The cautionary tale of Mrs Vanni

I've met / worked with / lived with / been Mrs Vanni.

She's boring.

Quality representation

From the Courier Mail November 28, 2006:

A FEDERAL MP angrily told a colleague he had "cut the throats" of better animals than him, during a fiery meeting of Coalition MPs yesterday.

Liberal MP Alby Schultz, who once worked as a slaughterman, levelled the threatening comment at Queensland Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce after being questioned about his plan to give men who pay child support the right to a DNA test.
Senator Joyce had told the meeting, chaired by Prime Minister John Howard, that the proposal was not in the interests of children.

In a verbal stoush that followed, a furious Mr Schultz allegedly called Senator Joyce a dickhead, before making the throat-cutting claim.

Sources said the altercation was broken up by Liberal hardman Senator Bill Heffernan, who himself was involved in an infamous dust-up with the outspoken Nationals senator last August.

Let 'er rip

Following overnight digestion of the 4.5kg Cole Report, an AWB executive facing charges allegedly said:

'The Government knew, and what about the UN? They knew everything', said one AWB figure. 'It's like Breaker Morant all over again. If I go to trial, then Downer will be the first witness called, that's a promise. My QC will rip him to shreds'.

click picture for legible view

The elephant in the room

I swear, I promise that when I started out on this story, I did not know it was going to end like this!






The Robur tea shop, where I think this happy scene takes place, was possibly in George Street, Sydney. I have lots more questions now...


Who are those people?

Why did all the women leave the table?

And why didn't an extensive search on 'elephant' turn up 'elephant's tea party'?

Memory like an elephant

Everybody loves an elephant, and some of the most enthralling stories my elders told me as a child involved encountering the great beasts in everyday, familiar settings. Often the stories would involve everything going along smoothly, until the clever elephant used the reach of its dexterous trunk to disrupt proceedings, usually in some inventive, illegal or slightly risque way.

My father saw a parading elephant reach out and steal lettuces from a green-grocer's display in Hurstville. (Great) Aunty May was in the crowd when an elephant removed a hat from the Mayor of Marrickville while he was giving a long speech in the 1920s and put it on a little girl. Grandfather, oracle of all things steam and rail, told me a story remarkably similar to this one posted by David B, Site Admin of the Railpage Australia and New Zealand Forum, on 16 Nov 2005:

My great uncle (who had 50 years with VR) told me of a particular circus train which had water problems. Not long into the journey the fireman noticed the tender was very low on water. They stopped at the first available place to take water and continued on their way. Not long after, the tender was low on water again. The crew couldn't find any leaks but couldn't understand why it was using so much water. They filled up again and kept going. It was only when the fireman looked back he saw the cause. Behind the loco was one of the abovementioned elephant wagons. Every now and again a trunk would appear out the end, open the lid of the tender, dip in, spray all the other elephants to keep them cool, then close the lid again!

So far, all I know about the Robur Tea elephant is that she worked with Wirths' Circus and that these photos, from the State Library of NSW, were taken in March 1939. The shop above is in Maroubra Junction, where she seems to be delivering a box of tea she has carried from the Robur Tea Company, possibly in the city. I'm keen for more information about the elephant, the campaign, and what happened on the day of this photo shoot. If you were around in 1939 and have a memory like an elephant, or if someone told you stories, no matter how vague, I would love to know more!

Official shade temperature 34.4

Full sun temperature at midday: 39.8
Temperature in closed car by mid-afternoon: biocidal.

Then a hot wind blew for hours. Poor oyster plant.

More pleasantly, such intense summer temperatures are supporting increased butterfly and bee populations in the front garden, and this feels like a major improvement over last summer.

I'm delighted to report that amongst the bees there are several native species, notably the beautiful blue-banded bee, shown here hard at work in her steel caps. Buddleia is starting to bud, and once the little six-legged darlings find that, I might have the early beginnings of a tiny sanctuary.

I've started putting out water, specially.

A great thrill on such a scorching hot day, when it was only possible to play amongst the plants during short bursts away from the couch, was finding a plump, healthy-looking caterpillar of unknown spp. Who will you become, little grub? Or who will swoop on you and predate before you pupate? I am still finding it difficult to get info on what species to expect, or to make special efforts to encourage, around here.

Gardeners, farmers, bushrats beware

Find out about the fierce, frightening, feral fire ant before you visit Queensland - or the ant finds its way down here, which it almost inevitably will as temperatures increase.




The site contains links to amusingly gruesome pictures including:
Close up of head of fire ant worker;

Small blisters or pustules form at the sting sites;

Fire ant stings on a calf's eyeball;

Fire ants stings on a baby's leg;

Well kept vegetable garden before arrival of fire ants; and

Above vegetable garden after arrival of fire ants.

The merchant banker

I love cricket and sometimes I like cricket crowds.

I love it when events collide and I am suddenly immersed in a filmic moment while all time slows down.

Today I had just left work and turned the radio in the ute on. Sometimes the radio doesn't work that well. First day of an ashes test and I had lost track of the score. Can't have that.

As I pulled up to a stop at the set of traffic lights closest to Parliament House, I reached over to turn up the volume, and give the wiring a bit of a kick.

An overgroomed young man looking a lot like a discredited media heir and reeking of aftershave pulled up alongside in a low-slung flash black convertible. You get a bit of that where I work.

At the precise moment that he came to a full stop and looked my way, the radio burst into full volume, and the cricket crowd started up one of my favourite chants:

You are - a wank - er

I could only look down upon him and smile.
Then I cacked myself laughing, all the way home.

red eye

This is about how red my eye has been for the last couple of days.

I look in the mirror at my chronically overheated workplace and notice I have a big pink triangle on my forehead.

It is an uncanny match for the birthmark borne by my great-niece.

It corresponds to the shape of my headache, and that makes me laugh.

the ageless project

The mission statement of the ageless project, this week's Blog of the Week is pretty straightforward:

We're sending the message that the personal, creative side of the web is diverse and ageless.

What I like is, it lists and links to a stack of personal, non-commercial blogs and websites, organised by the birthdate of the the author.

I'm partial to Don To Earth, by Donald Crowdis (born 1913): cool, mindful, considered.

I suspect Incendiary Granny (born 1920) and I could squabble amiably all night about presence in Iraq and the lionisation of the state of Israel, but there's some rich treasures buried in her blog, like this beautiful machine, and you've gotta love an eighty-six year old woman who counsels:

If you're a person who walks with a cane and you suddenly find yourself subjected to aggressive rudeness, remember that although you may be handicapped, you are not unarmed. Anybody messes with you, let them know they best step off or they'll feel the business end of your stick.

Hot, hot , hot: who will survive the summer?

It's been over 30 degrees all day, and apparently all day yesterday too. 'Cept yesterday had hot wind as well. Despite being largely absent I knew, because when I got home the oyster plant and the helichrysum that I keep in a hanging basket in an exposed site were limp and crisp respectively. No tragedy, because they're queens of recovery, and that's what they're doing as I type. And anyway, it's their job to tell me what's been going on while I'm stuck in the airless, windowless bunker.

Lots of flowers are fading now, or looking a bit exhausted from their ebullient spring display. But these blue beauties, cornflowers, are just hitting their straps.

Following close behind are some carnations, chocka with buds. I've only started to grow them for fun the last few years. I once grew them the cut-flower way, through horizontal goat-wire, the way that florists love. The technique, that also involves lots of disbudding, produces big straight-stemmed flowers with no scent. Not these. Their stems will be misshapen, and their flowers no bigger than a fifty-cent piece, but I can tell by the early starters that they will be powerfully scented and power through the drought.

Gunns shoot themselves in the foot

In December 2004, Gunns Ltd first initiated legal action in the Victorian Supreme Court against three environmental groups and 17 individuals, seeking $6.3 million damages for unlawful interference with its business. The case was struck out.

Gunns attempted to file again. The case was struck out.

Gunns attempted to file again. The case was struck out. The company was ordered to pay costs to the defendants.

Late yesterday afternoon, Gunns filed its fourth motion in relation to the same matter with the Victorian Supreme Court.

Strangely, although the case involves a number of high profile activists and politicians, and has received wide media coverage, Gunns has never seen fit to mention its litigation activities to its shareholders via an announcement to the ASX. Listing rule 3.1 specifies that:

Once a company is or becomes aware of any information concerning it that a reasonable person would expect to have a material effect on the price or value of the entities securities, the entity must immediately tell ASX that information.

Many companies make regular reports to the ASX on the progress of legal actions they are involved in - even tiny, straight forward ones. It quelches rumours and stops the punters getting anxious.

A number of factors have materially affected Gunns' share price since Dec 2004; the market is a complex game. However, since Gunns became a vexatious litigant, its share price has fallen 42% - in the middle of one of the biggest resources bull markets in ASX history.

Just to ram the point home, the second graph shows how they performed from the day they first listed right up until the month after they first went to court.

Slithering threat

Drunk driver threatens police with snake
AFP
November 14, 2006

AN angry motorist threatened police with a live snake after he was pulled over on suspicion of drink driving in the Northern Territory, police said.

The driver grabbed the unusual weapon off the road after being stopped in the rugged Northern Territory, the home of all manner of deadly creatures including a host of poisonous snakes and voracious crocodiles.

"The driver allegedly armed himself with a live snake, pointed the head of the reptile at them and threatened them," police said in a statement on the incident that occurred in Darwin on Saturday.

The motorist picked up the snake after officers who noticed him swerving along a street pulled him over for a breath test, which showed his alcohol level to be 0.131, over the legal limit of 0.08.

The officers told the man to drop the snake, but he ran into the bush still carrying the slithering threat.

The Runaways

77: they were about 18.

I was about 13 when I first heard them play the life-transforming ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-CHERRY BOMB!

JJ hadn't picked up its 3rd J yet - it was still broadcasting in AM, and I could only pick it up in Port from cloud skip, or hellishly late at night when the temperature dropped. On a bakelite radio, no joke.

They're back on my horizon because I only just found out that the drummer (Sandy West) died of cancer about a month ago.

And if you now feel like getting wasted here's your chance to celebrate a fine life well spent.

Come snow

Hee hee hee!

It's late November.
It's the southern hemisphere.

Happy birthday, rain-bearing ancestor - you spooky old coot.

This post marks the end of 'old man week'.

Taxi Driver

This week's Blog of the Week is Man of Lettuce. Adrian Neylan is a Sydney cabbie who drives inner-city night shifts, then comes home and blogs the highlights. Best thing is, Adrian has a very perceptive eye and an affable, laid-back style.

He's the driver you want to get if you've only just hit Sydney, or you've been there too long. Jump in his cab.

Be alarmed #2

As the youngest child of many in a house where everyone accumulated, but no-one ever threw out books, I had access, while trying to make sense of the world, to a Victorian childrens' story book full of weird little fables and fine line drawings. One of its more memorable cautionary tales concerned a very poor couple who lived in a tiny house in the country. The man, who cultivated frugal habits, began to tie his string collection together. Whenever he came across a new bit of binder twine, pudding string or parcel hemp, he would add it to his rapidly growing tangle of string.

The perils of this strategy were familiar, because in his widowed retirement, my railway grandfather took to splicing every bit of super 8 film he ever shot onto one huge reel. I liked seeing his fillums - the repetition of the familiar, the long, long shaky pans, the random jumpcuts, the climactic arrival of the promised 'new pictures of xxxxx'. Grownups hated them.

As anticipated, the frugal man in the story's obsession with string ruined his life. He grew overprotective, as the enormous ball attracted first great kudos and honour, and then string thieves. His wife left him, taking the family cow, when, even though she had grown gaunt and thin from the loss of the man's formerly productive farm effort, she could no longer squeeze past the string ball and through the front (and only) door of their tiny cottage. String man died a lonely and allegedly deserved death, crushed, body and spirit, by his runaway obsession.

This man, John Bain, made the world's biggest rubber band ball. It's now 5 foot high, took him and some helpers 5 years to assemble, and apparently cost $25,000 for the materials. Me, I can think of better things to do with that money.

This link takes you to tonight's reason to be alarmed: a Kafkaesque true story of air travel in the days of terror-phobia, wherein a small rubber band ball thrown casually into the hand luggage as an afterthought leads to detention, drug-testing, and a night in the clink for our hero.
[Flyer Talk link from Boing Boing].

Come rain

In 1985 I worked on a gardening gang with Frank, a Polish bloke who had lied about his age for some years to fend off retirement. He was very old, very knowledgeable and very canny about the weather and the workplace. A wage was worth more than the pension, so he wound down his days doing about the same amount of work in his backyard (which was a block away from the depot) as he did out in our patch - which included all the public parks and wastelands in 3 or 4 big suburbs. Sometimes a few of us tagged along to help him. He always treated me as his equal, regardless of age (50 year gap), gender, lifestyle, all that. His wife just thought I was weird, to work with men, but she fed me and gave me bottles of jam 'for later'.

Frank had a lot to say, but he rarely spoke full sentences in English - he used clusters of five words or less, and packed them with meaning using other tricks: world class comic timing, facial expressions, full body gestures. The longest sentence I remember him using regularly was:
'Slow down, girl: same money'.

Sometimes he would fold both arms over his shovel, point to the sky with his bristly grey moustache, and say 'come rain' matter of factly. Even when the sky was cloudless, it would be raining within half an hour. I never saw him get it wrong.

This morning, to my delight, it has come rain.

Saturday nights (all right for fightin')

My neighbourhood's been pretty stable and quiet for a while. The local kids are being good, staying off the road, and not doing too much in the way of stuff-smashing. There's an occasional outburst of Tourette-like swearing from a guy a couple of doors away, followed by door-slamming and high-speed take-offs, but it's never prolonged, and (while it annoys me that he inflicts his intense emotions on others without consent) it hasn't put me on 'someone's in trouble / time to call the coppers' alert for a long time. I think she left.

Today has been stinky hot, in a build-up kind of way. Not coincidentally there has been a bit of blueing and squabbling from a few different houses: enough to attract two visits from the constabulary (and counting).

I'm convinced that intense heat and blustery winds play their part; and I note the date- it's armistice day, a military anniversary, which invokes my childhood recollection that Anzac Day (aside from the prawns) was danger day.

Most of the flare-ups here today were around sunset / early evening. It's gone calm again now. A bit of cheery banter from over the road, some intermittent dogs, and occasional bursts of lovesick ballad from karaoke-guy, whose daughter is visiting. 'Bad to the bone' has come off constant rotation up the road.

Oops! Just when I thought all was calm, there goes a distant backfire, with respondent dogs. Despite (temporarily) living in the suburbs, I still think shotty first, carplay as a conscious 'oh,yeah, that's right' afterthought.

Look to the west, and rejoice.

Panic Gallery

This post documents some places where I have experienced panic attacks.



Senate car park - fire escape, APH October 2006

Conflagration!

Aries

This is a great day for putting your shoulder to that proverbial wheel and really firing on all cylinders where working matters are concerned. (SMH)

Meh! It was a day of waking up totally listless, rolling over, and pretending to be asleep or dead while the big fella prodded me in various places with a cold wet nose looking for a walk, and the little bloke tap-danced on my shoulders and licked me face all enthusiastic about the day- which I was clearly and belligerently not. I held my ground, and my eyes tightly shut. Rinny groaned and went back to his canvas bed, Salty huffed loudly and curled up tightly on on my head, to wait. And wait. And wait.

I'm pleased to announce that I eventually got it together and dragged myself off to work, but it was ten o'clock before I fired up the computer and plodded on with the Never-ending Chapter (4). I'm trying to thread a path through irreconcilable attitudes towards the use of hazard reduction burning, and the path is highly politicised and perilous.

One of the hot tips that I have received about dealing with listlessness and contagious miserablism is to cultivate the habit of seeking out the admirable and inspiring; at the very least to acknowledge it, since it's omnipresent.

One of this day's great delights, all too easy to walk past or drive a dozer over, is news (to me) of the discovery of up to 20 new species of orchid in Papua New Guinea.

America veers left (by a few degrees)

Democrats have taken control of the US House of Reps, and have a good show of seizing the Senate. This is a promising sign.

If our electoral results follow theirs as surely as the ASX follows Wall Street; Howard follows Bush; and a dog returneth to its own vomit, then it augurs very well for next year.

We've just got to survive long enough to get there...

This morning, our Prime Minister said this:

Quite honestly if we have to face the possibility of, for a temporary period, closing down a wetland in order to give people drinking water then I will support closing down a wetland.

and this:

I said yesterday and I repeat, for the electricity this nation needs, it’s still fossil fuels cleaned up and therefore dearer to use and nuclear power. But you won’t run power stations on windmills.

On Monday, our foreign minister is expected to sign the Indonesia and Australia Framework Agreement for Security Cooperation, which (amongst other things) will facilitate the development of a nuclear power industry in Indonesia. Indonesia, Mr Downer has possibly forgotten, is geographically unstable.

Stranger things happen at sea

From today's Sydney Morning Herald:

A cow has gone for a four-hour swim in the surf in a bizarre bovine spectacle before drowning off Queensland's coast.

The two-year-old Brahman-cross escaped from a nearby paddock during a muster at Elliott Heads, near Bundaberg, on Sunday and travelled 2km to where it was spotted by beachgoers paddling 300m out to sea...

"She jumped through the fence and raced down towards the ocean and that was the last they (the drovers) saw of her," Mr Atkinson [cow's owner] said today...

"She was probably a bit upset from the morning chase but why she went in the water I'll never know."

A crowd of more than 100 were drawn to the beach as word spread about the body surfing cow, which swam for three hours, coming to shore twice before returning to the waves.

Mr Atkinson and a friend eventually took a tinnie out to try to rescue the cow which was paddling in water around 7m deep but could not bring her to land. She eventually drowned from swallowing water.

University of Queensland school of animal studies lecturer John Gaughan said it was the first time in 20 years he had heard of such strange behaviour. Dr Gaughan, who researches cattle heat stress, said cows were good swimmers and often waded out into dams.

But he said to swim in the ocean for that long was bizarre. "If it was very hot it might have been just trying to cool off but it's unusual behaviour to actually go out and start swimming around the ocean," he said.

Meanwhile, in Dubai, this cow ran away to sea and survived. And in New Zealand, this swimming cow saved her farmer's life. Goddamn the Senate and the city! I miss cows.

Place your bets

Tomorrow's the first Tuesday in November.

My hot tip is Efficient.

Number 3, Railings, is up there, too.

Everybody wants to be a good judge of horseflesh. For a day.




On 16 November, 1962, the Australian Ballet held the opening night of its new performance, called 'Melbourne Cup'.

...loosely based on the running of the first Melbourne Cup in 1860, it tells of the story of a jackeroo newly arrived from England who, after a series of adventures and after falling in love with a debutante, places a bet on the winning horse, Archer.

The opening night cast featured Karl Welander as Archer's Jockey and Kathleen Gorham - as Archer.

Reasons to be cheerful # 1: the front yard

The first significant rain for - well, a good many months - fell on Thursday and Friday. While it was no drought breaker, it has had a stunning effect on the front garden, restored hope that I will get dahlias this summer, and is swinging the pendulum back towards 'keep planting'.

This is all good, because the front yard is not only a spirit-saver, but it has contributed, however slightly, towards taming the brat-pack and keeping neighbour-trouble at bay. Strangers stop to look at the plants, which is kind of nice.


These foxgloves are some of my favourites. Tough as guts, water hardy, resilient to most threats - and just beautiful, for weeks on end. As a bonus, they are tall enough to break up the suburban vista, yay! In this garden, they've also alerted me to the challenge of providing ladybird fodder, so after a bit of research, I have planted dill for the sweet lil' predators to move onto after the foxglove spikes have gone.


These are Aquilegia: 'Granny's Bonnets'. My Granny grew these, and foxgloves too, but I never saw her wearing either of them. To the left is a rock that my tow-truck neighbour gave me. I am self-appointed keeper of the lichen, and my mission is to keep it, and its friend, some moss, actively growing through the drought. Unsupported, they can go dormant for years. I can, too, but who really wants to do that again if you can help it? So I asked around on their behalf, and my discovery, from a canny local gardener who got the hot tip from an old bloke who ran a ride-on model railway (!) was: 'feed them sour milk and yoghurt'. I'm experimenting.

Numo: a girl and her hedgehog

This year-and-a-half long narrative of nurturing and delight in the prickly-other brings me utter joy.

What better to cook for your loved-one's significant birthdays than a cricket souffle, and of course (though it hadn't crossed my mind) if you live with a hedgehog, you end up with holes in your hand.

Google Game

The aim of the Google Game is to enter three search words and return the lowest number of hits. No results is no result, so the best combination of search terms you can have will produce one (1) hit. It's harder than it sounds.

So far my best score is two pages, which made me very curious about whose websites are (according to Google) the only ones in the world to simultaneously contain 'lacksadaisical', 'spoke' and 'lambast'.

The first site consisted entirely of the random-word gobbledygook that usually arrives as spam, until I hit 'cached' and discovered an abandoned blog. On closer inspection, there was no 'lacksadaisical' at all, just something lacking. Coincidentally - if that concept is valid- the last entry to that blog was made on my birthday.

The second site drops you into the middle of an ongoing discussion / dispute about the validity of the King James Version (bible translation).

No great joy for me in that particular articulation of a potentially fascinating debate, except that while checking that all the words were there, and that they were deployed coherently, I tripped over this:

I knew an immigrant from Italy who spoke broken English, and could not understand the modern translations of the Bible, yet he understood the KJV just fine. That might be an abberation except that I seem to read similar accounts elsewhere of people with limited knowledge of English, who understood the KJV better than modern translations.

I've taken that comment away to mull over it for a while.