughan that sort of thing” I enquire meekly, fearing for my life.

“The Blues is the colour of our jumper Father, er, um, sorry about the strangle hold.”

Hmm. I dust myself off and head to the next interview with Mal Meningitis, the coach of the Queensland Morons.

“So Mal, I mean Big Mal” hmm, big, M, couldn’t be. I ask the obvious “ So big Mal, you don’t live in Newcastle do you?”

“No Father. I am a true Queenslander. I live in Canberra” Mal replies.

“So Mal, are you are you going to beat those southern hicks, the Blues?” I ask.

“Don’t you worry about that” Mal replies “Look I have just finished making some pumpkin scones, replaced the faded curtains and fed the chooks, so don’t you worry about that Father”

Gordon zarking O’Donnell, what have we here. “Well Mal, have you ever thought about a career in politics?” I state rather dryly.

“Well Father, yes, no, maybe.” Mal states. Hey, maybe we do have something in common after all.

“Look Mal, I’m a fictitious character on a piece of paper that appears on a website called the Pigarms. What state of origin would I fit into?” I ask rather forlornly, you know,  that feeling of not belonging.

“Well Father, by reading some of your stories I think you would fit into the Mental Health state” states Mal.

Yes, finally, I can cheer for my team, the state of Mental Health but I wonder which competition do they play in?

“So Mal, how do you feel about the referees?” I ask trying to hide my complete boredom.

“Look Father” says Mal “You pay them enough money and you get the result you want. In fact the State Premier, Camp Bellnewman, supports gay marriage.”

“I’m sorry Mal but I don’t get what you mean” I state innocently.

“Well look” says Mal “come over sweetie here and I’ll give you a kiss and we can talk about the first thing that pops up.”

Look, someone get me outta here.

[PS: I would like to thank the word look that appeared over 19 times and did nothing for the story at all except improve my word count.]

Bilitis (Continued): Elegies at Mytilene

21 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in Uncategorized

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Translation by Astyages

<Eumorphote’rha Mnasidi’ka ta^s hapala^s Gyrhinn_o^s.>

(Mnasidica is far more beautiful than the gentle Gyrrhino”)

SAPPHO

47 – TO THE SHIP

Beautiful ship which brought me here, all along

the coast of Ionia, I abandon you to the shining

waves and with light feet jump onto the beach.

You will return to the land where the virgin is

the friend of the nymphs. Don’t forget to thank

the invisible counsellors, and take them

in offering this branch cut by my own hands.

You, made of pine, and on the mountains, the vast

inflamed Southern Wind stirred your spiny branches,

your squirrels and your birds.

The North Wind now guides you, and

pushes you gently towards the port, black prow

escorted by dolphins by the will of the benevolent sea.

48 — PSAPPHO

I rubbed my eyes… It was already day,

I thought. Ah! Who is near me…? A

woman…? By Paphia, I had forgotten…

Oh! Charity! I am so ashamed…

Into which country have I come, and what is

this isle where one hears so much about love?

If I were not so weary, I would have believed it was

some dream… Is it possible that this is Psappha?

She is sleeping… She is certainly beautiful,

although her hair was cut short like that of

an athlete. But this strange face, this

mannish chest and narrow hips…

I want to leave before she wakes.

Alas! I am beside the wall. I must

jump over her. I’m afraid of grazing her hip and

that she will not take me back to the thoroughfare.

49 – THE DANCE OF GLOTTIS AND KYSE

Two little girls brought me to their home,

and as the door was closed, they

lit the wick of a lamp and

wanted to dance for me.

Their cheeks were not made-up, and

as brown as their little tummies. They

pulled each other by the arms and spoke at

the same time, in an agony of gaiety.

Sitting on their mattress which was born by two

raised trestles, Glottis sang in a sharp

voice and clapped her resonant little hands in time.

Kyse danced by jerks, then stopping,

out of breath from laughing, and, taking her sister

by the breasts, bit her shoulder and

turned her round, like a goat which wants to play.

50 – ADVICE

Then Syllikhmas came in, and seeing us

so familiar, she sat down on the bench.

she took Glottis on one knee, Kyse on

the other and she said:

“Come here little one.” But I stayed distant.

She said again: “Are you scared of us?

Come on… these children love you. They

could teach you something you don’t know: the

honey of a woman’s caresses.

“A man is violent and parasitic. You

know that, undoubtedly. Hate them. They have

flat chests, rough skin, short hair and hairy arms.

but women are completely beautiful.

“Women alone know how to love; stay with

us, Bilitis, stay. And if you have an ardent

soul, you will see your beauty as in a

mirror on the body of your lovers.”

51 – UNCERTAINTY

Between Glottis or of Kyse I don’t know which

I would marry. As they do not resemble each

other, the one could not console me for the other

and I’m afraid of making the wrong choice.

Each of them has one of my hands,

and one of my breasts also. But to who*91

should I give my mouth? To whom should I give

my heart and all that with which I am unable to part?

We could not stay like this, all

three in the same house. They would talk about us

in Mytilene. Yesterday, in front of the temple of Ares,

a woman didn’t say “Hello!”

It’s Glottis that I prefer; but I

cannot reject Kyse. What will become of her

all alone? Should I leave them together as

they were and take another friend for myself?

52 – THE MEETING

I found her like a treasure, in a

field, under a myrtle bush, enveloped

from throat to feet in a yellow robe

embroidered with blue.

“I have no friends,” she said to me, “Because the

nearest town is five miles from

Here. I live alone with my mother who is

old and always sad. If you want, I’ll follow you.

“I will follow you to your house, leaving her on

the other side of the isle and I will live with you

until you send me back. Your hand is

tender, your eyes are blue.

“Let’s go. I’m taking nothing with me, but

the little Aphrodite which is hanging around my

neck. We will put her next to yours,

and we will give them roses in

payment for each night.”

53 – THE LITTLE APHRODITE OF BAKED EARTH

The little guardian Aphrodite which protected

Mnasidika was modelled on Camiros by a potter

of great skill. It is as big as my thumb,

and of fine yellow earth.

Her hair falls all around

her narrow shoulders. Her eyes are

long slits, and her mouth is very

small, because she is the “Ever-Beautiful.”

With her right hand she indicates her divinity,

which is riddled with little holes on the

lower belly and along the groin. Because she

is the “Very Amorous”.

In her left hand she holds her round

heavy breasts. Between her broadened hips

swells a fertile belly. Because

she is the “Mother-Of-All-Things”.

54 – DESIRE

She entered, and passionately, her eyes

half-closed, she united her lips with

mine and our tongues entwined…

Never in my life have I ever had a kiss

like that.

She was standing up against me, all in

love and consenting. One of my knees,

bit by bit, climbed between her warm thighs

which yielded as if for a lover.

My creeping hand under her tunic searched

to divine her unclothed body, which turn and turn

about sinuously writhed, or stiffly bent

with the trembling of her skin.

With the eyes of delirium she indicated her bed;

but we did not have the right to love before the

wedding ceremony and we separated brusquely.

55 — THE WEDDING

In the morning, we made a wedding repast, in the

house of Acalanthis whom she had adopted

as a mother. Mnasidika wore the white veil

and I a man’s tunic.

And then, in the midst of twenty women, she

took off her festal robe. We perfumed it with

Bakkaris; powdered it with golden powder,

and removed her jewels.

In her bedroom, full of foliage, she

waited for me like a wife. And I

placed her on a chariot between me and the

nymphs’ shrine and we cheered all who passed by.

We sang the Nuptial Song; The flutes

were also played. With one arm

round her shoulders and the other under her knees,

I carried Mnasidika across the rose-covered threshold.

56 – THE BED (not translated)

57 – SURVIVORS OF THE PAST

I left the bed as she had left it,

unmade and rumpled, the sheets tangled, so that

the shape of her body stayed imprinted beside mine.

Until tomorrow I shall not go to the baths, I shall

not wear clothes and I shall not

comb my hair, for fear of rubbing away her kisses.

This morning, I shall not eat, nor this evening,

and on my lips I will put neither rouge nor

powder, so that her kisses will remain.

I shall leave the shutters closed and I shall not open

the door, for fear that the memory which remained

might blow away on the wind.

58 – METAMORPHOSIS

Once I was a lover of the beauty of

young men, and the memory of their

speech, of old, would wake me up.

I remember having engraved a name in

the bark of a plane tree. I remember

having left a piece of my tunic in

a path where someone passes by.

I remember having loved you… Oh Pannychis,

my child, in whose hands have I left you?

How, oh unhappy me, could I have abandoned you?

Today, Mnasidika alone, and for

always, possesses me. She receives in

sacrifice the happiness of those whom I have left

for her.

59 – THE NAMELESS TOMB

Mnasidika took me by the hand to

lead me out of the gates of the town, up to a

little meadow where there was a column of

marble. And she said,

“This was my mother’s friend.”

Then I felt a great shudder, and without

letting go of her hand, I leant

on her shoulder, so as to read the four verses

between the hollow cup and the serpent:

“It was not Death who kidnapped me, but

the Nymphs of the streams. I rest here

under an earth lightened by a ‘hairstyle’

cut by Xantho. Let her alone cry for me.

I will not tell my name.

For a long time we remained standing there, and we

put no verse to the libation. Because what

does one call an unknown soul who has entered the multitudes

of Hades?

60 – THE THREE BEAUTIES OF MNASIDIKA

I sacrificed two male hares and two doves

to Aphrodite-The-Lover-Of-Smiles

so that Mnasidika will be protected by the gods.

And I sacrificed to Ares two cocks armed

for the fray, and to the sinister Hecate two

dogs who howled under the knife.

And it is not without reason that I have implored

these three Immortals, because Mnasidika wears on

her face the reflection of their triple divinity:

Her lips are red as copper, her

hair is blue-tinged like iron, and her eyes are

black, like silver.

61 – THE LAIR OF THE NYMPHS

Your feet are more delicate than those of

Thetis of the Silver Hair.

Between your crossed arms you

reunite your breasts, and you gently rock them to sleep

like the bodies of two beautiful doves.

Under your hair you conceal your moist

eyes, your trembling mouth and the red

flowers of your ears; but nothing will stop

my look nor the hot breath of your embrace.

Because, in the secret of your body, it is you,

beloved Mnasidika, who conceal the lair of the

nymphs of whom Old Homer spoke, the place

where the nyads weave their cloths of purple,

The place where flow, spout by spout,

inexhaustible springs, and from where the door to

the North allows men to descend and where the

door to the South allows the Immortals entry.

62 – THE BREASTS OF MNASIDIKA

With care, she opened my tunic with one hand

and held my warm, soft breasts; thus

one offers to the goddess a pair of

living turtledoves.

“Love them well,” she tells me; “I love them

so much! They are darlings, little

children. I busy myself with them when I’m

alone. I play with them; I give them pleasure.

“I wash them with milk. I powder them

with flowers. My fine hair which dries them

is dear down to its little roots. Trembling,

I kiss them. I put them to bed in wool.

“So I shall never have children, to

keep them well-nourished, my love; and, seeing that

they are so far from my mouth, give them lots of

kisses from me.”

63 – CONTEMPLATION (not translated)

64 – THE DOLL

I gave her a doll. A doll made of

wax with pink cheeks. Her arms were attached

by little pins and one could bend her legs.

When we were together she put it to bed

between us and it was our child. In the evening

she rocked it and gave it her breast

before putting it to sleep.

She wove it three little tunics, and

we gave it jewels on Aphrodite’s Day;

jewels and flowers, too.

She cares for her virtue and never lets her

go out without her; not in the sun, above all, because

the little doll was moulded from little pieces of wax.

Fitness with heavy Engineering

18 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by in Gerard Oosterman

≈ 8 Comments

Fitness Machinery with heavy Engineering

June 15, 2012

The Fitness Machines with heavy Engineering.

It makes you lose weight just looking at them. If you thought those exercise machines of a few years ago had reached their awesome limits, look again. I walked past a sport shop late yesterday afternoon and promptly lost three kilos. There they were, all lined up behind the window; ready to mangle you into a skinny frame. They are massive. Breathtakingly ambitious in teaching you a bitter lesson in fitness. You wonder how they would even fit inside a normal home. Mind you, the rotund (obese) probably live in those large homes specially built for people bigness and slimming equipment.

A few years ago, the fitness machines could be folded and put under the bed.  Now, of course, any home worth living in has to have a gymnasium together with blocks and tackles to hoist thighs and stomachs onto the equipment. A while back I wrote how those exercise machines could be put to use for electricity generation. I am sure that the combination of slimming down to a more lithe form and making electricity could easily be an election winning strategy for any party.  I can see a combination of Mirabella and a tubby Scott Morrison tied to an endless treadmill very easily.

No, the slimming industry has gone into larger designs as never before. The psychology of slimming and fitness dictated the industry into a complete overhaul and re-think, hence the bulldozer look like slimming equipment of today. The move for fitness and slimness has to be for equipment to be so intimidating, so large and devastatingly serious, that it reduces the participant into slimming by just looking at them. Is it the comparison of the size of those giant machines next to the purchaser that makes anyone look smaller and slimmer? I saw an exercise bike with a fly-wheel so big; it resembled something out of a Hunter Valley coal powered generator. A clever ploy! The bigger the machine, the smaller one looks.

There is perhaps a bit of glibness even a mere hint of hypocrisy in my attention to weight and fitness. If the ingestion of lamb and pork chops including spare ribs year after year are anything to go by, in my case they kept me slim and taut. Not for me the Roly Poly of anything being overweight. So I guess, weight might well be a combination of genes and lifestyle, especially considering that looking at old photos we were so much thinner even though the diets of yesteryear with mutton and fatty foods was hardly any more healthier. We did go around the streets a lot more, Billy carts and all.

One thing got me perplexed. What do people look at when on one of those giant machines, treading away hour after hour? Assuming it is set up in the bedroom or even a gym, it is hard not to assume the exerciser is looking at a wall or perhaps a piece of furniture, may be a bed or kitchen cupboard. Perhaps some might put up a picture of Mount Everest or The Matterhorn and imagining they are climbing it, eventually it must get terribly boring.

This is why I ask myself; why the hell don’t they go out and do the treading on the street, on the footpath with an ever changing landscape as one puts feet after feet forward.

What has happened to walking?

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Here to Help

17 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by in Emmjay, Politics in the Pig's Arms

≈ 19 Comments

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Quite a few patrons at the Pig’s Arms complain about the ABC’s “The Drum” closing off comments so quickly after an article has been posted, that they cannot get a comment in.

In the spirit of co-operation championed at the Salon de Porc, herewith is a viable solution.  Copy it into your clipboard and fire it off BEFORE the article is published – or use it on any of the remaining open posts there.

I’ve seen some seriously dubious positions put here at the Drum in my time, but surely (insert author’s name if you have time), this one takes the cake.  Never before have we been treated to such an unmitigated neo-fascist rant, completely devoid of substantive evidence and totally without cogent argument.  It would be funny except it clearly wasn’t intended as a joke.

To suggest that even the fundamental premise  of the article (if in fact one can be identified) has any validity, demonstrates a woefully inadequate understanding of social etiquette and the physical laws of our universe.

I abhor ad-hominum attacks and such disgraceful behaviour must not be tolerated. 

Sadly the era of burning people like  (insert appropriate name or remove any of the following that do not apply) James Packer, Tony Jones, Sophie Mirabella, Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey, Fatty O’Barrel, Humboldt Numan, Ted Baillieu, Sarah Palin, Nick Darcy, Gina Rhinestone, the Burmese military junta, Julie Bishop, Cardinal Pell, Archbishop Jensen, Silvio Berlusconi, people who abuse small animals, crown of thorns starfish, rabbits, arsonists, paedophiles, shock jocks, Mark Scott, Chris Uhlmann at the stake is over.

Such is what we laughingly call progress.

—ooo—

Hope this helps !