Southern Summer Solstice 2015

Another solar rotation is upon us.  The year has seen mega-profits for the global armaments industry; an increase in the number of immensely wealthy people on the planet; and a burgeoning of poverty, homelessness and dispossession.  Merry Christmas, one and all!

I do, however, see a glimmer of hope in the form of Jorge Bergoglio, Pope Francis to many.  I’ll bet money you never thought you’d hear this particular recovering low church protestant say the following about a pope but I like the man!  Francis has a message for us all and it’s not just about Jesus, it’s about common sense which is largely what Jesus was about anyway.

Glenn & Peter on Sackler Crossing in Kew Gardens

But screw the planet, let’s get back to us!  It was a big year which commenced with the repairs from last year’s horrible anus finally being complete.  It took 16 months to build this house; 8 seconds for a tree to crush part of it; then 8 more months to set things right again but it’s done and the best bit is nobody was hurt as could so easily have been the case.

We were fortunate enough to score yet another year of speech therapy for Peter at St Joseph’s Hospital in Auburn.  The people there are caring and kind and they keep us under their collective wings.  The therapy isn’t about actual speech, it’s about the cognitive elements of speaking – organising thought, laying down and retrieving information – all things Peter has struggled with since the surgery.  When I count my blessings, and I do so every day, St Joseph’s and those there-in are second from the top of the list.

First place, as always, goes to Jan and Tony who continue to make our lives work.  You are probably aware that Peter was abandoned by most of his family in a particularly brutal way and at the worst possible time, an exercise in pure evil.  It was my amazing sister and brother-in-law who stepped in to fill the void and continue to do so.

Peter’s lovely Aunty Joan also helps, albeit from a distance.  She lives on the Gold Coast and we enjoy going up and visit her.  A northern sojourn around May has become our habit, Queensland being just too hot for us in summer or even spring these days.  You’ll find more about that in A Postcard from the Gold Coast (June).

So on to the highlights of the year.  Most link to previous blogs should my various synopses whet your appetite for more look back in – cawthorne54.blogspot.com.au

Somebody Else's Mouth – A Cautionary Tale of Gum Disease (April)

I underwent a gingivectomy in April – an oral circumcision of sorts or a gum-lift if that thought bothers you.  I was sure that any excess flesh was all removed in late September 1954 but not so, there was more to come at the other end!  Medications, genetics, shear bad luck, or a combination of all three caused my gums to grow to the point where periodontal treatment became impossible and gum disease was rife so under the knife I went.

This was supposed to be a relatively simple procedure that would take around 2.5 hours.  Imagine my surprise when I awoke 5.5 hours later with my face packed in ice and a catheter up my penis!  My private room had the Middle Harbour view I’d been promised but wasn’t big enough to swing even a very small cat.  It was, however, just big enough to contain the surgeon, the surgeon’s assistant, the anaesthetist, a nurse and a wardsman who were all packed tightly around my tiny hospital bed, poking, prodding and otherwise adjusting me and applying more ice to reduce the swelling and distortion.  That was when one of my now famous claustrophobic panic attacks set in.  If you want to see me lose all shame and dignity just confine me in a small space or crowd over me.  It was ugly!

The recovery time was outrageous and as I write in late November, my mouth is still not my own.  My gums no longer bleed but my bite has changed to the point that chewing my fingernails of ripping open a bag with my teeth is an utter impossibility and much of my actual ‘chewing’ now involves pushing food up against the roof of my mouth with my tongue.

Ergo:  If you have gum disease do something about it – don’t leave it till you need surgery!

Return of the Native (September & October)

England no longer swings like a pendulum do, although you do see Bobbies two-by-two, many of them now carrying machine guns, particularly outside Westminster Abby or the Tower of Big Ben.  There were no rosy red cheeks on the little children, just iPhones and the like.

I won’t revisit old ground here because it’s all covered in the 10 fairly thorough Return of the Native blog postings which precede this one but allow me to just list the highlights:

·         Reconnecting with our very special friend, Lin and meeting her lovely Westie, Piper.

·         Visiting the Yorkshire village of Cawthorne which turned out to be anything but “Paper bag in middle of road”.  It’s actually quite flash and boasts a very smart ‘gastro pub’.

·         Experiencing Durham – a most beautiful old university town, the third oldest after Cambridge and Oxford.

·         Accidentally standing in the very location of a thrilling yet scary childhood storybook image of the railway tracks and viaducts around the Castle Keep in Newcastle.

·         Very intentionally riding a train hauled by my all-time favorite locomotive, Sir Nigel Gresley, a replica of which was my first (and still treasured) Hornby Dublo 3 Rail engine.

·         Spending three nights at Lindisfarne on Holy Island.  Those monks were into S&M!

·         Spending three more nights on a canal which saw me develop an entirely new skill set I’ll never again use.  Although having said that, anyone for a houseboat on the Murray?

·         Exploring gardens, glorious gardens!  And fields of green – Sting’s song played in a loop in my head as we motored across beautifully lush landscapes!

·         Climbing castles – functioning, semi-functional and abandoned.  They’re everywhere!

·         Seeing Lara and Nikos in Cambridge and meeting their son Yiannis for the first time.

·         Touching the door to Stephen Hawking’s actual office – the Holy See of Science!

·         Visiting the Thames Barrier – a most amazing piece of engineering!

·         Finding the place where the rotten prison hulks were moored on the Thames, and the very spot where the convicts were loaded for transportation to Australia.

·         Seeing The Book of Mormon – the BEST musical of our lives!  Love it, love it, LOVE IT!

·         Delighting in the Palace of Westminster – mother of our own parliament and a cornerstone of democracy.

·         Seeing the Rosetta Stone and Elgin Marbles at the British Museum.

·         Paying homage to Harrison’s Clocks at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.

·         Not knowingly seeing a single member of the Royal Family although I did visit a toilet previously used by the Queen, my second Royal Flush, the first being in Canberra.

·         And speaking of bogs and old queens – photographing the public toilet in Soho where shock-jock and all-round bottom-dweller, Alan Jones, was arrested trolling for gay sex.

It goes on so look back at the blogs if you haven’t already.

The Demise of the Mad Monk

What sets our Westminster System of government apart from the Congressional System is that when the mass of the population finally realise their prime minister is slightly madder than Rasputin, you don’t have to go down the American route and assassinate them.  You just get another one and we finally did.  I was dancing in the streets of Durham when I heard the news.  The locals had no idea what it was all about but happily joined in nevertheless. 

I’m, yet to be convinced that Malcolm Turnbull is much more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing (sorry about the wolf slur, Nancy) but at least we’ve seen an end to Abbott’s bizarre and entirely self-serving “captain’s calls”.  And how ironic that Frau Battenberg refused to allow him to “frighten a little mouse under her chair” when he recently travelled to London expecting to do exactly that!  She was probably as pleased as I am to see his arse-end after he tried to set her grandson up with his daughters.  What a national embarrassment was that?!

And in conclusion…

We have shared yet another year with Kevin, the amazing cat-shaped being who is our constant companion and sometimes comfort.  Kev will be turning 16 in February, old enough to get his learner’s permit so if you’re out and about on the roads best watch out!

The Significant Women – Sylvia, Hazel, Margaret, Oodgeroo and Truganini – have been a great source of enjoyment for us as well as Jan and Tony.  I can highly recommend chooks for therapy as well as eggs.  I feel my bloody pressure drop whenever I’m with them.

And finally, our three cold-blooded co-residents are all well as are the multitude of fish, frogs and tadpoles which inhabit our ponds and gardens although there is a visiting kookaburra who does his best to keep the aquatic population under control – we call him the Angel of Death!

Stay well, everyone.  We look forward to being part of your lives and having you in ours over the coming 12 months.  Try to tread lightly upon the Earth and spread joy as you go.

Much love

Kevin, Glenn & Peter (Lyle to some)

Click on Kev for A Taste of England 2015

Return of the Native - Part 10 - The Finale

Things I've found particularly memorable or peculiar - in no particular order - Part 2

I'm not precious about airline food, and anyway, I lived in college for four years.  It always reminds me of an Expression of Interest though, not quite the full Curriculum Vitae.  It also makes me think of the lolly chemist shop my childhood neighbour, Sue Taylor, got for Christmas one year.  I'm amazed we didn't end up prescription drug abusers or perhaps she did!  Anyway, North America aside, airline food really isn't that bad and the Canadians do at least try but I suspect they're constrained by some kind of 'make-no-effort' free-trade agreement they have with the US.

Tattoos are rampant among men of all ages and classes in the UK.  I would have said bad tattoos but that's tautological.  The ever practical British don't get a sharp, well defined tattoo though, they go straight for the mohair look; a blurry, aged tatt, the kind you'd expect to see on a 60 year old who's smoked too much, drank too much and had too much sun for his entire life and also in utero.

Then there are bad haircuts which don't have to become a permanent affliction but sometimes are.  Shaved sides and spiky bits are popular, particularly in conjunction with fuzzy tattoos.  I like to call this the 'unemployable look'.  When we were at the amazing outdoor museum in Beamish I spotted a family where the young father and all five boys under the age of seven sported the same savage hairstyle with speech patterns and vocabulary to match.

Parenting tip from a teacher of 35 years experience:  If your son has ADHD he's already different enough.  Giving him a punk haircut and allowing him to dress as a superhero isn't going to help him fit in. 

Haircuts and tatts aside, people in England are delightful and generally quite polite and helpful.  I stopped to talk with fruit barrow men, station attendants, shop keepers, bar staff, taxi drivers, whoever was up for a chat and it was all good.  Sadly, they were sometimes grateful for a little time and  acknowledgement - tourists can be rather rude and we saw plenty of that too.

Accents intrigue me.  There was an absolutely charming young woman at the canal side pub in Yorkshire, the very part of England from where my father's family originated.  She was pleasant to a fault but I didn't understand a single words she said and I was an ESL teacher for 20 years!  I just smiled, nodded and said positive things which seemed to work.  Interestingly enough though, everyone understood us, for which I credit soapies like Neighbours and Home and Away.

By contrast, we had lunch at a rather excellent Turkish restaurant in Islington where I understood the staff perfectly just as I did all the Muslim-from-wherever station staff on the London Underground.  Of course this could be a product of living in the Municipality of Auburn for 15 years.

The second language of London is Italian.  The first is Russian.  English probably comes in fourth after Spanish.

The London Tube is freaky small and crowded - built for Hobbits who crave intimacy.  When she was Minister for Transport, luminary NSW Deputy Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, approved a tube-style metro to run from the urban fringe at Rouse Hill to Chatswood without ever actually understanding what a metro is.  They run no further than 15km from a city centre because they're designed to carry more passengers standing than sitting.  Sydney will eventually have a world first with a 45km long line that won't even actually reach the city for another 20 years.  Nice one Glad!

British money is a bit mysterious because, apart from the coins, there is actually no such thing.  Notes are issued by the Bank of England but these are primarily for use in England and Wales.  Three other banks issue notes in Scotland and four in Northern Ireland.  Then the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey and a number of Crown Colonies have a go at it as well.   The only things they have in common is that they all have the same value and they're ugly; made of paper; people write on them; and the same denomination note does not necessarily correspond in size between banks.

The coins don't have numerals on them.  The value is written in text, very small, difficult to read text.  And don't expect to tell them apart by design; when the die was cast it wasn't cast very firmly.  There's something there but it's difficult to tell what even with glasses on and I know that because I had to wear them to sort change.  I was pleased to come home to colourful, clean plastic notes that actually fit my wallet; and coins with numbers on them - cumbersome and unnecessarily large though they are.  It's time to downsize the shrapnel as New Zealand did some years ago.

A good English cream tea is extraordinary - well worth every kilojoule and each yummy gram of fat!  It will make the best Australian Devonshire tea you've ever had look like it came from McDonald's!  Being a devotee of all things from King Island Dairy, I thought I knew cream, but not English clotted cream with a skin of butterfat on top.  English cream teas are quite literally to die for except at Harrods where they're nothing terribly special but are shockingly overpriced as everything is in that wankers' paradise.

And speaking of wankers, let's consider the House of Lords for a moment.  When we visited the Palace of Westminster we took the standard guided tour plus the House of Lords Cross-dressing Auto-erotic Asphyxiation Option which was well worth the additional £20.  The number of hereditary lords now eligible to sit in Parliament has been reduced from several million down to just 92 but at the end of the day the whole house is just unelected swill who can do nothing but delay legislation which eventually passes despite them.  So what's the point?  Are you beginning to see why Monty Python's Flying Circus isn't so much funny as simply ironic?  Any American folk who might happen to be reading this do look up that last word.  It's not generally well understood in your part of the world and almost always falls terribly flat when applied as it quite possibly has here.

And last, but certainly not least, we have the Almost People's Republic of Scotland.  Full marks to that Trout woman and her SNP for very nearly destroying the economies of two countries whilst driving a few more rusty nails into Europe's coffin.  Then there's the global flow-on to consider but SNP voters were too busy thinking about how they can have cheap healthcare and free tertiary education.  Oh, hang on, they already have both of those, unlike the English.  But it's not over yet, in their desperate bid to turn Scotland into a cold-climate version of Portugal, the SNP has given 7 year-olds the vote.  That's why I couldn't help but stand on the England-Scotland border facing north and yell "Fuck you, Jimmy!"

Now, is there anyone I haven't offended?  Equity is important to me so I do hope these ten blogs have provided something just a little distasteful for everyone.  If not please let me know and I'll do my best to expand the repertoire next holiday but for now I must bid you all a very jolly "Cheerio!"

Return of the Native - Part 9

Kew Gardens

I was expecting something more intensive from this world famous botanic garden and was initially a little disappointed by its park-like presentation.  It's a fusion between Sydney's Royal Botanic Garden and Centennial Park but once you adjust your thinking to the size of the place it's all there.  

Glenn & Peter on the beautiful Sackler Crossing at Kew Gardens

We were disappointed to discover that there are no longer any orange trees in the Orangerie and probably haven't been for at least a century.  It's now a cafe and function centre.  The Princess of Wales Conservatory does, however, have a good selection of the very same Australian natives we planted in our front yard - all under glass as I suppose they must be in a cooler climate.

It's almost worth going out to Kew just for the quaint village around the station.  That's Kew Gardens, OK - not Far Kew!

The British Museum

This place is absolutely rotten with plunder, all classy stuff that's very tastefully presented.  Until I saw them, I thought the Elgin Marbles should be returned but hey, fuck Greece!  They'd be rubble by now had they remained in Athens, the British saved them, they belong in London.

One of the Elgin Marbles

The Rosetta Stone was my actual must-see but unfortunately it's everyone else's as well.  My tip is save yourself the stress of the crush and go look at the Rosetta Stone memorabilia in the nearby gift shop.  You can get mouse mats, USBs, mugs, magnets, foam stress blocks, scarves, ties, pencils, pens, cuff links, broaches, paperweights, wall plaques, device rechargers, wooden postcards, regular postcards, notepads, key rings, tea towels and so much more.  It's like Jesus stuff at the Vatican or Mickey Mouse at Disneyland - same-same.

Glenn with the actual Rosetta Stone

We went to the classy museum shop though and bought a very smart piece of work by a master British glass blower, something that was worth standing in line at Heathrow to claim back the GST we paid.

The National Portrait Gallery

If you're short on daylight hours, the National Portrait Gallery closes late on a Thursday and Friday - and they have a bar in the foyer with a bare-cheated drag DJ who very much groves to his own beat.  We walked about casually sipping white wine and looking at "Art sweetie, art!" to quote the extraordinarily quotable Edina Monsoon.  And I must say, I gave the drag DJ a run for his money in my Hawaiian shirt and pink shorts amidst all the après-office London suits.

Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat

Trafalgar Square and there about

We somehow managed to leave this for the last day.  The tourist and shopping precincts of London are just so disturbingly busy that I don't think this was an accident.  Trafalgar Square is essentially a statue of a man on a very high pole and lots and lots of buses that go round and round, most of them red and double decker.  It was also being set up for a live broadcast of the following day's England v/s Australia rugby league game that I was apparently supposed to care a out.  Too funny!  

Trafalgar Square

 St Martin-in-the-Fields is nearby and they do lovely lunchtime concerts for just a donation if you choose.  You can also enjoy lunch in the crypt with lots of dead people - much like a weekday in any RSL club or bowlo right around New South Wales. 

With Yoda I am

I was on a quest to find the statue of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (a particular hero of mine) which is somewhere in the Temple District.  We found the Brunel Catering Company and a lot of smart but largely lightless residences with lovely private gardens but no Issy.  Never mind, Peter was in 7th Heaven when he discovered the Twinings Tea Company where you can try and buy every blend they produce at double the supermarket price - and he did! 

Peter outside the Twinings Tea Shop

The Wibbly-Wobbly Bridge

We were heading for the Tower Bridge then on to Wapping - simply because the name of the latter amuses us both in an Alf Garnett kind of way - but time was running short so we hit the Wibbly-Wobbly Bridge.  These days, this tends be known more and more by its correct name, the Millennium Bridge, now that its bugs have been ironed out and stabilised.  It's a great location from which to view much of London: St Paul's; the Tower Bridge; the Shard; the Walkie-Talkie; scads of Thames-born detritus; the stunningly ugly Tate Modern; and the reborn Globe Theatre.  There's also a plethora of tiny figures pressed into the walkway and you can get your own back on the ping-pong volley of completely directionless Londoners and tourists by stopping to photograph them all - it's huge fun! 

Art on the Wibbly-Wobbly Bridge

Back to Canada Water for the pack up

We left the classic parts of London till last and ran out of time so will have to come back, that's all there is to it.  We did everything on the list though:  Karl Marx; the Rosetta Stone; the Thames Barrier; the site of the convict hulks; all of the London transport options; The Book of Mormon; and much much more.  Then there was the North: Lindisfarne; masses of castles both ruined and functioning; beautiful gardens; the North Yorkshire Moors Railway with my absolute favourite engine, Sir Nigel Gresley; Hadrian's Wall; that terribly special railway viaduct around the castle in Newcastle; the canal boat adventure; and of course, Lin and wee Piper.  We have had a wonderful time! 

Farewell Canada Water - Farewell London - for now!

So it’s more of the same next time plus Iceland.  Look out for us!