In life, when one door shuts..... try going around the back

Dear Aunt Mary,

“What do you do when a 35-year-old Sri Lankan (so she said) woman, whom you’ve never seen before in your life, knocks on your door and tells you that she’s looking for a permanent boyfriend and somewhere to live, and that she has her sights firmly set on you?”

Signed,

Opportunity Knocking for Theseustoo.

Aunt Mary has been receiving a number of questions of a sexual nature, such as this one from Nephew Theseustoo.  I have received so many questions (not all thankfully from Theseustoo) that I feel it is time to devote an entire column to what I refer to as “love detours”.

Perhaps some of you think that your dear old Aunt Mary is unqualified to comment on such problems. You may even be convinced Aunt Mary finds such questions shocking; but I assure you she does not. Vulgar and base, yes. Shocking? Not one iota. You see, dear ones, even though Aunt Mary has never known wedded bliss, she is quite intimately familiar with all matters of the heart and loins. During the swinging sixties, dear ones, I was witness to such bacchanalia as would make Hugh Hefner swoon and Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice blush.

I was not however soiled by my experiences because I have always able to remain above the fray, as it were. Think of me as an enigmatic, revolutionary, and obviously brilliant research scientist to whom the messy trials and tribulations of human interaction are simply the disgusting muck at the bottom of my Petri dish. I know you are suffering, dear ones, and if the myriad of questions that currently have flooded my ebox are any indication, the great desperate majority of you out there look to me as a light in the darkness, a bastion of hope, an omniscient purveyor of truth, a vital counterbalance to the excesses of this hyper-sexualized cyber-society known as the 21^st century and I fully intend to be the rock in your  hard, hard place.

My first step in this calling is to bring some solace to my poor misguided nephew Theseustoo. You might ask, Aunt Mary, were you to find yourself in the identical situation to Theseustoo, what you do?

This is a very good question, dear nephews and nieces. One you should ask yourself regularly: what would Aunt Mary do? As a quick aside, I’ve been thinking lately of a simply wonderful idea. I’ve been thinking of making up some Aunt Mary t-shirts, hats, wristbands and the like, emblazoned with my image and likeness and the simple but always poignant message: WWAMD? What Would Aunt Mary Do? Isn’t that lovely?

So, let’s take the WWAMD test right now, shall we?

Just say, for argument sake, that your Aunt Mary was suddenly, without prior warning, to happen upon a young Sri Lankan on her doorstep declaring she has Aunt Mary in her sights. I can tell you without pause what Aunt Mary would do in that situation. She would slam the door shut in her silly Sri Lankan face and set the dogs on the wandering trollop; but (and here’s where Aunt Mary’s sensitivity shines most brightly) I sense, dear Theseustoo, that there is more to your question than you are willing to let on. Am I correct in this assumption, nephew? Could it be that you inspire this kind of spontaneous adoration on a regular basis? Have young women from other nations (Russia perhaps?) appeared at your threshold in the past spouting similar declarations? Have you Theseustoo, in fact been encouraging these innocents abroad into such bold acts as the logical result your own flirtatious messages sent willy-nilly all over the world-wide interweb?

If I am correct in my suspicions and you have used your obvious literary gifts to capture these poor women’s affections, then your Aunt Mary is here to tell you that you must take immediate responsibility for your actions and find some way to make amends. At the very least you should introduce the young lady to a lonely neighbor or, better yet, help her find some new career opportunity. You made the mess, Theseustoo, it’s up to you to clean it up.

Remember this little poem Theseustoo if ever you wonder again about life and love:

The road to love is straight and true,

No detours are required.

If you stray from your right path

It will only leave you tired.

Unless you know for certain this young tea-island girl is your one and only love, Theseustoo, your dear Auntie urges you show some much needed restraint. As I say to all my nephew and nieces: resist love detours at all costs no matter how great the opportunity seems or how appealing the knocker or knockers look.

Until next time, nosce te ipsum, dear ones.

Aunt Mary xxxooo

Column and Picture by Aunt Mary

Facebook Faux Pas

Dear wonderful nephews and nieces,

Well, your Aunt Mary finally went and did it! She got herself a computer and joined hypercyber revolution as you young ones out there all like to call it. What a brave new eworld this is, dear ones. Not one day was I on the world wide interweb before my box was filled with probing equestions from you all. I have no idea how you all sniffed me out so fast. You poor souls are all so very desperate for Aunt Mary’s counsel, aren’t you? Some times I have to stop and pity each and every darling one of you, I really do. But I know all too well how much you love your Aunt Mary and to be so needed by so many makes me a very happy Mary indeed; dare I go so far as to say it makes me a proud Mary? But enough! I need to keep on rolling down the river, don’t I young nephews and nieces?  Oh, but one more note before I go on, I do need to let you know that it may take me a while to get my elegs under me and find the time in my hectic schedule to ewrite back to you all especially as my little puss-puss has taken sick again and is demanding I pay her constant attention and cater to her every whim this week.

For now, I do want to address one econcern that was sent to me by my dear Nephew Norman. He ewrote:

Dear Aunt Mary, when will you be getting a Facebook page? We do so need your help navigating the treacherous seas of social networking. I have one particular Facebook friend whom I feel I have let go but I really don’t know the best way to do so. I and she, you see, have a history and even though we parted amicably I don’t really want this past dalliance spying on my present. Should I simply cut her off? Or is there a more mannered way for me to move on with my life?

Well, Norman, until I received your enote I frankly had slim to no information about this Facebook fad; but as you know your Aunt Mary is nothing if not resourceful and her razor sharp mind has been finished to a fine edge by years of trial and thus her experience in all matters of social import is second to none. Since receiving your emessage I set out to undertake an investigation of all things Facebook and I now feel adequately prepared to bring succor to your epleadings.

Facebook. Where do I start? Apparently in this 21^st century virtual existence of ours this is what passes for social interaction. Tweetering and twitting and bloggering each other ad infinitum et nauseum. Accumulating new friends like sailors contract communicable diseases. Rounding up old friends most of whom we barely even acknowledged during our adolescent years. Pretending to be farmers and gansters and engaging in any number of imaginary games that we should have outgrown as preteens. Not to mention wasting countless valuable hours relentlessly swapping photos and songs and video clips as if we were collectively starved for any and every form of entertainment and doing most if not all of these activities while sitting alone at a keyboard in our pajamas or worse. In short, dear ones, this Facebook addiction has to be a one of the saddest reflections I know of how far we have fallen down the socio-evolutionary scale. If you ask me primates, ants and penguins now officially have more genuine interaction with one another on a daily basis than modern mankind.

But do not allow yourselves to believe that you are suddenly off the hook, dear ones. We cannot allow ourselves to add insult to injury. Just because we have launched ourselves headlong down this path of degeneration does not mean be are beyond reformation. What we have to do is take a stand and demand that our new virtual interactions carry with them the same obligations to social mores that our physical interactions once did.

Here, dear nephew Norman, is what your Aunt Mary strongly suggests you need to do avoid committing any further Facebook faux pas.

For one you have to start considering your online friendships as carefully as you do your offline friendships. Clicking the friend button should be akin to an invitation to a dinner party. One does not simply slam the door on a guest carrying an RSVP. An invited guest is at the very least deserving of an explanation or, if the fault is yours, an apology should the invitation need to be revoked. A reversal or revoking of friendship should never be undertaken on a whim but only carried out after careful reflection and for good and just reasons. As a practical step, nephew, you owe your one-time belle an honest and open explanation for your new found need to remove her from your virtual space. I suggest you send her an enote, or better yet a hand-written letter, that says something along these lines:

“Dear friend, It is clear that we once were closer than we are today and while I still cherish the time we spent together the bond we once had is no longer what it was. For us to continue to share intimacies and have our lives entwined, even in virtual manner, can only tie us to the past and impede our future growth and progress. Regrettably, the only logical way for us both to seek the better good is to cut these ties that bind and move on to a brighter tomorrow. I will in due course remove you from my friends list. I hope you can see that this is the best for both of us because if you continue to seek out a virtual friendship with me I will be forced to block you from my interweb completely. Yours sincerely, etc..

You have no doubt already realized that you have many other current Facebook friends who need to be pared off your dinner list. Really, Norman you actually believe you have the time and will to adequately interact with 238 Facebook friends? I thought not. Here are a few suggestions for trimming your list.

To status twitterers: Dear friend, in the past few hours I have learned that you woke up feeling blue, you made coffee, you watched the today show, you had a change of heart, and you are looking forward to a big evening. Although these events may feel life affirming and/or of vital importance within your small sphere of existence, I have grown weary of your constant status updates and see no other option but to retract my previous invitation of virtual friendship. Yours regrettably, etc..

To the quizaholics: Dear friend, I care not a whit what your pirate name would be or who is your celebrity beau. I am not interested in which Shakespeare character you are or what famous philosopher you most resemble. Because you seem unable to stop posting the results of the latest infantile test you clicked through I will be forced to click the “remove from friends” button immediately after I click send on this email. Yours emphatically, etc..

To the clearly deranged: Dear friend, when I accepted your original invitation of virtual friendship I frankly had no idea you had devolved over the past few decades into a slobbering lunatic. I now see there is no hope of you ever regaining the status of functional adult and so I find I am forced to delete you from my list of friends. I do hope you are unsuccessful in your attempt to secure my address and I warn you ahead of time that should you try to contact me again I will not hesitate to slap you with an order of restraint. Yours blantantly, etc..

I hope you take my response as seriously as I intended it to be received, dear nephew Norman. And before I conclude also consider this…perhaps if you didn’t have quite so many pictures of your drunken excesses and reckless ribaldry plastered all over the interweb you would not be so concerned about snooping eyes in the first place. Perhaps if you were able to show even a modicum of restraint in your virtual life you would not feel so compelled to toss your guests from the party willy-nilly. The old adage still applies dear ones. What you refrain from showing is ever more appealing than what you do.

Until next time dear nephew and nieces, nosce te ipsum and also know that Aunt Mary loves you to pieces…almost as much as she adores her sickly little puss-puss.

EDITORS NOTE: IF YOU HAVE A QUESTION FOR AUNT MARY WHY NOT POST IT AS A COMMENT?

Susan and her big brother

By Susan Merrell

“Watermelons always remind me of Christmas,” said the young waiter at the café-cum-greengrocers where I was enjoying a coffee.

He’s right.  Watermelons, mangoes, chilled seafood and chardonnay are all the summery pleasures that have evoked Christmas for me now for many decades too.

Yet re-reading Dylan Thomas’ ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales” produced a wave of nostalgia for my Christmas’ past when I was growing up in the valleys that rolled down to the “two-tongued sea” where Thomas spent his childhood.

For Thomas: “It was always snowing at Christmas.” Though it wasn’t.  The snows usually came in January.  We considered it lucky if we had a white Christmas – and occasionally we did.  It was always bitterly cold.

One Christmas it did snow, our family of six, who lived in Cardiff, had planned to drive to the nearby Valleys to spend time with grandparents. While the snow never ceased to fill us children with delight, to the parents it presented problems.

With just a coal fire to provide our warmth at home and then only when someone was there to light it, what was to become of the goldfish while we were away? The goldfish bowl had already half frozen over once before. The fish had survived but leaving them in sub-zero temperatures is not recommended?  There was the question of whether the car would start too. In the Christmas Eve excitement, with my father busy constructing gifts that had been supplied in parts, no one had thought to fill the car with anti freeze – the snow hadn’t been expected.

Nevertheless, intrepidly we carried on with our plans. With the goldfish in a screw-top jar and four shivering children huddled in the back seat under blankets, we crossed our fingers that the car would start. It purred into life and we were off on a journey that usually took an hour. We couldn’t wait. To Aberaman and more presents.

Cardiff is geographically low.  We were headed upward: the industrial valleys of South Wales famous for both their coal and iron-ore deposits are, as the name suggests, between mountains and we had some steep terrain to navigate -like the main street of Pontypridd, where the singer Tom Jones grew up.

It’s so steep that buses used to go around it only getting back onto the gradient at the very top, engines straining until the bus, with its nervous passengers, eventually went over the top. In retrospect, my father should have done likewise but having driven up this street many times before he was blasé and went straight up the middle.

We got half way. But the icy road afforded no traction whatsoever. The car slid sideways, it made two yards forward then three back. In the back, we squealed with delight and laughed so hard. This Christmas was shaping up to be the best ever. In the front my mother sat completely speechless while my usually abstemious father spoke words he shouldn’t have done on the Lord’s birthday.

Eventually reaching the top and flat ground everyone in the front seat heaved a collective sigh of relief while a voice in the back piped up:

“That was great, Dad. Can we do it again?

Dylan Thomas wrote: “There are always Uncles at Christmas.” And so there were.  My father was one of eight children. My favourite was my Uncle Cyril.

Cyril drank alcohol – in itself not unusual. Except in Wales there was a huge teetotal demographic grace of the non-conformist religion that had gripped the country in the previous century. Our family members went from the sublime to the ridiculous jumping from total abstinence to absolute excess and nothing in between

One Christmas night, after us children had gone to bed, there was a knock at our front door in Cardiff. It was Cyril. With neither party having a telephone, he had driven an hour from Penrhiwceiber (also in the valleys) where my paternal grandparents lived because an impromptu party had started that Cyril thought would be improper without his brother Royston and family.

That he had been drinking all day and drove a Mini Minor didn’t pose any problems for him. Four children were bundled into the back of the car in dressing gowns while the adults piled into the front. Seven is a lot of people to squeeze into a Mini Minor but Cyril would brook no arguments. We were going to Penrhiwceiber come hell or high water.

We, in the back, especially enjoyed the moment when the car became airborne as Cyril took it over a median strip in Cardiff’s Civic centre and we loved it when Cyril drove around roundabouts until we were giddy. Uncle Cyril was such good fun. I could never work out why he changed so much come morning.

When we arrived, the party was in full swing.

“Say, hello to your Aunty Blodwen,” my father said as I stepped in the front door. Although I’d never seen her before, apparently we were related. And there were more – a lot more – all were aunts, uncles or cousins.

“Doesn’t she look like her mother?” someone would comment before the hugging and kissing would ensue.

When the enthusiastic embraces became too much I’d take refuge on my Granddad’s knee, although I had to fight off my siblings and cousins. We all loved our Granddad. He was such a gentle, softly-spoken man, it’s difficult to fathom that he and his formidable, four-foot-ten-inch wife, my grandmother, were largely responsible for most of the rowdy lot there assembled.

We ate mince pies and drank home-made small beer, a soft drink similar to ginger beer made from stinging nettles with unstable characteristics that often saw bottles exploding. I was always sorry that I was never there when that happened.

There was skulduggery in the scullery. No children were allowed in there. It was where the sinners stashed their hard liquor. Dylan Thomas talks of the drinking of ‘parsnip wine’, I suspect some innocent vegetables had been similarly employed to produce that night’s hooch.

Everyone stood to do their item that night. Some sang, some recited poetry we all sang carols. “

“Always on Christmas night there was music” for Dylan Thomas and our family was no different

This Christmas I will spend with newer members of my family, and although in different climes, I hope that these occasions will inspire someone maybe in forty years time when they smell a mango or taste a glass of ice-cold pinot grigio to say “Remember the Christmas when…”

The walks up the San Cristobel hills, both in Santiago and Valparaiso was worth it, not just the view, but also for the smooching and kissing couples. The dominant religion is of course the catholic religion with the elders impressing on the young to preserve virginity and no sex before marriage. They might not have penetrative sex but everything else is pursued instead. The kissing and smooching of couples in public is almost nonstop and ‘de rigueur’ in public parks. All benches are occupied, and while we might just feed the pigeons or sea gulls back in Australia, in Latin America the parks and benches feed lust.

The San Cristobel Hills are alight and on fire all day but it is at dusk when couples that have found their way to the top are not just holding hands and gazing in each other eyes, but also find the salvation of love, lust and sexual  relief . There is straining against the inside of trousers, and swooning sobs hardly held back. All under the eyes of a giant religious statue of the Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception. Those countries are not just Catholic; the birth-control is firmly in the hands of the church or indeed in the hands of the couples straining against each other on those hills. Once married however, the couples are busy with the babies and children and one rarely see the marital consummated couples with babies straining anymore on those saturated hills of love.

San Christobel Hill

The other phenomena of both Argentina and Chile are the success of the American based Evangelical movement. They have taken a slice away from the lower classes of the Roman Catholic church,  and while we were there, witnessed several processions of people, with the usual eye rolling and hysterical expressions of religious fanaticism. Like in America, you get the sense, that they are not secular but intend on imposing theocracy on society. The Catholicism of South America, while losing some believers to Evangelism, will surely never turn to the accepted type of the maniacal and extreme right of US style of the dominant religion.

The return from Chile’s Valparaiso to Buenos Aires was on an overnight and lengthy bus-trip. We stayed again in the friendly and unimposing Hotel Diplomat, stayed a few more days, whereby we visited the enormous cemetery of La Recoleta. Now here is the ultimate of burial services. No plastic flowers or forlorn graveyards there. If a culture could be defined by how we look after our dearly departed than Buenos Aires or Argentina would be placed on top. Whole streets of multi storied mausoleums, with marbled statues and immaculately kept tombs. Whole books of verse carved out in stone or with gold leaf embellishments. The graves include many Presidents and of course Eva Peron.