Titch

Hels wrote a post today about Titch. That is 19th century funny man Little Titch, a kind of music hall performer who went on to greatness and riches. His walk inspired was copied by Charlie Chaplin. I have watched some Youtube clips of him performing, and he was very clever.

Some of you may remember back to earlier days when people were affectionately called Titch or Little Titch. I had forgotten about the name. It was usually given to someone who was shortish or petite. So interesting to learn of the origins of the name. Thanks Hels.

A friend of Ex Sis in Law is called Minnie, because she is so tiny. It is not her name. Perhaps we should call her Titch.

I don't want to see the word bonza in comments, but what other words can you remember from  your childhood that are no longer in use?

What is happening with family?

Well, Mother after her hospital stay came out increasingly frail. I expect that is why they wanted her to do physical therapy while she was there. She mostly refused and only went twice. She went back to ABI Brother's home and she concedes herself that she needs to sell her home. She is back to getting meals on wheels, at a cost. She doesn't like ABI Brother's cooking. This Tuesday I took Mother out for lunch at McDonalds and then to the doctor's. The doctor has to call Canberra to be able to prescribe her strong pain killing medication and while she wants four tablets a day, he will only give her three a day. I am afraid for my mother because she can barely walk, barely managing with a walking frame and a walking stick. She only tells us what she wants us to know, but as I see it, her in home care support is pretty hopeless.

After the doctor visit, she asked if I could drive her to the masseur where she had an appointment booked on Thursday, when R would take her. Can't you telephone them? No, they don't answer. They are busy massaging. She tried to change the appointment to later, to her suit her, but I chipped in with 1pm would suit R best. That should have taken a minute, but she buttered up the staff for five minutes with tales of when her late partner used to attend the practice in a different location, and how wonderful they were, and his masseur sent flowers for his funeral. She went on to ask if the massage would be gentle, and of course they reassured her it would be. She said to me, don't bother with getting my walking frame out. I will use my walking stick. She went up the four stairs, with me behind her to catch her if she fell. When we left, I said to her, use the ramp. What ramp she said? She never looks for the best ways to do things.

Lordy, she did not mention her bowels once today. A miracle. ABI Brother's place is not set up for an old person.There aren't support handles in the shower. She doesn't have her emergency alarm. She is waxing and waning between going home and whatever other option there may be. While it is not easy for any of us to see her like this, it can't be easy for her either. She must know she is transitioning to an aged care place.

Hippy Niece with her father, Tradie Brother. and the twins headed north to Step Mother's near Echuca for a weekend. They had a good time. Tradie Brother posted a photo of the coloured twins crawling over Father's grave in Nathalia. What fun. All I heard was that Step Mother said the twins were very noisy. Step Mother, in spite of having two children, is not really a mothering kind of person. Give her a dog or cat, then she is just brilliant. Lordy, babies cry. Who would have thunk that.

Oldest Niece had still not send us a thank you note/sms for the hundreds of dollars we gave her for he engagement/30th birthday, just to equalise to her siblings and how we have bailed them out in the past. She did host us for a nice lunch though, with other family. It was fun day, but her new lounge suite and dining suite had not arrived. And she has bought a new Jeep. Money runs through her fingers like water. Which is fine as long as the money is coming in. I expect it always will for her. Like Ex Sis in Law, her mother, she is not work shy and her partner seems to earn well.

ABI Brother, acquired brain injury, knows how to work the system quite well, and received an $100,000 payout from Work Cover for his bad back, which is bad. After solicitor costs, he gets $80,000.  He sent two bunches of flowers to the respective female staff at the law firm, who he thought were very kind and caring. One called and spoke to Mother to thank him for the flowers. Whether his back problem was caused by work or his terrible accident, who knows. WorkCover pays for one hour of house work each week and one hour of gardening. Mother tries to play queen of the manor and order the cleaner and gardener around, but they take little notice but are also so kind to Mother too.

Since I wrote the above a couple of days ago, ABI Brother was called into the office and told he was no longer needed at work. His work place has been quite good to him over the years, and to R and myself, this came as no surprise. He was taking a day off a week and costing the company money. He could not really do the job very efficiently that he had recently been allocated. Maybe he will get some redundancy money. Mother, according to R, is nagging him endlessly. Like my father did, and her children do, Mother's nagging kind of disappears into a dead space. It is only the non blood relatives that really hear it. ABI's gardener and house cleaner are no more.

Sister cancelled their booked stay at our place (which thankfully shut up R moaning about Sister staying), and instead they just visited us for lunch for Little Jo's 11th birthday. Sister and Little Jo went on to play bowls with the Rainbow Family organisation. We had a very nice lunch at Sandbar in Middle Park and played the card game, Exploding Kittens, which was our gift to Little Jo for her birthday. $30 dollars plus postage for about forty printed playing cards? It is a good game though. It was played fairly, and Little Jo won. I thought I was in a prime position with a cancelling exploding cat card and a card to negate Little Jo's cancelling exploding cat card. She was the only one who had played it before.

I think Tradie Brother went through a depressive period when, only reading between the lines, was sacked from his old job for being so hungover when he turned up at work. He has never spoken honestly to anyone about it, but we read between the lines. He ran out of money, and borrowed $2000 from ABI Brother. Then he could not remember that he had only paid back $1,000, not the $2,000. Such stuff is uncomfortable for families, and I sided with ABI Brother as he keeps records, and he was right. The money was repaid.

But after some time, Tradie Brother found a new well paid job, and he still is getting income from his tenant in the granny flat and his boarder. So, maybe it is time for me to remind him that he owes me $500 of Mother's accumulated costs, that is her health insurance and admittance to hospital cost. Her health fund is good and paid for everything else aside from the $300 admittance fee. He is much happier now he is back at work.

Nephew and his wife are doing fine in their seaside surfing country town and they have a new dog. We are yet to visit.

Mother is our prime focus at the moment, yet we have no control over her. She will do what she will do. Frail as she is, her mind is as sharp as a manipulative tack.

The world moves on

Finally a kind of social media online organisation has put two and two together and come up with four. The leading one, Facebook never has, and neither has any other. Or is it just a standard ad by Paypal and too bad if homophobes are offended by it? You have to walk in a gay person's shoes to know what it like as assumptions about yourself are made daily. You have to walk in anyone's shoes to know what life is like for them.

R and myself went into town for dinner tonight to our newest fave Thai restaurant. We have only been out about for dinner half a dozen times this year since our Late Friend died. We left home at 6.15 and caught the tram to town, ate and we were home by 8.00. The foreign type Asian waiter who served us made a good call, when in perfect Australian asked us, do you dudes live in the city. No, St Kilda Road. Why don't you come around for a drink sometime, and we gave him our address. The last sentence is a lie, but at times my imagination works too much.

However, I am quite chuffed at this ad. Whether it is personally directed or not, and it not really that specific, like they could be just good mates (insert raised eyebrows emoticon),  I think it is a good and affirming ad by Paypal for gay people. And before any of you suggest it, I have not bought anything gay related and paid for it with Paypal........or have I? No, I am sure not.

Out and about in Paris Pt 1/2

I can't say a lot about these photos as what I knew at the time, I have forgotten ten years later, not that I knew a great deal. The photos were taken two cameras ago and are not great. In this first post, mostly from a coach, it is a reminder of the beautiful city of Paris. Eurostar terminus in Paris is Gare du Nord. I suspect it might be the most impressive Parisian station.

A madame with son chien. With knowledge of its reputation for dog droppings on the street preceding our visit, we did not see any, but we did not stray from tourist areas.

The Louvre, I think. No, I am sure. There was something controversial about President Mitterand and the glass pyramid, many years ago.

Nice fountain.

I guess red awnings are common at restaurants and cafes, but these look familiar from one of either Walt's or Ken's posts.

That arch.

That roundabout.

That tunnel.

The Eiffel Tower wasn't ready for us, so we went for lunch.

A lovely lunch with great company on a boat on The Seine.

Some old church?

Another old church? Maybe one of them is Notre Dame?

The river bank was on the left, so it must be the left bank. But then when returning to our docking point, I changed my mind.

Maybe this is Notre Dame?

This rather does my head in. Statue of Liberty and Eiffel Tower in one place. The photos will be a bit better in the next Paris post. Happy to increase my knowledge of Paris in your comments.

Myki Madness

BAD is still in Barcelona. Let's hope no one takes her to a Spanish gay bar.

Today's post was supposed to be of photos of Paris, but photo posts are harder work than just ranting with my fingers rattling the keyboard.

I know what some or your cities' public transport stored value cards are called. The names make little sense to me, with only the Octopus Card with spread tentantacles making any sense at all. Victoria's is called Myki. Maybe there is some sense in the name, My Key, to public transport.

For some weird reason, in Victoria our Myki cards expire after three years and they have to be replaced. Three years ago,  R had to replace his Myki so he went to Flinders Street Station to do so. It was painful.

If you catch a tram in Melbourne, you do not have to touch off with your Myki. You do on buses and trains. The reason is that it would cause great delay to trams as everyone touched off as they leave a tram. Our trams are very busy vehicles and depend on moving with minimal loading and unloading delay. Did you hear that that? No need to touch off on a Melbourne tram. Yes, looking at you Farm-ily.

So, R did not touch off his Myki on the tram when he went to Flinders Street Station, but to replace his Myki, he needed to touch it off. Who would have guessed that? He was sent in a train barrier and then out again. Because he was 'in the paid area', for less than 15 minutes, he would not be charged.

The rest of the process neither of us can remember.

It was time to renew his Myki again. He did touch off on the tram to ensure a smooth process. The exchange from the old to the new was no problem, until we got home. He was told by the clerk (in an autocratic manner, I say that clerk is pronounced as clark on my blog) that he would have to change his auto card top up details with the number of his new Myki. Fine, we will do that online.

He spent half an hour trying to do so, and I spent half an hour trying to do so, and there seems no way to do such a simple thing at the Myki website, but we couldn't.

Now we have had a computer and been connected to the internet since about 1996, so we are not really people who don't know how to turn on a computer. Nevertheless, we are stumped. I can only think there might be a time allowance for the things to update at Myki. If not, it will be an old fashioned phone call to the Myki org, who are always very helpful. We think the same thing happened the last time.

I will say though, with auto top up, normally our Myki cards work without a problem. But what is the need to replace our cards after three years? It is nonsense. I know our London Oyster Cards will work the next time we are in London, as long as they have credit, and I know they do, and that is surely five years after we last used them.

Our train system grew and then shrunk

BAD is in Barcelona.

How much work must have gone into this animated graphic. Just brilliant, about the expansion and shrinkage of Victorian Railways. You begin to see it start to disappear in the 1970s and increased greatly after the Lonie Report in the 80s. Some time earlier in England came the Beeching Report, which lead to the closure of many railway lines.

So, go to the above website and you may have to click animate on the left.

I don't think an animated map has been made for New South Wales, but here is a static map for Sydney folk to see when your nearest station was opened. Included is the date when each station opened. Nice work by someone.

Below is a map of Melbourne's trains system. Our naming of lines is absolute rubbish because they keep changing the name. Both London and New York do line names very well, with London having names for lines and the name doesn't change, and New York names their lines with letters such as the A Line, not terminus names as Melbourne foolishly does. Nevertheless, I think our train map is easier to follow than Sydney's. Frinstance, how do I get to Hornsby. I catch the T1 line, but T1 goes three different ways. How do I know? Not that I really want to go to Hornsby.

Ok, no map of Melbourne. It is too hard to find the right one. I've spent enough time on it. But to give you a taste of what I mean, the St Albans line became the Watergardens line as the suburban system was extended, and is now the Sunbury line. The Epping line became the South Morang line and is about to change names again. It is so silly.

Go to this link and see how Victoria's country train system expanded and then contracted. The animated map is just a brilliant piece of work. Yes, I linked to it above, but I can't be bothered editing any more. The large gap on the right is the mountainous Great Dividing Range. For travellers, the final map is not as good as it looks, as a number of lines are slow freight lines, slow because of neglect. 

A Shocking Crime

Make no mistake about it. Shocking crimes of active and passive negligence were committed in London preceding, during and after the Grenfell Tower flats went up in a spectacular blaze of fire last year. I have added the reporting of the investigation by The Guardian to my RSS feed.

It is almost impossible to understand how this could have happened. Given where we live, in a highrise building, anything like this is of great interest to me.

Every official department failed. The local council who was in charge. The local government's hired minions. The government. Builders. Architects, and worst of all the Fire Brigade. Having mentioned the Fire Brigade is not a reflection on the extraordinary bravery and self sacrifice of the fire fighters. They were ill prepared and not even vaguely properly trained for this type of fire, never mind their lack of equipment and failed communication devices. But so many firefighters put their own lives at risk to rescue people, and rescue people they did. Nevertheless, 74 people died. That is shocking. I think this one report of one day of the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire kind of sums up everything you will read about the firefighters efforts.

I've never seen any reports about the 999 workers who were receiving calls from residents in the tower block. What must it like be for them to be talking on the phone to residents and them saying that help is on the way, as the person just dropped off the phone because they were being burnt or smoked to death.  The stuff of nightmares. (subsequently I have heard evidence from some 999 call takers)

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jul/04/grenfell-tower-firefighter-inquiry

A firefighter at Grenfell Tower prepared to die when his oxygen almost ran out during the attempted rescue of a 12-year old girl because the fire lift failed, the public inquiry has heard.

Christopher Secrett, a crew manager at North Kensington fire station, placed himself in a corner of the smoke-logged stairs, so his body would not be in the way if he died, and tried to text his mother, the inquiry heard.

Secrett described how he was responding to a call for help for Jessica Urbano Ramirez on the 20th floor and had climbed with colleagues through thick smoke and extreme heat up 14 storeys.

They should have been able to take control of the lift but that failed and carried them only six storeys. If it had worked his air would not have run out and this was “one of the major faults” at Grenfell, he said.

Radio communications between firefighters in the tower also failed, he said. “I knew we were in trouble,” he told the inquiry. “It was just too hot and I was running out of air.”

Jessica was found dead on the 23rd floor.

Secrett’s testimony came on a day when the horror of what faced the firefighters in the early hours of 14 June 2017 became clearer than ever.

They described bodies falling from the building, including one that hit a firefighter and another whose leg came away from his hip when firefighters tried to move him.

John O’Hanlon described the scene as “absolute carnage” and like a war zone, likening it to 9/11. “We noticed somebody had jumped and landed on the playground,” the firefighter said.

“I had seen a blur and heard a thud. It was going so fast I knew it wasn’t a piece of debris. He landed around 10 metres from me.”

Secrett said he saw the same man lying in a garage where he had been put. His separated leg was next to him where he lay in a pool of blood.

“I remember one casualty I had was a young girl, she was roughly the size of a two- or three-year-old,” said O’Hanlon. “She looked to be of Somali descent. I believe she may have been dead. I laid her down and her eyes were rolled to the back of her head. That face will always stay with me.”

O’Hanlon told the inquiry that when he first got to the scene he was reminded of a hotel fire in Dubai he had seen on YouTube, but he said he had had no training in responding to such exterior cladding fires.

The London fire brigade knew about such fires because it had compiled a slide show about the risks of combustible cladding in July 2016, featuring the Dubai blazes, the inquiry previously heard.

O’Hanlon was one of the first to enter the fourth floor flat where the fire began and described how even though firefighters were pumping at least 240 litres of water per minute on to the burning plastic window surround the flames would not go out. He said the outside of the building was “roaring” like a burning gas main.

There were also “heated discussions” between firefighters over whether enough was being done to save people, said Daniel Egan, a fire safety manager who was responsible for relaying information from 999 calls from people inside the tower to the firefighters entering the building.

Egan said he had repeatedly told the firefighters at the bridgehead about two adults and two children inside flat 133 on the 17th floor, but believed they had not been reached, and described the response as frustrating.

Secrett, a firefighter for 19 years, said he had never experienced heat like he felt in flat 176, where Jessica lived with her family.

“At this point, the temperature just soared,” he said. “It went from what I would call normal hot to unbearable. I dropped to my knees and I think I actually lay down on the floor. I knew we couldn’t stay there. I crawled out and called to firefighter [David] Badillo that we had to get out of there.”

“I grabbed his arm and told him I was running out of air so he was to stay with me and we needed to get out. The temperature got even hotter. I remember lying on my belly and it took me a while to get back on my knees. I thought it was going to flashover and go. Flashover is when the temperature increases and increases until everything in the room will self-combust.”

They were also with Chris Dorgu, a firefighter whom they lost in the heat and smoke as they started to descend, but neither man had the energy to call out for him.

“I looked at my gauge and saw I only had 15 bar left,” Secrett said. “I was in big trouble. I put myself in a corner of the stairwell because I did not want to be in anyone else’s way if I didn’t make it out. I tried to get my phone out of my pocket to text my mum but I couldn’t get the phone out.”

Dorgu emerged and they came down together “stumbling, falling and crawling trying to get down”.

After spending time in recovery, Secrett started carrying the dead and injured from the block.

“It was raining debris everywhere,” he said. “Someone had jumped out the tower. He hit a firefighter on his back. There were lots of people there who went to help so I continued to help by putting out fires. There were taxis and mopeds nearby catching fire.”

The inquiry continues. Absolutely criminal. People should be gaoled. 

Buddha's Day

BAD is in Salerno, Italy.

My number of unfinished and unpublished posts was rising rapidly, which usually leads to a Flood Friday. Instead I have finished them and as you may have noticed you are getting two posts a day for the last few days. I am hovering around twenty, of which ten are permanently not for publication or have been published and then pulled.  Still, I am doing better than Snoskred with 60 unpublished posts.  Here is the first for today. I don't think there will be more two posts a day.

Too much writing and not enough photos of late. These were taken a while ago of local celebrations at Federation Square for Buddha's Day. There is not much to say about the photos.

A politician speaks. I know who he is, but it doesn't matter.

Pouring water over a miniature religious figure. Not baptising I shouldn't think.

I made a twenty second video with a pan of the scene. Turn up your sound and you will hear the bells of St Paul's Cathedral ringing. To my ears, it sounds like bell ringing practice for first timers. 

So not a gamer

I've never been a gamer on the net. It just does not interest me, but yet........

Mother had a black and white AWA Deep Image tv (Australia Wireless something. I can't remember ) in the seventies. It was a stylish modern television with a nice legs and and a very handsome timber veneer.  Mother still had the tv into the eighties and was rather late into colour tv, with her next set being a Rank Arena. My younger siblings had some sort of game thing they could plug into the AWA tv. I think it was called Pong. It was good fun, to hit a ball a bit back and forth from the control sticks. (I don't remember the control sticks, but it can't have been touch screen).

Such a simple game, but we had such fun.

Our Late Friend back in the early noughties asked what I was doing with my old mobile phone. He suggested I should give it to his partner as a gift. No way, I replied. It has Tetris on it and I can't find it on my new phone, so I will keep the old phone to play Tetris. I never did play it again, and eventually I put the phone into a phone recycling bin.

But yeah, things like Super Mario, Sim City,  etc all go above my head. I don't know about them and I am not interested at all to find out about them.

I quite like pinball machines though.

What about you? Do you like online game playing? I hear a deafening silence.

Madame Brussels and the mace

BAD is still in Italy, Messina to see Mount Etna.

No, I am not talking about Gattina in the subject line. She is more Madame Waterloo, a kind of satellite city of Brussels, where once a great history changing battle was fought.

In our lift are notice frames where notices are placed about what is happening in the building, a reminding of rules and what is on in Melbourne that might entertain or amuse.

I read on a notice  that on Friday nights we have a European winter night market in a street called Madame Brussels Lane. I'd no idea where that is until I checked. It seems to be more a place or a bar or maybe a lane too. I will investigate this week. I had heard the name Madame Brussels and I vaguely knew of her infamy. Over to Wikipedia.

Caroline Hodgson was born in Potsdam in the then Prussia to John and Frederica Lohman. In 1871 she married Studholme Hodgson and they immediately emigrated to Australia. In 1872 Studholme joined the Victorian police and was posted to Mansfield in country Victoria. For some reason, Caroline did not go with him and remained in Melbourne.

By 1874 she was known as Madame Brussels and was running a number of brothels in the Little Lonsdale Street area in the north eastern area of the city and becoming quite rich. She bought a property on Beaconsfield Parade (beach front, St Kilda) and owned city properties. Her husband died from tuberculosis in 1893. She married again, to a German engineer fifteen years her junior in 1895, but when they were visiting family in Germany, he ran away to South Africa. Two years later they were temporarily reconciled, but finally divorced in 1907, the same year as the authorities finally shut down her brothels. The divorce was granted on the grounds of desertion and in court, to quote from Wikipedia, she appeared as a most benevolent looking old lady, and quite secured the sympathy of the court by her demeanor. She died the following year of diabetes related diseases. She had one adopted daughter and was buried next to her first husband in St Kilda Cemetery. Here is the only photo I can find of Madame Brussels. She looks a bit glam.

Now we switch to something very different yet there is a connection to Madame Brussels.

The State of Victoria's parliamentary mace is a ceremonial weapon, carried in to parliament by the Sergeant of Arms as the Speaker of the House enters parliament. All members of the parliament stand while the Sergeant of Arms shoulders the mace. The reverse happens when parliament ends at whatever time.

The Parliament of Victoria's first mace was a humble affair of paper mache gilded wood and quickly replaced with something grander. Here is our third mace, still in use, about 1.5 metres long and weighing about 8 kilograms.

The second mace I hear you ask? Oh, you didn't. It was stolen by persons unknown and it was alleged it ended up in one of Madame Brussels brothels. This tale may or may not be true, but it is viewed by many now as fact. Here is another snip from Wikipedia.

Thirteen months later, the Bulletin and Table Talk published stories suggesting that members of parliament had taken the mace as a joke and left it in a bordello in Little Lon. The uproar was immense, the satire hilarious. 

So, there you go. The mind boggles at what role the mace may have played in brothel.  Sorry,  once again I am talking about sex. Perhaps I should do it instead of writing about it, but I can't really remember how.

Trumpeting around Europe

People should give proper respect to the office of President of the United States, back like the world did to President Obama when he travelled. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall as Queenie was dressed to meet the Trumpets. "One must do one's duty and endure. It is that Mrs May's fault that I have to meet him."

People really are so unkind.

Relaxing with good company.

Happy days with Mrs May.

Liz really, you are swearing like your late sister. Go and have a Dunhill and a Gordon's and calm down.

Ma'am, it was raining.

So unkind.

Really, you Londoners, do you have no respect for the President of the United States of America? (Planning approval by Sadik Khan. Mayor. London.)

Thanks to the late blogger, but not personally late, Lord Sedgwick for a couple of the photos. He lives on at Facebook.

The Post Office strikes again

BAD is still in Venice.

A couple of readers wondered about the battery life of our Dyson stick vacuum cleaner which we bought, hard to believe, five years ago. Well River, you were right. It did wear out, after nearly five years. I don't think five years is too bad really.

https://highriser.blogspot.com/2013/09/winning-lottery.html

The vacuum cleaner starting cutting out especially on the higher setting, but also on the lower setting after a long use. This normally happens if you fail to empty the dust or if it is blocked, so that it doesn't put strain on the motor. I cleaned it meticulously, but still it was cutting out. I spent perhaps two hours on the net in hourly blocks researching what was wrong with it.

Eventually I think I worked it out. When the battery fails to deliver enough current, the system heats under the strain and to protect the motor, a thermal cut out shuts the motor down. Remember, I was only thinking this, I wasn't sure. I explained to R and he agreed with me. But is it able to be changed by an amateur? I examined and found a large button I had never noticed. I pressed and I could pull the battery away from the rest of the unit.

I had a look online for a battery and came across one at a company called Battery Aussie. I assumed the company was in China, but it isn't. It is a local company in Melbourne. We decided we would risk the money on it being a failing battery. I ordered the new battery which was $40 plus postage, nearly $50 all up.

All went smoothly. The next day the company emailed and asked for more information and a photo of the battery, which I sent by return post (what? My fingers did it). Great that they were taking good care to ensure I had ordered the correct battery.

That was about the 22nd June. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Given I thought it was coming from China and not Dandenong South, I was being patient. Come the 12th of July, I sent the company a polite enquiring email. The company replied with an apology, not that it had done anything wrong, with the tracking details. Perhaps it should have sent me the tracking details originally.

Ok, so it might be at the post office or it might have been returned to sender. On the 13th I went across the road to the post office, and sure enough, there it was and had been sitting there since the 2nd, ten days. I told the post office boss that we never received a delivery card and that it was now at the post office for collection, and he shrugged his shoulders, it happens, he said. Well, it was sitting in his post office. After a few days of non collection, why didn't he notify us?

Australia Post makes most of its money now from parcel delivery but given how appalling its service is, I can't see it being sustainable. I think this is what the government wants so it can sell it off, no doubt to an overseas corporation.

Well, we now have the new battery and it does seem that the old battery was failing. I am pleased with Battery Australia. They have batteries for just about everything at good prices, and I have since come across the price for a Dyson branded battery and it is nearly double. Whether this one lasts five year or not remains to be seen. I'll let you know in five years or earlier if it fails, assuming I last five more years. Next in my online purchases is the nightmare of Little Jo's birthday present. The old battery has gone into the battery recycling bin in the basement.