A normal day.

The tuna dish.

My fishes died yesterday! I was foolish to have left the care of my aquarium to a neighbour up the road. We were going camping. All this back in the eighties or so. She, the friendly neighbour, in her way thought it best to feed them in one hit as she too planned to go away but did not tell us that. What made it worse was that the aquarium held salt water tropical fish with life coral. It held 500 litres of ocean water with some beautiful and very expensive fish. (notice ‘fish’ as the plural)

Too much food for fish means that the water will go off, bacteria will soak up all oxygen and the fish will simply drown and die. I had planned to go back to Sydney half way through our camping holiday to check on my fish. The devastation after arrival came clear within seconds. There was by beloved Emperor floating sideways gasping for air with two blue Damsels as dead as could be. The air pump was going flat tack but with some fish rotting as well, it was an impossible and unfair battle. I knew what to do.

I transferred the still live fish into a plastic garbage container with fresh lot of sea water which I obtained down the hill of our street direct from the harbour, and transferred the air pump to aerate the water nonstop. I emptied the aquarium of the putrid water and buried the dead fish below the paper bark tree in the court yard… A sad day! I saved some fish and after clean sea water was put in the aquarium transferred the live fishes* back into their own home again. Fish are very intelligent and they knew I was in the room and would became agitated, wanting to be fed. I read that an aquarium holder of octopuses’ allowed his pets to go and wander around the house at night before going back into the water.

When I read how reefs are being plundered by money hungry tropical reef fish and aquarium traders, I stopped having them and now just have our JRT ‘Milo’. Even in the dog world there are stories doing the rounds of ‘puppy farming’. It just is never ending how so much is reduced to money. Anyway, Milo is just a street dog without pedigree and was sold by a very caring dog loving family.

I now have to explain the heading of ‘loaves’.

During the last war and my persistent memories of that period so early on I was given a loaf of dark bread by a German soldier billeted below street level in the cellars of our street. It was just a few weeks before it would all end in the capitulation of all German troops. He must have felt pity. It was when hunger stalked the street of Rotterdam and thousands were starting to die of starvation. You can imagine my mother’s joy of having a loaf of bread. It came from the enemy. A kind enemy.

I have never forgotten.

We all have to do this. Fill up the car’s fuel tank at the petrol station. With the price of oil dropping by about twenty percent we would expect a similar drop in petrol. Not so, it has dropped, but not by as much as the Brent Crude oil price. It figures. The companies have to make up for the lower price by holding onto the higher price paid at the bowser for their dear life or dear profit. ‘Our Dear Brent Crude give us our daily Bollinger Oh la la French Champers;

The oil devout execs must be praying, eyes slanted piously upwards.

I can’t think of anything less inspiring than poking the fuel hose through the inlet opening of the fuel tank. In my car it has a spring loaded cover under which is a black cap with below it a dire warning ‘Diesel.’ It is about as far as my reading goes. Just one word, ‘Diesel’. However on the bowser itself are several items that one can read. ‘Please pay before moving car’ is one sentence, but there is more. Several options and grades of fuels with their different prices to study, but,… there is more, much more still. ‘Spend another five dollars you get another 4c off’ it states frankly but insistently.

Those words include vivid images of an ice cream called ‘Gay-Time’ and a slanting open soft drink bottle. (usually a 600 ml Coke bottle). The slant and the gushing out of the brown liquid is to invoke a kind of latent or hidden thirst in the petrol purchaser, almost imagining the fluid going down the throat and giving the two second joy as a decoy for true happiness. That’s what those images promise, true satisfaction of fake thirst sated and a more happy, happy feeling.

The problem is that once the hose is in the aperture one just has to watch the bowser tick over. This is when an overwhelming ennui takes over. I am desperate for a diversion, any diversion away from the maddening ticking over of the bowser. But I get drawn in each time. It is an addiction. I don’t want to miss out on the exact Fifty dollar amount that I always use as a limit and aim by the cent to achieve this. Don’t ask where this originates from. Perhaps the bombing of Rotterdam or maybe the Kipfler potato.

It is a small ambition, I know, but heaven help me out of this dreadful concentration of such a stupefying event. As I get nearer the fifty dollar mark my concentration reaches fever pitch. I slowly, cent by cent increments crawl towards the forty nine dollars eighty eight cents and then take a breather, surveying the situation calmly, collect my thoughts and try not to look down the floral blouse of the lady next to me, also bending and busy with bowser. I ignore the distraction and bravely continue on till the Fifty dollar is reached, right on the dot. Such triumph!

I walk to the garage and hand over my previously extracted fifty dollar note that I have kept in my closed fist just for that purpose. ‘Receipt?’ ‘No thanks.’ I walk out, relieved it is over.

And that’s that.

PS: The pictures are mine and totally unrelated to the article.

Tags: Bollinger, Brent oil, Coke, Diesel, Gay time

I was abused from an early age by having to eat lumpy porridge. It has left its mark and no psychologist or therapist has given me any insight into how this continues to shape me into the present dysfunctional personae, still grappling with life so fraught with fits of uncertainty as to its real meaning or purpose.(Phew)

The weeks just prior and after the end of WW 2, Holland was on its knees. Oats, Biscuits and Spam was fought over by people running towards the US, Canadian and English Lancaster bombers overhead, dropping food parcels. I remember my dad running on a field towards one and bringing home a huge metal box with rock hard but very nutritious English biscuits. The sky was dark with food being parachuted , raining down on Rotterdam. How glorious a liberation it was! Dancing in the streets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_Manna_and_Chowhound

Despite the biscuits saving us from starvation, I still remember being very churlish about having to eat porridge with lumps and preferred the biscuits soaked in water. It was years later, when ‘easy oats’ came into being that could be cooked with milk without resulting in uneatable lumps. The porridge cooked by my mum then became silky smooth and with the Golden Syrup was delicious, a real delectable food. Even so, I have hardly touched porridge ever since. The lumps left their mark. That’s what a war does to you.

Walking around, pondering and practising a pensive thought or two is now a well earned pastime in advancing years together with offering adages and words probably so wasted on the much better informed. Together with Helvi and Milo, I traipse through our town forever hoping to find solutions to life and purpose. How this can be found by walking with a dog, hand-scooping his toilet habits in plastic bags, and drinking a latte in between is questionable but probably as good as studying Plato or taking Prozac.

But going back to lumpy porridge and hunger, we are surprised how much food can now be found just on the streets and parks. A half eaten hamburger here, bags of chips there. I sometimes, much to the horror of Helvi, lift a lid on public rubbish bins to see what has been discarded, much the same as I am curious about peoples washings on the line. Don’t ask, why? There is no hope. There is so much that can be gleaned from washing lines. Is the husband an office worker or tradesman? Are there children? How lithe and slim (or large) are they? What are the favourite colours etc. (Even that little joy is getting less with so many now lazy and using a cloth-drier).

But for discarded food…Only last week an entire ‘meat lover’s’ pizza in its specially designed aerated box was thrown out in the bin. Half full drink bottles, chips, steaks, even calamari rings, all gets thrown out.

It is nice to know that if ever I became destitute and homeless, food will not be a problem. I could probably make a living as well from sitting near a supermarket with Milo at my side, a cap with a few coins next to him and holding up a sign. “Help, I have still not found the purpose of life.”

There is hope where there is life!