Cast List update

I was prompted to update my Cast List. It is useful if you are relatively new to my blog and wonder who I am talking about when I refer to family and friends, although there aren't too many friends left now. The link is at the top right of my page, but here is a direct link. 

http://highriser.blogspot.com/2007/05/new-cast-list.html

I consider my posts in the latter part of the week somewhat a failed period. Lockdown and shaggy hair is depressing. We can't even see Mother in hospital (mixed feelings about that one). There is also the lack of getting out and about and not taking photos. I'll try to come up with something more interesting tomorrow.

Note to self

 1st September: Magnolia blooms all but gone.

2nd September: Elm seed pods appeared.

3rd September: Green appears on plane trees. 

Planned post fail

This is getting to be a habit.

Mother has been back in hospital to have her medications sorted out. It was decided to insert a heart pacemaker, done. Should reduce her medications. It has been decided to insert a stent in her left leg, after having one inserted in her right leg during her last hospital stay. Maybe today, Thursday.

Sister called Mother in hospital. Sister thanked me for calming her, Sister, down. She is having a rough time. She called Mother at hospital and Mother ranted on and on about a phone call from her friend and then inappropriately about hospital staff. Mother can be so untactful with 'they're one of those Thais or Filipinos or something like that'. "I think Dr Saffa is an Arab, or something like the that'. Not relevant Mother. Sister hung up the phone to Mother. She told me she will call her back after she finished the call with me. I said to her, you are getting like R. Don't let her rattle you or get to you. Put the phone down for a couple of minutes and return. She will still be talking. She is 87, which is not an excuse but cut her some slack. 

I really feel for Sister though. Her wife Bone Doctor had a hysterectomy and ended up in ICU with extreme bleeding. She is ok now, and should leave hospital at the weekend but apparently can't drive for six weeks. 

Another lad at Sister's school has suicided, fifteen years old. Without permission, the evil Murdoch media empire published the details with the conservative opposition party jumping on the story as a mark of the effect of lockdown is having on people. That the boy suicided may have been related to lockdown or not is a cheap point to make and may or may not be true. The family rightly keeps a dignified silence. Sister managed to have a social media post with details removed. I didn't ask but I don't think he was one of her students. She teaches 16 and 17 years olds.

Sister's daughter Jo had her second Pfizer vaccination early this week and was unwell for a couple of days but is fine now. She is really missing school and like many children, quite over learning from home. Sister has been taking her usual extreme amount of exercise, painting the eaves at the front of their house and teaching online three days a week, as she did in person at school. 

Back home, our lockdown has been extended for a further three weeks.

Hasn't that cheered you all up no end!

Lets look at a happy picture, well not so happy for canal boat workers and owners, as trains killed off canal boats. It's a famous picture I had not seen until recently. I love it. Just not on my walls, thanks. I hope you can see it large as I can. Have you English types seen the picture before?

Busy busy

I've been so busy doing lockdown nothing I haven't had time to write much of a post.

Words: 

There is single worship outbuilding at the synagogue opposite. I should know the name for it but I cannot remember. Ideally the roof should be made of palm tree branches. I think its name starts with the letter s and then maybe h. I will not Google it and don't you tell me. I need to remember the name. I've tried for days. I am creating new brain electron paths among the many dead.

Fit is a rather basic word. Fit for purpose and a person can be fit.

In the English gay world, fit is a loaded word which I don't fully understand. There is even a fortnightly publication called Fitlads with an impressive 20,000 copy print run. It's a gay news magazine with personals, I think. Ah, that was a figure from 2008. I expect the mag is now online.

Tv tonight was talking Jack Jumper ants. I know them as Jumping Jack ants. I feel so old and out of touch.

Words, names, expressions, accents and language are ever fascinating to me.

Podcasts and tv

I listen to podcasts when I am out walking, mostly from ABC and some from BBC. I've detailed what I listen to before. No need to repeat. Check my tags ABC and Radio and you will find them. I've been listening to podcasts since our dear Lord invented them. News, commentary, comedy, I 've heard so many and I still listen.

The Tampa Affair twenty years ago was to Australia's and our conservative government's shame as the government lied when it told us refugees were throwing their children overboard to drown. Our Labor Party was in acquiescence with the ruling Liberal Party. The Norwegian captain of the ship who rescued the refugees from their sinking boat was put under incredible pressure. 

To have the whole matter coalesced into a fifty minute podcast is enlightening and fascinating. Kirsty Melville not only presented the excellent programme, she also produced it. Well done that woman.

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/the-history-listen/seachange:-20-years-on-from-the-tampa-affair/13505628

For a very long time I have followed the story of the murder of Sydney's comfortable yet anti property developer in the inner Sydney suburb of Kings Cross and Potts Point. In the 1970s Juanita Nielson funded and ran a local newspaper and was an activist against pulling down old buildings where the poor might live, for expensive highrise apartment developments. In summary, Sydney was very corrupt then and she was murdered. At best it could be said that it was a poor police investigation into her death. Personally, my opinion is conservative New South Wales politicians did not want a searching investigation into her murder.

I found this six part radio  podcast series abut Juanita fascinating. I think the pods are available world wide.  https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/truecrime/juanita/

But wait, a tv crew followed producer and presenter Kirsty and there is now a tv show soon to screen about Juanita. It's a two part tv series and should be quite well made. Maybe not available around the world on ABC iview.

Magnolia Monday

As an annual event I've probably posted photos of magnolias in bloom for the last ten years. I like playing with the minds of those of you in Northern Hemisphere causing you wonder why magnolias are in bloom at this time of the year.

The common Soulangea.  This one is always such a late bloomer, I expect because of not a lot of sun and cold surrounding masonry walls.

Not a bad camellia either, if you are into fairy floss on a stick.

Denudata I believe, perhaps the best one to grow if you like snapping off branches for an indoor display, as a friend's mother once did for us and it sat nicely in a vase on the piano and lasted for a long time.

In a side street close to home were more. They look like Soulangea but are not the normal Soulangea shape. Tortured into shape Soulangea?

I did not believe my Plant Snap app with its identification attempts of this plant. Can you help? It looks like a Pieris, Lily of the Valley, but I didn't think grew to this size and it didn't have a discernible scent. 

A posh meander

I was on a mission to....do it because I could. What a luxury not available now. Between lockdown 6 and 7 I caught the 58 tram to the Toorak terminus, walked down the steep hill and caught the train from Kooyong Station to the city and a tram home. There have been a caffeine break along the way, in fact I am sure there was.

The tram stops a little short of the main Glenferrie Road, so I would walk uphill before descending the steep hill to the station. Instead I used the side street Glenbervie Road to not walk up hill and have a gentler descent. 

I knew I was in one of Melbourne's most expensive areas and these houses would cost millions of dollars to buy.

A strangely narrow house!

Ok, not such a narrow rear end.

Undergoing a big renovation.

An Australian flag and I am sure it is Carlton Football Club flying next to it. Does the club president live here? 

This one looks like a new build, but as it has a chimney, probably not. 

This one is new and while it is quite different to the old houses, it does not jar.

The same for this one, New buildings don't have be copies and fake old building styles. All they have to do is work with the existing older architecture.

Long have I admired what I think are maisonettes, here meaning joined two storey apartments.