Category Archives: Gerard Oosterman

Milo’s flying efforts and his nemesis, the Magpies

29 Thursday Sep 2011

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Over the last few months our Jack Russell ‘Milo’ has watched, with increased consternation and despair, a pair of magpies roosting high above him. Milo doesn’t have enemies except for birds. We think it is a form of jealousy. Milo doesn’t know he will never fly. Back on the farm we first noticed Milo’s efforts in trying to fly. He would spot birds perched high above him in trees. His flying trials were especially directed at cockatoos, and especially towards the silver crested ones.

They would soon learn his attempts were hopelessly and spectacularly futile and openly laughed at him, sometimes joined by a sole kookaburra. Poor Milo would only increase his flying efforts, jump up as high as possible, surprisingly high we thought. We often observed that when he jumped up very high that he seemed, just for a split second, to levitate, suspended momentarily in mid-air before falling back to earth.

When he spotted us watching him he would bravely and doggedly, and somewhat pathetically, increase his efforts.  It was a bit cruel and we refrained from openly laughing at him, and indeed would withdraw behind the window inside our farm.  This would allow him some privacy and we knew he would always finally come home inside where he would slink to his beloved Afghan carpeted covered cushion, sulk a bit (but not for long), we would then give him some defrosted chicken necks as a form of consolation.  He might perhaps have felt, by chewing hard on those bird necks, some satisfaction of having conquered something with wings. (But alas, never through flight.)

Here at our new address the magpies really laid it on thick, swooping down on Milo making snapping sounds. They were protecting their eggs. To add injury to insult, they would cunningly wait for Milo to be inside (sulking), sweep down and steal his crunchy nibbles, his own food. Milo, behind the glass door, would fly into a rage, bark madly while looking at us, pleading to slide the door open, let him try and kill the black and white thief. The beady magpie eyes, cunningly staring back at Milo, knowing full well he was safe.

The story has a happy ending, at least for Milo. He got his comeuppance, or rather the magpies did. The tree that the magpies had their home in and where they had roosted so successfully a new brood of future Milo tormentors in was getting dangerously tall and big.  “It is not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’ it will fall down and crush someone’s home, no matter what direction it will fall”, the Body Corporate stated solemnly at its yearly meeting.  “This tree must go, and we already have a quote from the experts, including the grinding down of the stump and removal of all the branches and trunk through a large chipper”. Approval was overwhelming.

The day arrived when the team arrived with spiked boots. Milo, this time was just happy to watch from a safe distance. Limb by limb the tree was denuded and higher and higher the cutter climbed assisted by a winch and a dangling chain saw. The magpies were circling anxiously including the young ones. Finally, with Milo watching keenly, the birds gave up and all flew to a tree in the next allotment. We watched Milo’s triumph. He still can’t fly. Something we are careful never to point out.

 We gave him an extra chicken neck!

Rosaria from Gozo ( A descendant from Hebron)

12 Monday Sep 2011

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With the pulling on of clothes and winching up of anchor, the voyage to Messina continued on. The morning was calm and the sun just skimming over the surface. It would be a perfect day. After just a few hours they arrived and were picked up by the gallery owner whom they had phoned just prior to arrival. Their boat was berthed next to a flotilla of much larger and more luxurious vessels. The power was connected to the boat and fridge and batteries re-charged.

 Rosaria’s dolls were taken into the boot of the gallery owner’s car which then drove to a cafe for late breakfast and a coffee. To their surprise they were introduced to Sir Frank Bovims and his wife Wendy at the cafe. Wendy had a strong English accent but Frank had a thick middle European accent which Rosaria recognized from the many tourists from central Europe visiting Malta with many filtering over to her island of Gozo. Some of those from Slovakia, Slovenia and Chechnya had accents very similar to Sir Frank.

 Many seemed to have a fondness for nude bathing, which on Gozo was accepted in some hidden coves facing the Mediterranean. The cultural fondness by many Europeans to go naked when swimming or sunbaking wasn’t necessarily based on anything deliberately flaunting a kind of sexual naughtiness, but more based on taking clothes off and then putting them back on afterwards as a more practical solution than putting on swimming gear.

 Of course, many from mainland Malta, especially English tourists would be seen motoring past those nudist coves hoping for a glance at a pubic bush of which many amongst the “Mittel Europa Menschen” were well endowed and renowned for. For some reason, the English fondness for perving on huge pubes seemed to go hand in hand with the consumption of vast quantities of beer of which the empty cans floated on-shore.

One wondered if those pubic triangles could even be male or female discernable when viewed from some distance away. Perhaps the Brit’s’ lives were so dull, that anything with hair on it would make them break out in riotous behaviour, especially when away from their much loved ‘privacy’ of their homes. Many of the English male tourists had shaven heads, wore nose rings and, according to their blue arm and leg markings, could possibly have spent more time in tattoo dens than at schools.

The nudists would first clear the sandy coves of those beer cans and bottles, a kind of symbiosis in tourism whereby Malta encouraged the tourists to come and spend their money which in turn made other tourists clean their much loved Maltese environment of the detritus caused by that same tourism.

After the introduction at the Sicilian cafe to Sir Frank and Lady Wendy Bovims, it turned out that Wendy had spent many years living in Australia. She knew about Rockdale, in fact she used to go to clubs and play the pokies. This was before she met Frank Bovims. The subject of Australia certainly was an ice-breaker and the little group soon got on very well. It turned out they had flown to Sicily the night before and had chartered their own plane. The Bovims were rumoured to be very well off. He had spent his life building up a world- wide conglomerate of shipping and construction businesses which were floated on the UK stock-market many years ago. Recently there had been a bitter struggle between Sir Frank’s company and a hostile takeover by one of Australia’s largest construction companies. The final offer for the take-over was just too much to resist and Frank could not but recommend the take-over to his loyal shareholders by the Australian company.

All this Wendy explained smilingly to Rosaria and Joe. Rosaria’s English was very good she had gone through high school and had studied art and design at Malta’s university, while Joe’s English was a bit more a result of having taken foreign tourists around on fishing expeditions. Even so, he got most of the gist of the conversation which meandered between Australia, art, and central Europe. Wendy explained that she only recently married Frank. They had been going together for some years. His first wife had recently died.

Rosaria was curious about the title ‘Sir and Lady’. Wendy explained that like so many descendants of Hebron who had the misfortune to live in Europe during Hitler’s time, teen-age Frank and his parents’ family were simply rounded up and after a while told to undress, given a piece of soap and were walked towards the doors of hell. Frank, being a strong teenage boy, was spared, survived and after the war went back to Brno’s university. The communist takeover with the denouncement of anything ‘bourgeois’, Frank was again imprisoned and made to work in uranium mines. After gaining a pardon on Stalin’s birthday he was given the choice to work in construction or mining. When, for the third time another oppressive regime and the Russian tanks rolled into Prague, Frank and his wife had enough, fled with one suitcase to England to join their son who was studying at Oxford University.

Frank resumed his career in construction and one of his biggest jobs was the construction of The Canary Wharf and many even other large construction jobs in the Middle East, including the PETRONAS Towers in Kuala Lumpur, a huge shopping complex under the Red Square in Moscow. He was duly awarded the Queen’s Award for Exports. He had also joined the Board of a shipping line P&O. Wendy seemed to know so much.

Frank, in the meantime seemed more interested in Joe and his fishing boat, wanted to know how he was going and how he sold the fish. Did the fish get sold through a Co-Op or through private marketing? Joe told him that on a good day he would catch enough to see him out for the rest of the week. He would then take tourists around on fishing expeditions and that’s how he managed to learn his English. Frank seemed genuinely impressed.

Rosaria was agog, nothing whatsoever had prepared her to sit with Wendy and Frank at a cafe in Messina not really knowing much about the couple who might buy her dolls with her lace. What, she wondered, had destined her to meet up with such an extraordinary couple, Sir Frank and Lady Wendy?

The Cost of Obstinacy

21 Sunday Aug 2011

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The treasury informs us that 2.4 billion has been spent on detaining boat people since 2000. This has worked out at $100.000, — per boat people. I wonder how long this stupid waste of money will be allowed to continue. The tide in favour of off shore detention has now been shrinking, and ever so slowly there now appears the realisation, that, if not from an humanitarian point, but from a financial point of view, we might be better off to swallow our pride or blind obstinacy and simply do what the rest of the world has been doing for many years, dealing with a difficult problem that presents itself directly on most of their doorsteps on a never ending and daily basis.

After all, not many countries have the luxury of spare and submissive countries or excised islands close by where refugees can be send to and let to slowly languish into a trickle while getting their status processed.  In the meantime, as we get pointed out daily, concerns about their treatment, resulting in hundreds of cases of self harm and mental break-downs, riots and AFP involvements is ringing alarm bells worldwide especially amongst the UNHCR. No matter what we do to try and repel the boat people, they will undertake those dangerous voyages, no matter what we try to discourage them or brutalize them. They have nothing to lose.

So what is that fear that Australia has about dealing with boatpeople that, no matter what, will continue to arrive at our doorstep? Are they armed or pose threats? Do they come with murderous intent, rape and pillage? The most and not unreasonable assumption is, that many more will arrive, if we let our guard down. That might well be true. So what?  Australia happily takes in more than a hundred thousand migrants in a year. Suppose, if a thousand boatpeople a week arrive on our shores a week. What is the problem with that?

Surely, by reducing our normal intake of migrants by fifty thousand would still not increase the overall number. Consider that the reduction of fifty thousand migrants from ‘normal’ channels are those that are probably with much less urgent needs to come here, then why not kill 2 birds with one stone. Consider how our image would change overnight?

 Instead of being looked upon by many with the horrors piped out on TV’s world- wide, first with The Tampa and then the terrible sights of roof-top refugees, burning and self harming, those terrible drowning at Christmas Island. Sometimes, the footage resembles something close to the torture on Guantanamo Bay where hundreds are also still languishing after many years.

The advantage of age is the luxury of hindsight. I remember still a similar fear of refugees and new-comers in the late fifties and sixties. The ‘reffos’ and Italians and Greeks were knife pullers and worse, garlic eaters. They would catch trains or buses while speaking strange languages. That fear for Southern Europeans later changed into a fear for the boat-people from Vietnam. They would bring exotic diseases and wore funny hats.

All of those fears were unfounded. Can you imagine Australia without the huge benefits from all those brave enough to have had the guts to come here? We would all still be slurping milk-shakes, eating meat pies with lamingtons in hand, and thronging around the 6’o’clock ‘time-out gentlemen’ pubs. The Sundays, they were deadly quiet with just the stray dogs about, scratching their fleas at deserted suburban rail-stations.

We now again still seem to harbour those fears for the Afghans, Burmese or Iraqis, again based on fried air, nothing much more.

What is that fear and why do we allow fear to compete so sadly with compassion?

Come on Aussies. Open your hearts. Take the risk and deal with those unfortunate boat-people arrivals as best as we can. Deal with the problem with honesty and do it in the country where they wanted to come to, Australia. Show the world we care and have compassion. We are the largest and least densely population country in the world. Not just a country but a complete continent.  Let’s also have the largest hearts.

Rosaria from Gozo ( Including a romantic night on the High Seas)

20 Saturday Aug 2011

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Rosaria had finished the exquisite lace on the four porcelain dolls and started to prepare herself for the boat trip to Messina. Once more she overlooked her art works which she had spread along the front of her house, carefully propped up against the facade of those ancient rocks. The lace had an even more intricate pattern than ever before and she was very happy; felt that each one of those dolls was better than the previous ones. She didn’t quite know how that happened except that she felt free to just follow her instincts. Her nature was loath to repeat things and wanted always to feel inspired by something new and different. Not that anything was ever deliberately different or showy. The colourful garments and the lace on top complimented each other. For her each work was a kind of playing and the dolls themselves almost telling her how to move those bobbins. The resulting works were art by accident more than by a deliberate imposition. In any case, Rosario was never worried about this. She just made beautiful lace.

The trips to Sicily were most times done by ferry but Joe decided to just borrow a bigger boat. It was much bigger, had a galley, separate rooms with bedding and all the comforts of a luxury cruiser, even had navigation gadgets that he never sat eyes on before. Rosaria and Joe would surprise their aunt Maria asking her to join them as well. It would be the last trip before the baby was born and aunt was always a joy to be with either on terra firma or at sea. She had kept up her singing voice and often could be heard in the evening when the sultry evening beckoned everyone to be outside. The smell of cooking wafting throughout Gozo with the aroma of lamb and fish, all basted, cooked and infused with rosemary as well. The sun was like a fiery orange ball, sinking in the sea late in the evening with laughter and music slowly fading at last. Gozo slept well during those nights.

If only the Azzopardi family could see it all again. That was not possible. They were truly and well entrenched, and very happily, in the delights of the life style of Rockdale and its many possibilities of improvements. All thanks to Halal and the magic of so many meat solutions.

The porcelain dolls were woken up early when Rosaria packed them in wood shavings and into sturdy carton boxes. Joe reckons the trip would take about 5 hours and had already loaded enough diesel fuel for the return trip. He had also packed enough food, almost as if Messina was getting a feed from Malta now. Sharing of food was of course reciprocal no matter where one went in the Mediterranean. At times, almost a contest who could outdo each other with the giving of meals. Rosaria’s stuffed olives eagerly expected at the gallery where most of the dolls were being exhibited and sold.

A letter was received the previous week in which the gallery had received an order for her dolls from someone from England. His name was Frank Bovims and his wife Wendy, who had their own gallery in London, would take care of the dolls if they were sold. Amazingly it seemed that the dolls had practically sold already. Joe was pleased that his wife was getting such a name for herself. She was the best in more ways than one.

He helped her aboard. While she jumped from the plank she had tucked her skirt in between her legs exposing her shapely thighs. He still fancied throwing a bold peak at her sturdy legs and she knew his way, looked up and smiled back. The still fancying of each other was something they did not take too much for granted. They left late in the afternoon, and at dusk almost halfway, they dropped anchor. Aunt Maria didn’t disappoint, she sang beautiful with the swell of the sea breathing as if pregnant as well. Joe and Rosaria were soon in a deep slumber but not before there had been some hugging and tugging at each other with a loving embrace.

Even in Gozo modern times had arrived. Skype was not just confined to Rosaria and family. Young people would now also be seen with heads bowed down onto a small object with tiny buttons and shiny screens. The pushing of those buttons was often seen as a form of voodoo by some elders, whose comprehension did not really include communicating in such silence. There you go though; this is the way of an even braver world. It even had spread its wings to lovely Gozo.

 

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Rosaria from Gozo ( Azzopardi’s Halal approved sausages)

06 Saturday Aug 2011

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Rosaria from Gozo ( Azzopardi’s Halal approved sausages)

July 29, 2011 by gerard oosterman

The sausages were flying out of Azzopardi’s Meat Solutions shop at Australia’s Rockdale Shopping Emporium. Ever since his brilliant flash of insight to use chopped up rosemary, a touch of hot chilli with the mince, together with the stamp of Halal, his turnover doubled. He cleverly managed attracting the many Moslims in the area into buying his Meat Solutions.
 
He now had a separate Halal division whereby for just 50cents a kilo more those sausages turned into Halal blessed snags. The ingredients were the same and Joe reckoned that dead sheep don’t talk too much about Islam, let alone Halal. He assuaged his conscience by a self administered reassurance of being exceptionally well endowed with sound business acumen. Once inside the mouth, Halal killed or not, his sausages would taste succulent and lovely anyway. 

A further improvement, aided by his ever accelerating ‘business acumen’ was for his wife to sometimes wear a headscarf when helping out during busy times. This scarf wasn’t necessarily a sign of belonging to the faith of Islam. At least it was a hint. People were free to interpret it the way they wanted to. It could do no harm. In fact, the opposite, it did no harm, but, this little item of a scarf could well add to the ‘bottom line’. Money kept rolling in. The ‘bottom line’ is what this proud butcher now frequently used. What is your bottom line? He was forever asking this lately especially at social events such as at sausage sizzles or at the local club?

Whenever a subject turned towards his religion he would smartly have some ‘bottom liners’ ready to steer things to the safety of money-talk and the making of it. This was much more important.

He sometimes laid awake tossing and turning, his conscience nagging him somewhat. Was dishonesty creeping up, gaining the upper hand? He turned around, back to back to his wife in their new King size bed with the inbuilt stereo. They hadn’t listened to much music lately, too busy. What can one do? He wanted to be successful and that is what the scarf and Halal was providing him and his family. Hzanna had queried him on her having to wear a scarf in his shop. She knew her canny husband. She wondered how she could possibly explain this in the next Skype episode with her sister Rosaria.

Of course, years ago, Maltese women wore scarfs going to their Sunday church as well. She might have to explain that Halal and Islam were very close to Catholicism and that the scarf was for hygiene as well as respect for customers. It was all a bit complicated. She felt like getting up; take a long shower with a good scrubbing down. Was she feeling a bit sullied by the infusion of not only rosemary into the Halal sausages but also by wearing a scarf with such dubious intentions?

They had joined the local RSL club some weeks ago and just before her birthday she received a very considerate ‘congratulations’ but also an offer of special deals including the dinner for two for the price of one. They often had special deals on lunches and wine. The clatter and jingling of poker machines were just next to the Restaurant. This was convenient for those wanting to glaze the evening with a chance to even make some money and to have a play on the pokies, especially when a dinner just cost half. The club had shown great insight and good planning in placing the machines just next to the diners.

It was the Friday and her birthday when they invited some of their friends to go and celebrate at the Rockdale RSL. That day Hzanna had been to her health and beauty trainer for a hot stone treatment. Now that the meat solution shop was doing so well, husband had been very generous in allowing a few little luxuries. They denied much when the children were growing up and just lived frugally, eating most of the meat that had dated somewhat and could no longer be used in the sausages. Not even the Halal ones. One had standards to uphold and the inspectors of butcher-shops were especially trained to inspect suspect dark skinned pretend butchers trying to muscle into the Rockdale precinct. Mr Azzopardi was too much of a conscientious and trained butcher to risk being seen in the category of dodgy meat traders. There were certain standards to uphold!

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Orang-utans and Boatpeople

02 Tuesday Aug 2011

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Orang_utan

Orang-utans and boat people. 

Does anyone see the irony of the complaints by Malaysians about Australia’s treatment of Orang-utans at Melbourne zoo and the habit of caning people in Malaysia, or even more relevant, the treatment of our boat people in detention?

The latest news tells that a representative of a Malaysian Palm oil counsel had made complaints about the Orang-utans’ treatment at a Melbourne zoo. They were horrified about the Orang-utans being somewhat cold. They had heard sounds of sad crying and signals of distress from the animals. The Orang-utans were shivering and a picture was even shown of one of them carrying a coat. Melbourne Zoo retaliated and stated that the outside and inside temperature in their environments was kept at a cosy constant 20celsius. “They are the happiest Orang-utans in the world,” they replied. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-01/orang-utans/2819534

At the same time, we are all being reassured that the latest boat arrivals to Australia that will be sent back to Malaysia will not be caned. We also are now being told on the news that those unwilling to board the plane back to Malaysia might be forced to do so with full authority given to the Federal Police to use whatever they can muster for the boat people to comply. There are lawyers busy on a formal protest about the possible use of force on people already traumatised.
Are we getting care for Orang-utans and people somewhat mixed up or confused? If the Orang-utans are the ‘happiest’ in the world, I wonder about the level of ‘happiness’ of boat people being returned to Malaysia.

The federal police have been given ‘carte blanche’ by our PM Julia Gillard to ensure the boatpeople would board the plane back to Malaysia. This, we were assured might involve whatever the federal police have at their disposal. This, it was suggested, could well include the use of ‘potential lethal force’ with no ‘blanket exemptions’ even for unaccompanied children. This lethal force has been used on Christmas Island already. We are not shy from using lethal force when it comes to boat people. Bean bag bullets fired from shotguns, batons, tear gas, capsicum spray, handcuffs, the whole arsenal at the Feds disposal has been used to force compliance on more than just one occasions. So far our treatment of boatpeople and refugees is not showing the world much about our compassion towards the less fortunate.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-01/gillard-asylum-seekers-malaysia/2819786

While we don’t cane people in Australia, we are not far from it, edging inexorably closer. Not the cane, instead the possible use of electric Tasers or cattle prods instead. It could be debated whether being stunned by a Taser or bean bag bullet is better or worse than a caning. The concern by the Malaysians about treatment of Orang-utans in Melbourne could perhaps be best answered by giving a Malaysian delegation a grand tour of our own Australian refugee camps in isolated Australia’s outback and on Christmas Island. Let’s show them how we do it so much better, so much more humane!

I am not sure about the percentage of self harm by our zoo inhabitants including the alleged shivering Orang-utans but I bet it is a lot less that amongst our own boat people locked up for long periods, living in uncertainty, in isolation, behind gates, fences and barbed wire. The ombudsman had all the figures, mind numbing it was.
Was it fifty a day, twenty or was it a hundred a month or just a couple of real or attempted hangings daily? Did it include lip sewing, roof jumping, wrists slashings and hunger strikes? Razors for shaving are taken away after the shower. Just in case. All points of possible hanging are removed. Suicide has been made harder as well. It has not only become mind bogglingly numbing, it is now heart numbing as well. We just let it go on and we shut our hearts and prefer to focus on royal weddings or the passing of a bill in the US.

It’s getting harder and harder to push away images of the Holocaust whereby people were also traumatised and pushed onto transport by the use of force. Most countries are coping with refugees in the tens of thousands, some in the millions. Even overcrowded Malaysia is coping with over eighty thousand refugees registered with the UNHCR. We seem unable to just treat people like we do with the Orang-utans at Melbourne zoo. We are using the same Jack Boots methods that were so popular in dealing with another traumatised and defenceless people some seventy years ago.

One can just imagine within the next day or so, footage of boat people being herded by force into the plane. Journalists will have their cameras focussed and the world will again learn about us.
When did we lose our hearts?

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Profile of the Sociopath or of those with smooth faces,untouched by ‘living’.

28 Thursday Jul 2011

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  • The sociopath

  • Glibness and Superficial Charm
  • Manipulative and Conning
    They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
  • Grandiose Sense of Self
    Feels entitled to certain things as “their right.”
  • Pathological Lying
    Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.
  • Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
    A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
  • Shallow Emotions
    When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
  • Incapacity for Love
  • Need for Stimulation
    Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.
  • Callousness/Lack of Empathy
    Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others’ feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
  • Etc. This from Wiki
    .
  • Notice the smooth faces of those untouched by having ‘lived’. Compared with the man who confessed of being addicted to gambling, having been in jail at the latest Q&A. Come to think of it, does A Bolt also not have a smooth face, totally untouched by age or having lived?
    Hope he stays away from guns.

Rosario from Gozo (part 5)

24 Sunday Jul 2011

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Rosaria from Gozo (continued)

July 15, 2011 by gerard oosterman

Gozo

He was hardly home when Hzanna found her husband creeping along the walls of the brick veneer own home, holding a gadget that emitted a pulsing sound. When the pulsing stopped and made a continuous sound the ‘stud-finder’ had found a stud. It was marvellous. Home improvements technology at its best. In no time were the white shelving unwrapped from their plastic imprisonment and husband proceeded, with the help of the stud finder, to fasten the shelving onto the studs hidden behind the plaster walls. The shelving came with an Allen key, which Hzanna thought belonged to Allen. He explained this was not so. It was just the name of a small hexagonal tool that could drive screws and bolts &nuts to fasten different ‘home improvements’, he explained. Hzanna decided to memorise all those details to relate to Rosaria when next connected by Skype. You need a lot of patience and fortitude but after a while the mysteries of ‘life-style’ will become clearer she hoped.

Even so, when Rosaria send her the photos of the party at Gozo’s L-Ghadira beach, she suffered pangs of warm memories, not quite having faded out. The Malta memories were persistent, not easy to obliterate. The Rosaria olives with stuffing she remembered from all those years ago. The climb over the rocks. The washing and drying of clothes on those same rocks. The singing voice of Aunt Sophia she could still hear together with the peppers and chillies hanging from the doorways and fishing-boats coming at the harbour side. The salted anchovies’ bouquet still on her tongue. Rockdale is just as good she consoled herself, yet again. She knew that her husband was proud of his Azzopardi’s ‘Meat Solutions’ shop in Rockdale. It was doing well and money was rolling in.

Her daughter’s lack of suitable boyfriends was a niggling problem. She thought that perhaps she should give her the chance of finding someone back in Malta. But, she was now more Australian and hardly even spoke Maltese. Even so, it remained a worry. Hzanna was reflecting how things were different in Rockdale with frowns on her forehead. Malta was different as well. They don’t have Bunning’s improvements or modern brick veneer. Apart from her daughter’s problems with football loving and beer drinking boyfriends, Hzanna had noticed a change in her daughter’s facial features. Her lips were curled and becoming somewhat pouting. She overheard the word Botox and had read that some women thought it important to try and prevent growing older. There was a method of injecting a youth retaining substance now. This method would fill cracks and hollows and loose skin would be rejuvenated to its former unblemished glory. Why did she at twenty three already feel she needed to retain youth? Was her daughter not in the middle of ‘youth’? Perplexing problems reared its head.
Still, the shelving had been put in place and she finally had space to put the family photos including the full coloured one of Azzopardi’s Meat Solutions shopfront in Rockdale’s shopping Emporium.
*

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Rosaria from Gozo (Chapter4)

10 Sunday Jul 2011

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Azzopardi new bed

Hzanna Azzopardi in the meantime back in Rockdale was excited in anticipation of telling her sister Rosaria on Skype this coming morning about her latest home improvements. Before her husband’s departure to his own butcher shop in Rockdale’s Westfield’s Fantasiastic shopping Mall, she asked him to log on to Skype.

Her husband had started his butcher-shop some years ago and had recently changed its name from ‘Meat for YOU’, to ‘Azzopardi’s MEAT SOLUTIONS’. He thought that, due to the influx of many from the Middle East, an exotic name might add to many more commercial opportunities. He, very judicially, now also proudly displayed ‘Halal Compliant’ on his window. Law abiding, the Azzopardi family was indeed.

After the Skype was engaged Rosaria’s face appeared, looking all flushed and roseate from the family event at L-Ghadira beach. How are you? I am fine Hzanna replied, just as excited. We have just got some new furniture from Harvey Norman and next we will be looking for shelving at Bunning’s. After all the years of scrimping and saving for son and daughter, the Azzopardi couple thought it was time to splash out for themselves. A new lounge and King size bed, she explained. The bed was huge and had a stereo music unit built in the bed-head. Rosaria was somewhat rattled by all this good news from Australia.

 She was puzzled by Harvey Norman and Bunning. What were they and why a big bed? Was it to do with privacy or veneering? She understood that things were different in Rockdale. 

Why the stereo in the bed? Hzanna was a good singer. She remembered her sweet singing at the school in L-Ghadira before her leaving Gozo many years ago. Hzanna had take pictures of the new bed and also the furniture, e-mailed them all in colour. She was so proud of her new life and her husband with his own Meat Solution business. It would never have been possible in Malta. Besides, everyone in Malta was a butcher, and often a tailor as well or a barber.

Hzanna further enthused about Australia having many people who have a ‘lifestyle’. A lifestyle is what Bunning and Harvey Norman sell. That’s why many like Australia and want to live here. In Malta you just sit on wooden chairs and other crude hand-down heirlooms shared throughout all the families. Hzanna sounded a bit haughty now. Rosaria, smiled sweetly back but her forehead was showing a furrowed effort in getting to grips on Harvey Norman, King bed, Bunning’s and life-styling. It was a big task so soon after her family party on the beach. She could still hear Sophia’s singing and was not ready to comprehend ‘lifestyle’ as yet.

She understood that life is different elsewhere.

                                                                 *

Rosaria from Gozo (chapter3)

09 Saturday Jul 2011

Posted by in Gerard Oosterman

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There was going to be a getting together of Rosaria’s family at L-Ghadira. It was within walking distance of everyone. This little inlet always provided a cool breeze. Usually but not always, after enough wine, most would take a swim, frolic in the water or drink even more. Rosaria was excited. It would be a break for Joe. You can only do so much fishing. She had a goat killed and went to the market to get the largest green olives which she would stuff with her very famous and secret mixture. It would, as always be very spicy. Chilli certainly was one of the ingredients. The mixture of herbs and salty fish was another possibility. No one could outdo Rosaria when it came to stuffing olives. Whether it was the stuffed olives, the copious wine drinking or the grilled goat, everyone would end up enjoying a riotous getting together. The flute playing by Antonio, the singing voices of Maria and her mother Sophia would always bring out the tears as well as the impromptu dancing. 

On the day, a general sauntering towards this L-Ghadira inlet was seen to be taken place. Men with bundles of wood, women with baskets of food and the bloodied goat wrapped in hessian were descending towards the water’s edge which was surrounded by huge boulders as well as some small sandy beaches. Blankets and rugs were spread. The children were already swimming. Some arrived by small boats. As the day progressed, more and more arrived. A variety of tables were set up. Huge jars of Rosaria’s stuffed olives were displayed together with baskets of grapes, dates, lettuces, pickled onions, pickled fish, a variety of nuts and dozens of wine bottles. The wine was home- made, young and unlabelled, to be drunk with some urgency.  Then there were tables with the breads, stone ground flour dough bread, sour dough breads, black breads, olive breads. There were sweets, honey breads and stringy vermicelli baked sweets soaked for days in molasses. The children dipped into a large vessel of orange cordial and other soft drinks. Fires were lit. Kerosene lamps made ready for when evening would arrive. Musical notes and some singing were soon to be heard and cries of joy began to rent the balmy evening air. The women were dressed in flowing dresses, many showing sturdy calves with alluring hips and a generous softness higher-up. Their bodies were aglow with robust health which only generations living on diets of mainly fish could have brought about. Rosaria was starting to show her pregnancy adding to her sensuousness. A woman could not have been more alive.

L-Ghadira

The singing and flute playing had started and the goat had now been on the smouldering heat for several hours.  As the music got hold, the wind died and the sea becalmed. All of a sudden the lilt of Sophia’s voice was carried along Gozo’s shore of L-Ghadira. This was a voice as never heard before. Sounds of such ancient origin without words but redolent with roses and cinnamon. Those thrills of continuous notes could only have come, carried along the river reeds of the Euphrates and being of a Methuselah’s age. Or was it from Babylon sprinkled with Myrrh? Perhaps it was a lore born by deep oceans and of their sunken hidden myths. Singing and poetry with Sophia’s voice the lyre. This music Sophia could only have learnt from generations of women and mothers.

 Now the singing and music held laughter as well as their tears. The dancing became earnest. Rosaria and Joe with many other couples were seen dancing together with a closeness that held a promise of even closer beckoning loins later on but back in the village, with an urgency that satisfied and sated but would inexorably collapse in a deep and sweet slumber.