While waiting for Warrigal’s offerings, l hope this will tie you over:
Music for You
19 Saturday Feb 2011
Posted in Uncategorized
Author Archives: gerard oosterman
The Slow Train to Sydney
17 Thursday Feb 2011
Posted in Gerard Oosterman
We took the train from Bowral to Sydney yesterday, as a kind of test run for the future. Living just 100 kms from Sydney we thought we might reduce driving and use public transport.
We had enquired the day before and were told by the Station Master time of departure and cost which for us seniors was a mere $2.50 return. Wacko, who could refuse an adventure of this nature? Next day we got up early, all excited about the coming day. Arrived a bit early at the station and bought our tickets. When the train arrived we were surpised how new it was and spacious. Many people hopped on-board incuding an elderly couple. The husband had a brand new dark blue checkered shirt with razor sharp pleats still visible on the sleeves. One almost expected the white collar bit of stiff carton to still be peeking from the back of his shirt.
The train took off on a rather somber and overcast day. We weren’t going very fast but time wasn’t important and we settled nicely. It took us past many stations including the one of killer Milat notoriety. The houses there were somewhat dilapidated looking with yards full of junk and cars propped on bricks with large dogs barking at the train. Bargo, Tahmoor, Dapto, Yerrinbool and many others we passed by. This was the train with only 4 stops between Bowral and Central, Sydney.
At one stage I noticed a very optimistic notice board on a terracotta roof. Painted on a large sign in bright blue was written; FUNERAL DIRECTOR and telephone number. The sign faced the train so it was clearly designed for the traveler but I wonder how many would get their address book out and scribble down the phone number. Who on earth would have that kind of foresight?
We arrived after almost 2 hrs (This is the fast Country Link) and sauntered down the platform but no ticket inspection. We walked up towards the Town-Hall soaking in all the changes since the last time we were there. As usual, there were huge cranes and dog-men directing great concrete panels hovering above building sites. In all sorts of nooks and crannies were available coffees and cakes. Backpackers were spilling over the footpaths busily sending texts and pictures of exotic Australia back to Japan or Sweden. Many were with those towering backpacks and some, which is’ par for course’ in going overseas, squatting down on the pavement cross legged.
Also, a disturbing increase in homeless, some with cardboard notices explaining their plight, others just oblivious to it all and seemed sound asleep. At the entrance to Myers was a small colony of homeless with mattresses and blankets, shopping trolleys, empty big M bags and a profusion of polystyrene containers. One desperate homeless and bearded man held up very bravely: FAMILY COURT VICTIM!
We were getting hungry and noticed a pub advertising food. It might have been called the King George but Helvi just now assures me it was The Edinburgh Castle. All patrons were seated. This is one of the most baffling cultural changes in Australia, where not that long ago, everyone in pubs would always be standing, except for some blue hair coloured patrons in the “Ladies Lounge”.
Not only were all seated they were also enjoying their beverage with food. We ordered two Heinekens with one Rump steak and one Chicken snitzel, both with chips and salad. This was about 1pm and the hotel was chockers, so were all other eating and drinking venues. What a buzz.
We decided to head home after this excellent lunch and slowly sauntered back to Central station where a sign told us to go to platform 23 for Bowral. Train after train did arrive but not a sign of anything going towards Bowral. We walked back to the entrance and a Rail Information Lady took it upon herself to guide us towards a train. Platform 23 is where you go to Cambelltown and then change over, she said. Oh, we did not know that nor was this indicated on the electronic sign or loudspeaker. She then went out of her way to say why you don’t get on the Country Link at 3.48PM. This leaves at platform 3.
There is a huge distance between both platforms, so we decided we needed another schooner to remain hydrated. This was lovely, seated away from the humidity of the Sydney Station in a air conditioned and licensed premise next to a McDonalds. I had the courage and gall to brazenly also ask for two fifty cent smooth-ice cream cones. Helvi declined, how can you drink beer and lick ice-cream? I gave hers to a homeless looking man who also did not lick it. We finally walked to the platform and this smooth ice cream in its cone was still un-licked and might still be sitting on the table as far as I know.
After seeing a young man with both legs cut off below the knee and heavily bandaged attended to by an ambulance officer on a mobile phone, we decided to hop on the train. That same couple, with the husband’s sharply creased shirt were also in our wagon. Perhaps they were doing the same as us. Perhaps they might even have taken down the number of the Funeral Director? Who knows?
The return was just as good but we were feeling pretty shagged by the time we arrived back, which was at 6pm. I noticed that in the morning the train came from Canberra and the afternoon train was also destined for Canberra. There wasn’t a buffet or possibility for any water or a coffee on board, which is a bit rich if you are going Sydney-Canberra. It could be that after Bowral a buffet car would be linked to the train.
Who knows?
It’s now or never.
16 Wednesday Feb 2011
Posted in Lehan Winifred Ramsay
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It’s Now or Never
I make six hundred photocopies of my school flyer to insert in the newspapers of the next suburb. But my car in the carpark is sitting on a bed of ice, and the wheels simply spin without moving. I am a little pleased because I feel anxious driving on the ice of February. I set out on foot. Down the road I meet Mr Kitamura walking his dog. I ask him where the newspaper distribution office is, and he points me in the right direction. It is a walk of 25 minutes, but I am outside and the weather is fine, and I feel like I have taken a step.
The flyers go out, but the phone does not ring. I am in a low-pressure pattern holding pattern. What if my six hundred flyers don’t bring me any students, what then? Things are no better for having gone to the newspaper distribution office. I take some more to a gallery. Maybe things will be okay. But if there is no clear result it feels like there is no step taken. I take some more to a cafe. The owner is not there, the cafe is locked. Then things will not be okay. I will have to do another thing tomorrow.
This is the way it is for the anxious. Maybe the weather will improve. And then maybe I will go outside.
This is the way it is for making something happen. Even if I have taken a step today, I will take another tomorrow.
This is the way it is for making something happen. Even if I have taken a step today, I will take another tomorrow.
One student came today. She is elderly, and she reads the lessons I give her over and over, determined to make them stick in her head, but she doesn’t think that they do. She seems worried too, by the lack of noticeable change in her. I take out an Elvis Presley song. Her eyes light up. She loves Elvis Presley and she has this song in her house. Two things have connected for her. This is the difference, for her, between taking a step and standing still.
No students come to my painting lesson. So I paint a picture. I have no money, but I do have time. Make a good plan and then begin it. Do what you say you want. It’s Now or Never.
The demise of the Cigar
15 Tuesday Feb 2011
Posted in Gerard Oosterman
. Just now, about ten minutes ago, when paying for a bottle of red wine, I noticed behind the cash register a somewhat forbidden looking black wall divided by many compartments.
On closer inspection while getting the change, I noticed that they were actually compartments hiding packets of cigarettes. The names and prices were written in white on this black wall together with the number of cigarettes in each division of those hidden cigarettes. All of a sudden I was becoming somewhat overwhelmed by remembering the cigar.
In times past, a tobacco shop held an enormous attraction for me. When I was very young back in Holland I started the forbidden pleasure of smoking, perhaps at the age of twelve or so. From hollowed acorns and grass helms, I and friends fashioned a smoking device and smoked. It soon developed in smoking cigarettes.
At that time the smoke shop was a heaven for scents and pleasures. Those displays of all that, with racks of pipes and boxes of cigars and the fact the kind shop owner used to sell ciggies single, I remember still so fondly.
The image of my dad, who would on special occasions, got a cigar which he used to prepare with great skill and patience. The cutting of the end and the snipping of the front part with a special knife, a special ritual. The aroma of our house with this cigar heralded an almost festive day coming on. Everything was alright for that day, things were going fine and all were happy.
All that is gone now, there is now just a black wall and stern signs.
Tow-bars and heli-pads
14 Monday Feb 2011
Posted in Gerard Oosterman
This is one for the legal division of the Pig’s Arms. Anyone that has ever driven kids to schools or cubs knows that the preferred method is by mums with very large black coloured cars.
Well, once (ones, for you Emm) upon a time, a long time ago, an old granddad took it upon him to also drive. Not in a big black one, but in his modest Astra 1600cc grey station wagon. It had recently been fitted with a tow bar and even more recent with the electronic harness. This harness cost more than the car, almost. This drive was to take grandson to his cubs.
While reversing in a parking spot at the cub’s hall, granddad noticed a menacingly large and black vehicle. It was also being parked. There was, during the parking a slight nudge by Astra’s tow-bar ball to the front of this monstrous black car. It was one of those cars that could easily have had a small pool or heli-pad on the roof or in the boot. I am pretty sure it had an internal staircase or lift-well. Anyway, as big the car as small the lady, all hysterical and shaking with rage.
“You vely, vely bad dliver” she said. “My car shaking, you damage, you damage”. “Show me license, you hit me.” I somewhat sagely reminded her that nothing much had happened and no damage done. Yes, but you vely bad, vely bad she shouted. She then demanded my license which I, always the well mannered driver, produced, even if just to calm her down. We both delivered the cubs and drove off.
Her car, as it turned out a: Holden Lexus RX 450h Sports Luxury 4d Wagon insured for $80k=.
Nine months later, as always when precautions are not taken. A stern GIO letter demanding $ 1530.00 or” the debt collector with dire consequences will take all your possessions, garnishee your wages”( ha ,ha, ha, from ABC’s income will take 2054 years) The letter assumes I am liable. I never have car insurance, never apart from motor bike accident 50 years ago been involved with any accident.
Now, the legal eagle from the P/Arms advice por favore:. Should I cough up, seeing I saved thousands not having car insurance? Or……… Should I rear up and subpoena the lady driver to court, (whose address I never took) and take her to task of getting the whole front of her car restored and remodeled at my expense? She obviously used her insurance to get every blemish or fault fixed. I never was involved or informed of any claim.
I remember Maurice and Blackburn solicitors giving me a handy break on some dodgy share dealings involving GIO and a class action by thousands of other shareholders.
This is of course a different issue and perhaps to save stress and time off from shit and stuff, should, as Emmjay so aptly put it: bend over and cough up? Much obliged and ta. You can send the bill c/- Hung-One. PO Yo. Pig’s Arms legal Aid.
The Train to Rookwood
10 Thursday Feb 2011
Posted in Gregor Stronach
The Train to Rookwood. http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/37682.html
The Kerry O’Brian’s interview with Woody Allen last Wednesday night on the 7.30 report would have to be one of ABC’s best coups. Woody’s interviews are collector’s items as he is notoriously shy of publicity. His answers to Kerry’s questions were quirky, witty and to the point. His best was towards the end when he seemed to reject the notion that getting older equates to the getting of wisdom. On the questions of why we are here and what the point of life was, he remains modestly unsure. Whatever he gained through all the years, he would gladly have exchanged it all for; quote, ’wiping 35 years of the calendar’, adding with a distant look, that he would probably make the same mistakes all over again.
This might have been a bit tongue in cheek but made me think how much profit there is in getting older. Surely, there has to be some reward for having survived all the misery and sadness of having lived through so much uncertainty and the many difficulties. It is not unreasonable to assume that one becomes better with the passing of years at coping with some of the misfortunes and events that could, with foresight, have been avoided, and that the benefits of getting older begets us the wisdom to not repeat errors and mistakes into the future.
We plod on with expectations of improvements, and hope that with age, we will undoubtedly get rewards for the courage, determination and resilience in having cobbled something out of our lives. When enough time has lapsed we can have the luxury of reflectively taking stock and do the accounts, and hopefully find out, that, by and large, we stayed the course and that we had achieved the things that we sat out to reach with the positives having outweighed the negatives.
When young, and bursting with enthusiasm and raging hormones, we recklessly hurled ourselves into the future, taking and accepting risks, relationships and partners all at once and with wild abandonment. We brazenly and bravely fought to make our mark. Nothing would stop us and we blindly believed that hard work and enterprise would ensure a stake in prosperity and much goodness, not just for ourselves, but also for our offspring and others. Deposits would be made on house and car, schools for kids would be booked years in advance, and inexorably with the passing of a few more years, we would reap rewards by climbing into even better and bigger houses with more bathrooms now and larger cars with DVD player hooked from the back seat for kids to watch Shrek when driving somewhere and anywhere.
Did we also not take in our stride the misfortune of family life gone off at a tangent or even astray, with lives, like forgotten letters in the drawer, damaged or lost through accident, illness and inherited gene, or the scourge of modern age, addiction to evil substance?
With the advance of years beyond the half century, we fully expect that wisdom and experience will guide us to calmer waters and ease us into a nice and comfortable latter part or even, with the luck of robust health and benefit of not smoking anymore, to old age. We paid our dues and mortgage man is now finally sated. The credit card we will keep on sailing with, just in case of the unforseen, the failing of car or broken and worn washer-dryer, a trip to Venice or even Chile’s Santiago.
Having steamed through that post mortgage, and for some, post marriage years, we have now travelled to the beginning of an advanced age with the cheerful Newsletter and Senior’s card in the post. The Senior Newsletter has holidays for the advanced seniors at Noosa and a plethora of advertisements for those handy battery operated electric little carriages with shopping tray at the back. Are we to zoom in and out of shopping centres soon, using ramps up and down? With the sheer numbers appearing on footpaths now, it won’t be long and there could be outbreaks of motorized wheelchair-rage, could it not?
I suppose there has been a major drop-out of readers now. Who wants to get ahead that far?
Please, don’t get impatient. Just hang in here for another eighty or so of words, when at age eighty, we are almost there, indeed, we have arrived. How did we fare? It is time now to have one more go at something, perhaps golf for the very fit or, dread the thought, bowling with cricket gear all in pristine white and with men wearing neatly pressed pantaloons but suspiciously bulging when bending to bowl!
Once more, we listen hear and hum the forlorn ‘Le piano du Pauvre’.
I am nothing
I exist
Only in the generous eyes of others
Somehow, with The Train to Rookwood now at station, we have so far stumbled, bumbled but stoutly plotted on. Time has finally arrived, with casket to carriage, no time for regret.
Death
Inaccessible
Even to memory
Appears and goes away
With a scull
For a nod
The Train to Rookwood.
Poems by friend Bernard Durrant.
Going down on Elektra and Downlights
05 Saturday Feb 2011
Posted in Gerard Oosterman
Oh, Elektra you fair damsel in distress, whereto my ohms and amps I go?
Is my plight with your volts forever to stay my watt and foe?
After the herculean task of moving from farm to town-house twice within 6 months, we have now finally unpacked and are settled in a new town-house not far from shops, railway-station and cinema.
All the ceilings have down-lights. They are all the rage now and are 12 volt halogen powered. The reduction from 240 volts to 12 volts gets done by an equal portion of increase in heat. There is nothing like Einstein’s theory of relativity being proven. While we live now in a new dwelling-town-house and the roof is insulated by a thermal blanket, we thought of insulating the ceilings as well. There is nothing like feeling snug and warm in winter and cool during heat. We feel, like so many, that our ecological footprint ought to be kept as modest as possible without compromising in comfort.
When the insulating expert quoted us, he explained that every one of those down-lights would have to be covered up, as well as each accompanying transformer, and kept away from those fire resistant polyester insulating batts, the argument knocked me for six. Those down-lights can achieve a temperature of over 370 Celsius, he enthused. Yes, he continued “they are a bit like having toasters in your ceilings”.
Even though the down-lights are twelve volts they still burn 50 watts each and another 10 watts for each transformer. This is a very expensive way to light up your house.
“Heaps of houses have burned down, especially after the covering up by heat resistant thermal batts.” The insulating man was rocking on his heels now, not unlike the Shires weed inspector triumphantly spotting a nasty Paterson’s curse back on the farm. I got really warmed up to the subject now.
Needless to say, we decided to install the insulation but only after covering those hotwired halogen down lights with special covers to which the insulating batts can be snugged-up to. The next step will be to replace all the halogen down- lights with fluorescent down- lights, doing away with the danger all together and catching two flies in one swat, ‘lowering heat and danger and being friendlier to the environment with less coal fired use of electricity. Save on electricity bills.
We have an amazing 32 of these halogen 370celcius heat giving down-lights in our modestly sized town house, including 12 of these in our lounge cum dining-kitchen area alone. We have 2 of those in the fume extractor above the gas stove, fatally focussed on the fried bacon and eggs. Can you believe it? The extractor catches the fat, ideal to burn the house down while cooking chips!
Have a break with this, Una Furtiva Lagrima; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Funp7JTWp2A
Needless to say, after our discovery of all those potential fire bugs cum-toasters hidden in our ceilings we hardly turn them on now and will get them replaced pronto, at least as soon as the electrician will spare the time. In the meantime we have plugged in reading lights and creep around with torches. You would have to be mad using those fire bugs of lights. Just imagine after a night of celebrating with a particular nice bottle of Shiraz, falling asleep with the down-lights sizzling away above the marital bed’s ceiling?
Is this another one of those ‘asbestos’ like dramas ready to blow up in the future? Tens of thousands of homes have those dangerous lights and tens of thousands more will no doubt be built in the future. How on earth was this form of lighting ever allowed to happen? How did this pass the building regulations? The resulting fires after the government subsidized insulation schemes are partly or perhaps mainly to blame on those 370 C heat giving concealed fire hazards inside ceiling cavities. This might well have been avoided if those lights would never have been approved in the first place.
But, there is more.
Another amazing bit of Aussi architecture is those much-loved black roofs. . Has anyone ever measured the difference in temperature between black and light coloured surfaces exposed to sun and light? Black roof surfaces together with those 370celsius down-lights would have to create the most perfect combustible area between ceiling and roof imaginable. We are supposed to clear debris around the house, rake leaves, clean gutters during the bush fire period but it might be even more prudent to look at those dodgy lights. Of course, anyone ever having ventured through a manhole into the roof would have noticed a possible built up of debris, dry leaves, old storage of papers, rats nests etc. I shudder to think of the nightmare what the halogen light in contact with that debris could result in
It is easy to blame the insulating contractors, but there is something fishy here. We love to rely on an economy that includes our love of home ownership and home building. Nothing must stand in its way. I suspect that the need to keep propping up housing industry might include a rather lax ‘laissez faire’ attitude to a whole host of regulations. One of them might be allowing housing to be built badly insulated in the first place, with black roofs and those potential halogen furnaces. No matter how you look at it. To have anything fastened onto a ceiling capable of such enormous heat is stupid and very dangerous.
It’s not hard to find the evidence of the danger of halogen down-lights:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/07/21/1184560109174.html
In Victoria there were 57 house fires caused by halogen down lights in 18 months. The fire begins in the roof as the insulation is ignited by the 300 plus degrees Celsius temperatures produced by the light fitting. As the fire is in the roof it often goes undetected by smoke alarms, and residents can be unaware of the fire until it crashes through the roof.
Unless tougher regulations on the use and installation of halogen down lights are introduced, it is only a matter of time before someone is killed; the Metropolitan Fire brigade has told The Sunday Age. Two young children almost died in separate blazes when roofs crashed onto their beds while they were sleeping, brigade investigation and analysis unit officer Rod East said.
Strange doings about Electra.
04 Friday Feb 2011
Posted in Gerard Oosterman
O Electra, daughter of Agamemnon, to thy rustic cot I come!
for a messenger hath arrived, a highlander from Bowral, one who gets milked by the complexities of modern life, not least by Elektra the thief of my delecta electra milk, announcing that many companies now lurk amongst nubile dark skinned Amazonians from Lesbos, (even with both still intact). Who knock on my temple’s Corinthian plywood door to change elektrikity accounts.
Seriously, what the f#%ck is happening with getting door knocks to change over my power accounts? Doesn’t all electricity flow through the same cables and power poles? So what’s this with Energy Australia, AGL, Red Energy et all, all knocking and trying to sweet talk me into changing my account. They come resplendent with charts and kilowatts savings on this and that, promise free channel TV. I always thought everyone pays the same for electricty usage.
In my earlier days, electricity and phone were all supplied and all paid for by usage. Are we to be forever to be pursued by dodgy merchants? How on earth is it possible to now, at my latter years, to worry about competing elektrasity prices and kilowatts?
Answers bitte!
Vale Maria Schneider
04 Friday Feb 2011
Posted in Uncategorized
Last Tango actress Maria Schneider dies at 58.
The Last Tango in Paris was one the best films ever made. Do they still make films of that calibre?
The revenge of the Scottish Lawnmower Man
01 Tuesday Feb 2011
Posted in Gerard Oosterman
The revenge of a lawnmower man.
Where we live gardens are of the most importance. Even the name of ‘Southern-Highlands’ seems to evoke gardens. Possibly gardens from Scotland. Indeed, there is a yearly event here whereby the ruddy Scots and their descendents celebrate a festival. Many then wear kilts and play bagpipes. There are also shops that sell stuff related to far away Highlands.
There are items reminiscing of all things England as well. Lots of those interior shops with knots of lavender flowers, lavender sachets, lavender soap, lavender curtains, lavender make up, posies of Queen Anne lace with Babies Breath. All artificial of course but looking real enough for me to touch them, just to make sure. There are endless wreaths which makes me wonder if wreaths serve other celebrations apart from funerals? Some of those are made from twigs cleverly intertwined and very bleached looking. I believe people hang those at the back of bedroom doors. Perhaps a reminder that the party doesn’t go on forever! “Stop mucking around and go to sleep,” the wreath seems to be saying late at night, just when hubby might get a late twinge.
As always there are exceptions to those lush gardens. I noticed an exception on my twice daily walk around the block with Milo. There is one 1950’s free standing solid brick house with just a lawn. Just a lawn and nothing else, no trees, do shrubs, but not a blade of grass out of place, and at dusk the house in totally darkness from the outside. Not even light escaping underneath the front door nor a shimmer through the blinds and curtains. The whole aura of that house is one of ‘spick and span.’
Yet, I know it is occupied. The lawn gets mowed every few days. A solid ruddy looking man in short shorts and with a sloppy hat pushes a lawnmower. He pushes as if his very life depends on it. He greets me with a nod, so there is an ongoing form of communication and I am hoping I’ll pass him just when the mower has run out of petrol or when he is just finished to try and get a bit of his story. I have also noticed in my much earlier Revesby days, that there are gardens that are well kept but the ‘well kept of it’ is just the lawn. There were no trees, no shrubs, no flowers, just a beaten down lawn.
It’s not just the well kept lawn but also the well kept concrete footpaths. The grass is cut to the path with some tool called an edger that cuts through the grass, roots and all and give the edges an almost crew-cut appearance, the concrete path being the ears whereby the grass has been trimmed around.
I can understand an overgrown garden with neglect clearly the culprit. What I find harder to reconcile is that some go through extremes to not have anything growing but also to beat down the growing grass so relentlessly. Is it some kind of revenge? Is it a revenge of the Scot?
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 