http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-18/anna-funder-hits-out-at-media-companies/5032444

Ms Funder is working on a new novel and is also among a group of authors who have contributed to a new anthology about dispossession – A Country Too Far, edited by Tom Keneally and Rosie Scott.

The Melbourne-born writer said Australia had successful multicultural policies that were reflected in society, but that she was saddened by the recent treatment of asylum seekers.

“It saddens me to think we are not recognising people who have an absolute legal right, a human right, to come and seek asylum here and we are denying them that, that we are locking up men, women and children in prison camps and they haven’t done anything wrong,” she said.

A former constitutional lawyer, Ms Funder criticised the Government’s legal action to prevent asylum seekers landing in Australia.

“The absurdity of excising mainland Australia from the Migration Act that would allow them to claim asylum boggles my mind and makes me very sad,” she said.

I never knew this, but cars have wells. A foot-well; and it is where your feet are when driving. (Another definition is an example of sentences with their pronunciation, according to Mr Oxford dictionary). Let’s stick with the car foot-well for the sake of this piece of writing.

This is going to be a boys’ piece, so be warned ladies!

For a couple of years we have been driving a car without a foot rest. Unbelievably as it sound and just at the age where many have gout stools, we have a car without a foot rest at the bottom of the foot well. It means your left foot is kind of hanging at half-mast with the toe part pointing upwards. After a couple of hours driving it feels as if your foot has given up the will to go on any further.

This was one reason we thought of getting another car with a foot rest. Without compromise on foot comfort we went straight to a dealer of cars and looked for a model with foot-rests. I know that many people would have car priorities in different areas of requirements but believe me, we wanted just a good foot-rest. If the car had four wheels and an engine as well, so much the better.

”Could you show us a car with foot rests, please’’, we asked the salesman who already observed us from the moment we stepped into the Peugeot/ Volvo/Skoda dealership yard. ’All cars have foot-rests’, he smiled. ‘’Not our Holden Cruze,’ we answered with expert car nous. (We didn’t want to come across as elderly car ignoramuses.) ‘’ Ah, well, you are talking just Holden,’’ he quipped but still friendly. ‘’Perhaps you are after European comfort with a smooth overall superior technical suspension,’’ it sounded as if out of a Peugeot prayer book delivered from the pulpit of the Notre Dame.

‘’Yes, but also with good foot rests, can you show us some,’’ we demanded firmly. ‘’We have several with similar outputs as your Cruze but with far more comfort and good stabilizer controls.’’ The French know a thing or two about comfort and style,’’ he added while looking at Helvi, smelling a sale. He went even further; ‘’you know how good the French are in designing good comfortable yet stylish shoes?’’ ‘’Oh, yes, so much better than here,’’ she answered him. The salesman was on the home run now having observed Helvi’s very Paris looking shoes and fashionable colourful silk scarf. ‘’You are wearing lovely matching ear-rings,’’ he smoothed on.

‘’Just show me the Peugeot with the footrests, please,’’ I curtly stated, not to be left out totally and hoping to gain back the upper foot and my authority in the coming deal. He obliged by opening a few car doors here and there. My foot honed in on the foot-rests on the left of the foot-well. The Peugeot had by far the widest and most comfortable foot rest.
After a ‘free’ coffee, compliments of the yard dealer across the road in an antiques cum old wares cum books cum coffee shop we mulled over the trade-in of our foot-rest-less Cruze and agreed to get the Peugeot 407, 2009 model with low kilometres and great foot-rest.

We are picking it up today.

Our feet deserved it.

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The Sofa
September 11, 2013

The Sofa
For many years we have sat on a sofa and matching armchair. We bought it second hand from a road-side farm selling old wares and semi-antiques. We had it upholstered into a nice warm dusty pink- mauve velvet material.

Its level of comfort is such that I sit in it more than is desirable. I often think I should get up and do something but the lure of its softness and comfort is hard to resist. Anyway, you can never sit enough, I reckon. The world hurries by in so many cars on highways, what’s that all about?

Large trucks have Logistics and Solutions written on them in large lettering. Surely that is tautology? The frantic nightmares of most people on the move I can only help by reflection, introspection and writing. What better way than to sit on a comfortable sofa. I have done my part in manically moving about for many years. Time for sitting has arrived.

Actually, I probably sit behind my type writer more than on the sofa and in between both, do a lot of walking around with H and Milo, the incorrigible JRT. Another reason why we find leaving the sofa hard to leave lately is that the springs have gone. When seated we are almost level with the ground. Our knees stick up like flag poles. For some months now we are debating almost daily what to do about it. Of course being seated so low and sunk in comfort we generally keep on talking about it but rarely actually get up and do something. A bit like Sydney’s second airport! Year after year it gets talked about but nothing happens.

Anyway; at our age getting up from such low posture we often remain sunk in or on the sofa. If we want to avoid a pre-mature demise by expiring on the sofa, it now has become almost a medical emergency to do something urgently. We are still managing to get up from the sofa by moving forward onto all fours with knees on the floor and then drag each other up somehow. It is exhausting work and defeats the long stays on the sofa. But, what can you do?

Have we left it all too late now?

September 18, 2013

_
It seems everything gets a bit less as the years roll by. Our strides with Milo are shorter now, as when, for example, I was marching up the Austrian Dolomites so many years ago. Of course I never took any measurements of my strides then nor will I resort to it now.

It is the same with intake of food. Our meals are shorter in that they are smaller now. From the huge plates of yesteryear, laden with heavy clay spuds, sprouts and massive steaks, we now eat a miniscule little baby beetroot with single small Dutch carrot and a single sad eyed sardine. The plates are smaller and those big plates are only taken out when the grandsons are over with their noisy enormous 3 kilo potatoes appetites.

Yes, it has all become so much less or smaller. Even noise is getting less. It is rare to have loud music blaring out or TV on without watching. I have noticed that it seems to be quite acceptable for the younger generation to have the TV on or loud radio cackle without watching the TV or listening to the sounds. It is more or less something that appears to give some meaning to their lives, almost as if the noise confirms they are really living and whooping it up, just like everybody else.

Anyway, whatever the pro-s and con-s, (more cons) of modern life, within our duopoly of domesticity a rather peaceful era has arrived and we love it. We are sometimes still invited to a sleep-over at our children or friends but we rarely accept. It means we often scurry back, in the hollow of the night (now with the new foot-rest car), to our own nest and throw ourselves down on the newly stuffed divan, utterly content with our own abode. No noise, no TV chatter, just us. How lovely. How much better can this get?

With all the diminution of those superfluous materials in our lives and a concentration on quality rather than quantity we seem to be somewhat burdened by having things we never use. Cupboards are filled with too much. So many spoons and forks are rattling in drawers, not too speak of cork screws, bottle openers, ladles, swirly things and other cooking implements. We have a round saucepan made of granite or stone given to us years ago. A thing you pre-heat in the oven and then you can cook something in it afterwards. Why stone? Apparently some obscure tribe in Papua or Tibet use that form of cooking. We have never used it.

We have so many saucepans. One is so huge, I can’t remember we ever cooked for the army or orphanages. It has a large handle and on the opposite side a smaller handle as well. You can only lift it by using two strong arms and that is without food cooked in it. With food cooked in it I have to stand on a chair for extra leverage and need Helvi’s aid as well.

With the weather warming I prefer to cook outside. It is so nice to wake up not to the smell of fried onions. I have a super duper barbeque with Teflon hot plate and stainless steel burners. Late in the afternoon, I slice potatoes and Helvi makes some top side grass fed Angus cow meat patties. With that a variety of vegetables, all in miniscule portions and I barbeque like mad. Not a single saucepan gets used.

In the meantime our cupboards are groaning with all our past cooking machinery and implements. Stainless steel saucepans. Cast iron saucepans. Teflon saucepans. Ribbed saucepans (cast Iron) to give that ribbed look on the salmon or sole. They are all resting there in our cupboards waiting for heat, food, but above all for the human touch to be taken out and used once more again. They live in hope!

Perhaps it will happen at this year’s Christmas.

Tags: Angus cows, Christmas, Papua, Teflon, Tibet
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The Revolution is coming

May 19, 2013

Posted in Gerard Oosterman |

My first view of naked Woman.

May 6, 2013

Tags: Capri., Circular Quay, Home-Bush, Locomotive, Nissen huts, Parramatta, Rotterdam, Scheyville, Sydney Posted in Gerard Oosterman |