.

The autumn leaves are in a serious downturn. Going past the hospital grounds I was wading knee-deep in them. I love walking through them listening to their particular sound. The crunching of leaves underfoot cannot be imitated easily. It is a sound of my childhood when I used to play with my friends no matter what weather. It would be the leaves in autumn and the swishing of snow in winter.

In winter, and if there was a good pack of snow, we would take matches and some lint with us and try and find snow bubbles above the frozen canals of The Hague were we were living after the war. The gases that were free to rise when the water wasn’t frozen would get trapped under ice or snow and form gas bubbles which we would explore and set alight with our matches and burning lint. The aim and hope was always to get a big bubble with a huge explosion. We never found the really big one..

Is it true that boys are more drawn to fire and explosions and does that explain the inclination to wars and bloody mayhem? I watched a mob of primary school kids running into a park. Within minutes the boys separated and went running after each other rumbling and play fighting, rolling over the ground. The girls in the meantime, few rumbled or threw each other to the ground. Most were happy to sit in the shade of a tree and talking. Is it nature or nurture?

Another favorite trick of mine was to put petrol on water in our kitchen sink and light it. How I was fascinated by something burning that was floating on top of water. I suppose it was a lesson in science. I always did this when my mum was having a nap in the living room which was on the other side of a long wall-papered corridor. The bottle of petrol was kept in a green cupboard underneath the sink and was used by my father to fill his cigarette lighter. In those days it was the height of sophistication to light a cigarette by petrol filled lighter. Men walked around not just smelling of tobacco but also of petrol seeping out of there lighters.

The contraption used a small rotating disc against a flint stone that would ignite the petrol infused cotton wool wick that was kept inside the housing of the lighter and which would protrude through a small hole at the top of the lighter. Even the modern lighter uses some inflammable liquid or gas to light the cigarette. Of course the delights of smoking have long gone since, together with so many other enjoyable cultural habits. We now ingest more tablets than ever before but they are just not as satisfying as the pipe, cigar or cigarette.

Let’s also not forget that instead of smoking we now suck on sugar, salt and fats as never before.  Even so, we live longer or at least stay alive longer but is it still hotly debated if it is ‘living’ when the number of Alzheimer and dementia suffering people are skyrocketing and queuing up by the millions at the gates of places with names such as Eventide, Golf-shore Delight,  or Heritage Thistle.

I don’t want to grow old and in my demented state start grabbing nurses by the bum or mumble obscenities in church and suck up farts in a bicycle pump and then stalk my best and equally old and fading friend and give him the full benefit of a recently digested Brussel sprout blast.

It would be nice to grow old and still be writing my little nonsensical pieces within some reasonable word order.  I have some doubts though. Lately I wake up having to piss almost every couple of hours during the night. I thought of rigging myself up with a handy rubber harness above the bowl where I can hoist myself up with pulleys and ropes and sleep there instead of in bed.  I have to check the Senior Magazines for any aids. I am sure to find some. I bet many might well end up chucking a mattress on the bathroom floor.

In the meantime, my life of decades ago  playing with exploding gas bubbles under the frozen and snowed canals of my youth and now mulling over the possibility of hanging from a suspended harness above the loo is still proof of a busy and interesting time ahead.

The joy of ageing with Milk bottle Lenses. (No walking stick)

The eye test is scheduled for 30^th of April at 10am sharp. The hearing test will be May the 13^th, anytime after 2pm and in Sydney. In both cases bring your health benefit card!

The right eye is being threatened by a good bout of (old) age related Macular disease resulting in loss of vision. It is irreparable but a good diet is advised and there can be injections into the affected eye that may be of some help as well. There are lots of aids including magnifying glasses, super strong spectacles with milk bottle lenses, enlarged print in books and change the settings on computers to giant format with an added opportunity for those that as the loss of vision increases and a thick depression blankets in, you can share your loss with an experienced counselor who will ease you into accepting that life is short, and anyway,” it doesn’t last forever”. Have you chosen your casket yet? That’s just such great news. Keep up your pecker Gerard.

I know I should fear large brown bears or trucks on the footpaths, but loss of vital organs is in a class of their own. I mean, can’t read the small print on the gas bill anymore? What could possibly be worse? Can’t hear the ads on channel 10 or 7, those lovely jingles by Harvey Norman’s ‘Get it now” exhorting us to buy the latest nest of woven plastic tables and chairs for outdoor dining together with a gleaming turbo driven eight burner stainless steel kitchen cum barbeque life style enhancement.

Why then do we get so many ads relating to funeral cost protection lately? You get to see this happy family cavorting with kids on a sloping lawn with the wife beaming happily in the knowledge that her hubby has taken out a good solid funeral protection plan. He looks so proud! It all adds so much to lifestyle. What are they trying to tell us? Should we ask the funeral organizers to put the cremation retort on low or stand-by? Is that part of ‘life-style’ as well or is it more of a death-style? How’s your death- style going might well be the next catchy phrase?  Is it still thriving, getting warm?

If that is all what lays ahead it can’t be too bad? There is still lovely food and nice conversations with friends and family but I do resist the temptation of the old and weary to rabbit on about   ‘the good old days’ when petrol was 2shillings and six pence a gallon and Franquin the Great Magician was as hilarious an evening of entertainment it could ever get. I just put on the ‘for the hearing impaired’ ear phones and listen yet again to ‘le piano du pauvre.’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeD-B-KSwgs

Nothing could chase the grandkids back home to mum and dad quicker than when I put on that piece of music and ask H for yet another fox-trot. (Or talk about the benefits of a Jules Verne book)

I have learnt my lesson well and leave the kids to their IPod, Pad, Tablets and Apps and console myself that a similar fate will befall them as well. “You will all be lucky to get out of it alive, I tell them”. They look a bit bewildered when I say that. Oma puts them at rest and says “your Opa is just kidding you”; “he is always joking and making fun.” “Don’t take him seriously!” “He is going gaga.”

I can still put on my own socks and you walk rather briskly, so my lovely wife tells me.

This journey is still ongoing.

The world is a failed fruit-cake.

If you thought the noise about the Chechen-American brothers in Boston had died down, you are mistaken. It is still at fever pitch. The commentary on blogs and web-sites are running hot and are now blamed for jamming even the levers and cog-wheels on North Korean nuclear weapons.

Someone has estimated total cost of the 6000 police, 2000 vehicles, 22 helicopters with Boston businesses and shops as well as all subway, rail and transport closed down for a couple of days, of being between 800 million and 1 billion dollars. One man is dead and the other, a teenager, can’t speak.

http://www.thetranscript.com/ci_23067670/marathon-manhunt-could-cost-1-billion?source=most_viewed

The only business allowed operating during the ‘search’ was the Dunkin Donuts shops in Watertown! Residents were allowed to stock up on donuts but advised to stay indoors and ration the donuts as good as possible. Scuffles were reported breaking out as long queues of donut customers fought over limited supplies of the chocolate coated ones.

Bruins and Red Socks (whoever they are) postponed their games.

A fertilizer factory that apparently been allowed to operate within a housing estate exploded and so far 14 have died and two hundred injured.

That same night or nights Iraq held an election and 55 people were also blown up in a string of attacks. Those costs no one seemed to have blogged much about. I doubt if the Dunkin Doughnuts patrons would even have bothered giving it a second thought.  The local action is what was central and closest to hearts and minds. Here in Australia it was very much the same and the hunt for the bombers just about the only news item  during the entire day apart from something about a horse named Black Caviar leaving for a paddock somewhere and being patted by people, some showing unbearable grief and anguish with tears in their eyes

http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/latest/16831382/black-caviars-owner-reveals-anguish-of-retirement-decision/

Of course, a tragedy is a tragedy and it is silly to compare them but it does strike me that a tragedy in America overshadows tragedies elsewhere. Perhaps we are numb to tragedies happening in the Middle East or those countries at war and are unsettled much more with those that happen in the West or close at home. I don’t know why that is so. Is it all because of geography or different cultures? I thought we were a global village now!   Someone’s son or daughter is someone’s son and daughter. (Or father, mother friend, wife, husband).

http://rt.com/news/iraq-election-attack-killed-876/

When those children were killed at Sandy Hook I would have thought that gun ownership would have been tackled as a first step. How can violence ever be stopped when people are allowed unlimited guns? How come this latest attempt to at least start to rein in and do something about the millions of guns being held in American Households failed again? What do people do with all these guns? Do they take them out, fondle them and oil them followed by looking down their muzzle, perhaps take aim, just for practice? Do they fantasize protecting their homes against robbers or foreign armies?

Are American people really  safe with all those guns in circulation? It defies logic and common sense. Surely the Constitution can be amended. Wasn’t it amended before?

Ps: Of course national disasters are in a completely different category. None the less those that have died in China during the last earthquake are just as dead and just as missed by friends and family.

The interview with the two brothers Chechen father, sitting there so forlornly on his bed, his boney knees stuck out, looking for an answer. How could his sons possibly have come to that; all so sad? Not all that long ago, there they were, in the sandpit letting it run through their fingers, saying ga,gah and gra, grah; lovely boys, uttering their first words with the world at their feet. And now?

The world is a failed fruit cake.

Ps. Since Sandy Hook as at 26April 2013 another 926 people have been shot dead in the US.

One of those week-ends

Even though half of the week-end had passed, I dreaded the next half. All day it was all over the media about the two brothers allegedly responsible for the planting of explosives that killed three people including a young boy. Hundreds of millions world- wide were glued to their Apps and Iphones getting the latest. The two brothers are supposed to be ethnic Chechen who arrived in America aged about 7 and 12.They grew up in America. Some years later they plant bombs! What happened in between? One could ask the same about the man responsible for the massacre at Sandy Hook; what happened? They used to be lovely little boys not long ago. I suppose Klara thought the same of her little boy, Adolf.

I decided to (resolutely) to try and shake my gloom by taking a walk with my wife and our incorrigible Jack Russell ‘Milo’ to our little river at the back of our complex of eight town-houses. I call them ‘units’ but some also refer to them with the rather more grandiose name of ‘villas’! Coming from Europe, I hesitate to call them villas seeing they don’t resemble anything one would find facing the sea at Monaco or the waterfront French Riviera with 50 metres of swimming pools and helipads with Portuguese maids dressed in white uniforms serving Dom Perignon in tall stemmed glasses.

Years ago soon after arrival in Sydney and aged 15 I was desperate to investigate a Sydney suburb named ‘Palm Beach’. Having grown up in Holland and seen the occasional movie with waving palms and people lounging in hammocks while sipping from a coconut with skimpily dressed Hawaiian girls swanning about I was desperate to soak up and make real my vision of waving palms. I thought the hoola girls can come later as a concession to a possible disappointment. (Even then there were already creeping in shadows of doubt or negativity about my possible unrealistically enlarged projections of fantasized distant futures, dreams or visions.)

I was right to be skeptical; not one fucking palm. I walked along and noticed a garden facing the sea. It had a profusion of white peace lilies (Spathiphyllum) which I knew in Holland to be tropical indoor plants. I can still see my dad bending over them with a small watering can. I thought, well, at least something tropical at last. But…here my skepticism and previous negativity came to the rescue once more; on touching them, leaning over the white picket fence, ( just like dad bending over his indoor plants) they turned out to be plastic. Can you believe people spending time to plant plastic greenery? What sort of country had my dad migrated to with locals having the hide to call their suburb Palm Beach with no Palms and gilding the Lily as well? I have found out that the English speaking world is somewhat over-generous with naming things that are only just skirting along the edges of ‘truth’. They sell fresh-cream apple pies with the cream oozing out being a grainy mock cream and the apple probably plastic grown at someone’s Palm Beach garden. They advertise ‘free gifts’. Electrical shops are named “Good Guys”!

The walk along our little river or bubbling brook is always a restorative event. Milo goes berserk sniffing out the ducks while nervously cocking his hind legs alternatively every few metres. He is clearly eternally optimistic in breaking loose and murdering a nice duck, no matter how strong the leash is, he jumps around and is  enjoying jumping and bucking about. I don’t allow him his duck but as a concession to murder, I will let him loose at the church yard where he  chases the occasional wild rabbit and even killed one. Rabbits are in plague proportions, so…

Good boy Milo.., Good boy.

Learning to Swim

To try keeping your head above water while alive seems to be about the best advice one can give. I remember years ago being given that lesson by my mother. It seems strange that my memories of my birthplace (Holland) while a child seem to be mainly about warm and sunny days. Yet, having gone back and revisiting that place as adult it always rained or was shrouded in fog. One flew over cloudless skies all the way from Sydney to India then over the sun baked Mediterranean followed by the Swiss Alps below with sparkling jewels of mountains until you reached Amsterdam’s Schiphol and all became dripping and looking miserable.

Are childhood memories invariably sunny and warm? Perhaps one felt safe, cared for and loved and the sun always shone as it invariably would not when growing up and face the world independently. No weather has sun only; clouds, rain, storm and tempest are all part of it as well. That’s the lesson we learn when growing up, the trick is to keep head above water, steer the good ship into calmer waters.

Those first times that I went back I traveled by boat. The first trip cost me hundred and six Aussi imperial pounds for the whole of 5 weeks duration between Sydney –Genoa. Another ten pounds for the Trans-Continental express Genoa to Amsterdam. Unbelievably, one was fed and feasted for the entire 5 weeks trip including all the Chianti one could possibly drink included.  Those large passenger boats would be seen off from Circular Quay by enormous crowds with hundreds of streamers the last connection between the passengers and onshore family and friends.  Many would be given last minute advice. Alas, when the boat finally moved away many a tear could still be seen on both travelers and on-shore friends. “Keep in touch Mavis or Ron, will you”? Still being shouted and renting the air.

It was during those sixties and seventies that many young people would take a dip and tip a toe into a foreign world with overseas travel becoming more popular. Slowly, another world away from Australia would emerge for many that previously had been experienced by just a few or seen only on maps or heard from others. Who could resist the travel when it was so cheap? Compared with air travel it soon became the preferred choice.

Even so, it did not hurt to pack a few toilet rolls, just in case. It pays to be careful. There were some strange cultural habits being imported into Australia by European foreigners. Strange food items like garlic, black bread and coffee that came in beans with some of the migrant kids even disliking our own food goodies such as beans and spaghetti on our sandwiches with lovely vegemite and sliced Devon.  Then there were those foreign habits of drinking wine slowly and wanting to be seated when talking to others, outside coffee sipping with seating on pavements as well and even restaurants opening on Sunday. Where will it stop next and many were worried?

Some came back with tales that in France you did not have ‘normal’ toilets like ours at home with Pine-o-Clean refreshed pink knitted doilies covering the lid etc, no, you had to squat into a hole, oh the horror was still visible on Mavis retelling her tale how she lost her lipstick irretrievably in one of those dark bottomless holes at Marseille.

In Holland, some discovered, the toilets had a kind of platform in which to peruse or admire latest efforts before flushing, allowing a kind of final good-bye as well. Some years later in Bali and many other parts of Indonesia there were different toilet habits again. Suffice to say people there never eat with their left hand or indeed shake hands, pass goods with the left hand which is used for toilet duties. Have some pity for those born left handed!

As for my swimming lesson; we used to swim with a doubled up rubber bicycle tyre. The summers were endless and permanently sunny.  One day, with my mother watching I was half way across the river when the air vent came out deflating the tyre in seconds.  My only option was to drown or try and make it on my own. “Just keep on swimming normally,” I was calmly advised from the side of the river.

That’s what I did.

“There you go dears, a lovely ‘worry free’ retirement. Your money with us as safe as in a bank, we even call ourselves Banksia Mortgage Fund.  Please sign along the dotted line and we will take your cheque now”.

Retirees were queuing up investing their hard earned savings in Mortgage Funds including the Banksia Group. It’s funny what a name can do to one’s image and image is what it is all about, isn’t it? Safe as a Bank…but safe as BANKsia, I think not.

Why is it that it is taking so long to realize that unfettered ‘freedom of market forces’ means usually, sooner or later, freedom to get obscenely rich for just a few at the cost of poverty for the majority?

The exposure last night on ABC Four Corners about the plight of tens of thousands  of retirees having lost billions of hard earned retirement savings invested in so many well known but dodgy Mortgage Funds will no doubt soon be forgotten in the annals of our previous exposures of similar ‘Investment schemes’.

Every ten years or so, this turns up assuaging a few but nothing ever gets done.

I give you ‘Capitalism’.

Who has forgotten Estate Mortgage many years ago? Investors were returned 5c in the dollar. In many countries those kind of financial investment vehicles are strictly regulated but in some, including Australia, it is a free grab for young and old but the pensioner ends up in a caravan or trailer home and the human sharks setting up those fleecing vehicles are whooping it up grandly in huge waterfront McMansions with 12 flat TV’s, 9 Bathrooms and 44 bidets with hordes of fly blown lovers rinsing and selling them their whoring wares.

Is it inevitable that our western style of democracy inexorably remains slanted in favour of the criminal sociopath unable to feel even the slightest empathy towards their victims? Are they so unable to put themselves in their position? It appears so. Last night it was revealed that those people running their lucrative schemes are happy to be foreclosed upon, having salted away millions in family trusts first, only to reappear again around the corner and starting all over again. No doubt, another 4 Corners program will be shown again in a few years time.

And so it goes on!

The latest Forbes Magazine rich lists includes 1426 names of people who have more than 1000.000.000 dollars with this year adding another 210 new members. They are known as belonging to the so called 1% list, meaning they own 99% of the world’s wealth. It seems out of kilter doesn’t it?

In the meantime the 16 000 investors in Banksia Securities have started a class action. Indications are they will get 50 cents back out of every dollar invested. The lawyers claim the accounts were wrong and are asking how the Company could all of a sudden owe $660million. – Where were the accountants, but more importantly; where were the regulators?

And so it goes on!

Unchain the Kids and Headstone buffing at the Cemetery

So many kids are confused with their attention being drawn to so many things, it’s a wonder they can put socks on. Our movie watching today includes accepting that at a cinema most viewers are now multitasking and divided into part watching, part eating pop corn or masticating on something, slurping slushies, and full-on texting on cell phones including taking photos of the movie they are watching and forwarding it onto the texting friends whom they have probably never even met. It all very mysterious. I think I’ll visit my cemetery plot at Rook-wood and buff up the headstone a bit, for a week-end of reflection and serenity restoration.

We decided to go and see ‘Django Unchained’.  We have always liked Tarantino’s movies and read enough of the movie to take the risk knowing we would be subjected to the usual habit of so many that don’t seem to be able to take a couple of hours off without risking expiring from  lack of sugar ,salt and fatty substances.

We were not disappointed. As soon as the movie started, there were those familiar rising halos of smells with chewing, swallowing and ingestion noises of the patrons. Why can’t the movie theatres introduce a special room for those that want to eat and swallow? I mean, IKEA have rooms with cubbies and slippery dips and lots of balls and balloons when mum and dad go for a new flat pack kitchen or 100 number tea-lights. Most pubs and hotels cater for eating hordes away from those that like peace and quiet. Why not do the same for those that can’t seem to get away from ingesting food. A special room for munchers, lickers and slushy slurping. Cinemas would make a fortune

After the movie, we decided to visit a brother at Dungog in combination with a drive- by and stay with friends at Ettalong. Next day we went for a walk along the waterfront promenade and perhaps also look for a place to enjoy a meal, all in the one hit. Right on the beach and just fifty centimeters above sea level we found the right place.

Actually, the place found us. The building towers over everything at Ettalong. It’s the Eiffel Tower of the Central Coast. The building is huge and painted a shimmering white. The front of the building facing the sea and bay is a huge RSL club (returned soldiers league club). When we were there we didn’t see any uniformed soldiers having returned from wars, world-wide riots, revolutions or other disturbances. What we did see were many couples including their children going for a ‘Nosh-up’ which at the time we were there, had a mouth watering menu of many dishes at $9.- a plate, including a fifty percent discount on the first drink.

The curious tradition of non- club members having to sign-in still exists and it still gets up my gander/dander. Do non members steal the cutlery, perhaps secreting the forks and knives up their sleeves? I still don’t get the reason for this oddity,no matter how often it gets explained. A bit like cricket, I suppose. I can understand ‘members only’ or ‘members AND the public’, but why this ritual of signing up when they allow anyone to go and visit and then having to identify and give name and address? I would think foreign tourists would be loath to give information of that kind for just wanting to have a meal or dance the night away. What next, an FBI agent or rendition to Egypt, water-boarding?  Helvi would sorely miss me, for sure.

The fifty percent discount when ordering a meal applies to the first drink only. Fair enough, I thought and ordered a bottle of Lindeman’s merlot with utter confidence. It was very lovely to drink, unctuously rich Dutch cigar box with hints of Sunday school prune and ambitious towards the fruit loaded Pavlova on the middle palate.

I thought it better to wait for the 50% discount on the glass of wine after depletion of the bottle settled in. I dutifully went to the bar again, which there now was a long queue of 50% discount patrons waiting in a line which had a rope strung along a few stainless steel barriers. That 50 % must have really been a good business move, I thought. As I shuffled forward and it became my turn I asked for the three glasses of merlot with the discount.

The barmaid asked for my meal tickets as proof of having ordered three meals I did not have the receipts, but… and here comes the good bit. She said…”oh, you look like a NICE OLD Gentleman”, “don’t worry sir,” she added ever so kind and friendly. I was feeling a strange mixture of elation and mortification. I am now ‘nice and old’. A new era has heralded itself.

I think I might just leave the buffing of my headstone for a while yet. Too spooky!

If sport is still seen as the holy grail of youth growing into wholesome adults, I wonder if we ought to consider the opposite. A kind of movement, like which followed that of cigarettes, which we now know are secreted behind closed doors and wearing beige uniforms. People look guilty lighting up in public with a quick avoidance of looking into the eyes of the triumphant non-smoker.

Years ago, smoking was seen as sport is now, a kind of combination of robust health and the coming of age into responsible adulthood.  Remember those advertisements of a brave pilot seated in his war-plane’s cockpit, ready to teach the folks in Bremen, Hiroshima or Hamburg a good lesson? He wore goggles but in his mouth which seemed to hold a sardonic smile, there was also a Camel, all lit up, ready for anything but never ever a hint of looming cancer gnawing away at his youthful lungs. The opposite, it soothed nerves and gave patriotic confidence and made you fight and conquer enemies.

Nerves of steel, the advertisement waxed on and millions of young people took up the smoking health habit, all wanting to grow up and have the Pilot’s nerves of steel for the future. Movies were full of smoke and ash. There was nothing more seductive than Clark Gable brushing off some cigarette ash from Rita Hayworth’s blouse with fingers agonizingly trailing over her heaving but sturdy bra enveloped breasts. Unforgettable scenes of bravery when in ‘High-Noon’ and music’s ‘do not forsake me, oh my darling’ the cigarette dangled so lovely and enticingly from cowboy Carry Cooper’s lips. Many young girls fainted in the cinema in tandem with Grace Kelly’s swooning subserviently in cowboy’s arms.  Yes, smoking was robust health with a Mae West gun in your pocket. A sure sign of having grown up.

This morning on my walk past those gigantic oak trees in the park, I noticed the acorns being shed by the hundreds. It brought back the days when as a very young ten year old I was already influenced by the adults, including my father and my aunty heartily smoking away. With my friends and the help of a first pocket knife we hollowed out acorns and with a small straw inserted, managed to make a workable but primitive sort of pipe. We clandestinely managed to get a packet of tobacco and lit up, gloriously grown up after school, but hidden from adults which added to the taste of the foul nicotine. Smoking before discovery of the pubescent rose buds of girls’ breasts, that was the order of things then, I remember it so well. The sheer joy and  wild enthusiasm of entering the world of adventure and discovery of so much with being wickedly alive which doubled when a couple of years later girls entered the world of forbidden delights as well. It just never stopped then.

How things have changed now. A cold shower on all that smoking, perhaps not so much on girls but…while things have calmed down on budding breasts, at least they are not a health hazard as cigarettes proved to be. What a disappointment smoking turned out to be. I gave up reluctantly years ago but still enjoy someone else striking up with the smell of a fresh cigarette still having an overpowering sense with recurring memories of those forbidden delights so many years ago.

How disappointing sport turned out to be and with all those cases in Court, it is starting to resemble the turn around with cigarettes some years ago. All of a sudden, sport seems to have the stench of smoking. Corruption, drugs are rampant, insider criminal betting rings, girl friends getting glassed or worse, murdered, one wonders if the pilot lighting up in his warplane’s cockpit with a Camel wasn’t a better option after all?  Who still wants to be associated with a bicycle or a ball, let alone a cricket bat or fibre blade runners. It’s all getting to be a bit dodgy. Soon too, sportsmen will be locked up as well as cigarettes.

Perhaps outdoor chess might bring out the robust man or healthy woman? Who knows and what is the world coming?

When will it all end?

America’s broken Dreams.

After decades of untrammeled capitalism there are still those that believe in its system able to the ‘transformation of all to the common good for all.’ This is what really happened though when the power of money took over from the power of sharing, caring, empathy and tolerance. Take a good look!

http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/view/30857

Was it forty two million or forty four million who are now living in dismal poverty in America? How could a country get it so wrong and so quickly? Here was a nation once held up as an example of giving anyone prepared to put shoulder under the task the just reward in living the life of dreams and untold riches. They had John Steinbeck’s ‘Of Men and mice’ as a previous example. The problem was the neglect of dreams of the spirit and mind and an over emphasis on material benefits. Is this a repeat of the 1920/30’s?

Was it ownership of large houses with triple garages that overtook ownership of caring and friendship, neighbourly concern, an intimacy of living together? Did they forget to understand what gives  satisfaction is learning to overcome life’s tribulations and a yearning for bettering ourselves by caring about others? It wasn’t supposed to be this lonely race to fat bank accounts with share portfolios kept locked in  study-room’s gleaming drawers. Something went wrong somewhere.

Americans aspired to keep young with Botox infusions, silly anti-erotic chicken-wing look Brazilian waxes and expensive life expanding lotions, do anything to keep death away. That was banished as much as possible with the casket silently sliding and discretely hidden by a curtain, towards its final journey, the incinerator.  Better to concentrate on membership to exclusive golf clubs or solariums to give  tans as overwhelming proof of health, wellbeing and.. Being and staying alive together with John Travolta and Olivier Newton.

The poverty in America while terribly real is also removed from what we used to think of as poor. The family was still driving a large car; they had flat TV, computers and the kids fiddling with electric gadgets. Some of those did not look very hungry either with large torsos struggling to get in and out of cars. It was the feeling of the US being totally lost in people’s life’s travel that was the real poverty.

The desolation of the urban landscapes, the flotsam of dangling signage and derelict commercialism, windswept and friendless acreages of spiritual dehydration, so palpable and visual, even to the blind. The poverty in the US is truly obscene and it makes the poverty of those in Bangladesh by comparison almost dignified, if one can give dignity to poverty! How will this ever be overcome? It is not just lack of money at play here.

One couple lamented, oh so sadly, there are ‘no safety nets here’, it’s just hearsay; it doesn’t exist! So, of all the riches, of all the wealth creation with gigantic burgers with chips and mayonnaise, there still is no safety net, no care, and no empathy?  Where is society’s inclusiveness? No one is smiling anymore!

So, what is going to happen? I wonder if a change of course is required or will the old ways of the past be cranked up again? Perhaps, the Reds under the beds were not that silly back in the fifties. McCarthyism jailed those brave souls that were for equitable sharing, chased them away, but those that had inclination towards social conscience and fled to Canada certainly made that country showing a much more humane face. The extreme materialism in the US and with all those people with guns and assault weapons don’t bode well for a safe future.

One thing still fills me with wonder; those 120 million of smiling Hindus taking a dip into the Ganges at Allahabad. What have they got what the US doesn’t?

A Horse, a Horse, a Kingdom for a Horse… (Steak)

There are so many different strokes for different folks it makes a mockery of absolute truth, common sense, or even us keeping a semblance of  being sane. As some say; what is grist to the mill is porridge for the porkers.

Who can’t but be amused over the ‘shocking revelations’ that horse meat has been eaten in Britain? People were seen choking on their tripe and tripping over their chokos. What, eating horse? We are English, don’t you know? Cameron was keen in pointing out, the moral repugnance of having been dudded by the French in meat being horse meat instead of real meat, the holy ‘cow’. I am sure many were also outraged by having eaten horse, never mind morals of eating any animal.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-09/cameron-condemns-horse-meat-scandal/4509702

There is growing outrage, and of course, its les frogs who are to blame. What insult, with ’les chevaux’ being mixed into our beloved frozen hamburger mince. What will the neighbours think?

The irony must be crystal clear to many of the non-Anglo world that in a country where just about everyone is brought up on horse racing, betting and punting, that the eating of horses is seen as abhorrent, close to eating babies or to boarding out children to schools. (Hold onto your horses, we do that lovingly).

We all know that horses are not allowed to be whipped anymore and much is made to prove we don’t, with lots of TV footage of horses being stroked and even kissed (on the flaring nostril after having made a packet for the owner and the punters). Surely, that’s proof of our love for horses!

Yes, but what about the proof also that horse racing is cruel and not far removed from Espanol bull fighting or Indonesian cock-fighting. The animals are manically competing against each other and when their chance of winning is beyond hope they will end up in paddocks, hopefully looked after caring owners but many also with enlarged hearts, lungs and tissue damage. It is estimated that about 60% of horses trained for racing end up at the knackery well before their natural lives would have expired.

That’s right, next time you open a tin of Pal, look deep inside, you are looking at Beaux Hoofs or Triple Ur Dollar. Many also are so psychologically damaged, too nervous and flighty, unfit for casual riding around the paddock as well. We also know that many are damaged during racing with torn muscles, ligaments and tendons.

Look, having come from Holland I have eaten horse meat as well. Mea Culpa to all horse lovers. It was one of mum’s bitter disappointments that David Jones in Australia did not sell smoked prosciutto from horse meat.’ Oh, no we don’t sell horse meat,’ she was told. My mum blithely unaware of the cultural sensitivity, answered, ‘oh, you should try it, and it is sooo delicious… mmm…she smacked her lips.’ The shop girl disappeared, fainted behind the counter.

I don’t think the French, Dutch or Italians love horses any less than the Brits or Irish but make less of a fuss when eating them. The Dutch are more likely not to eat sheep. Those poor little lambs etc. It is strange isn’t it, with that lovely children’s song with little Bo Peep that it hasn’t filtered down in Britain to then also not eat lamb.

Different strokes etc… and so it goes on. The more one learns about people the more I like my lentils and stroke my Milo. Our incorrigible Jack Russell.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUql207FuW4