Bicycles

Bicycles are built with a sort of matter-magnet in their frames. It's an undiscovered substance that works like a black hole in space, attracting matter toward their frames.

Unfortunately, the larger the item, the more attractive it becomes and if it weighs something more than a bicycle, and appears to the casual observer to be immovable, it is very likely that the bicycle will propel itself towards the object. Probably the reason this has not been studied to date is that the action is very much akin to that of gravity, and in the vertical sense, is commonly mistaken for it. In the horizontal plane, there's no mistaking to be had.

I clearly remember being eight, and being taught to ride on a grown-up ladies bike by my father. He'd run beside me holding the seat, and then when I least expected it, he'd let go, while still running beside. From the moment he let go, the bike would swerve towards him, or if there was something larger and more immovable, towards that. Eventually I learned that by pedalling harder, one could speed past most of the obstacles. It worked for all but one.

I was learning to ride at Auntie Phyl's place you see, and her driveway was sloping from the street to the back yard. This meant that at the beginning of the run, down beside the house, there was enough pace to overcome 'the force', at the bottom of the drive there was a chook run, which necessitated a left hand turn, and there was still enough momentum to avoid that as well.

The tricky bit was the clothes hoist, sitting alone in the middle of the yard. It was there, with no more than twenty metres to spare on either side, radiating its attractive force. Mostly I would manage to stop, or at least fall off before I became entangled with it. Mostly.

In a desperate bid to overcome it, on one fateful run, I decided to just accelerate past. A grand plan, and one that should have worked. That mysterious force grabbed the bike and shot it headlong into the solitary pole, as though guided by some invisible rail. In those days before helmets, I may have considered that I was lucky as my head narrowly missed hitting the pole, but the only thing that stopped my groiny bits coming to a gentle rest against it was the thoughtfully positioned handlebar gooseneck.

Sadly there were witnesses to this catastrophe, one of them being a mother who sympathetically warned me that if I cried I never get on a bike again!

Traumatised and cross-eyed though I may have been, I persevered, and eventually discovered the skill set which was to give me hours of freedom during my adolescent years and beyond, although to this day one of my eyes still produces tears at the most inopportune times.

For more than twenty years I repressed the joys of this process and the knowledge of overcoming bicycle magnetism I had accrued on the way, until it was all brought back with a shuddering jolt.

My youngest you see had reached an age when she really should discover the joys of two wheeling. In a concerted effort not to repeat the trauma of my own youth, we went to a park, completely devoid of clothes lines, poles, or obstructions of any kind, with a thoughtfully positioned picnic shelter at each end.

All went well for a time. She quickly gained confidence and pedalled off towards the horizon as though she'd been doing it all her life. She was not even within 20 metres of the picnic shelter, when the bike of its own accord suddenly and deliberately changed course to ensure that when the collision happened, it would be exactly at the centre of the structure.

She was perturbed, but only a little. Dusting herself off, she headed off in the opposite direction to the shed, a sensible plan it would have seemed, had it not been for that magnetic substance. We watched awe struck as the cycle scribed a perfect arc completed only after impact with the exact centre of the next side of the shelter.

She became a little more perturbed.

Her state of perturbment, if there is such a thing, seemed to rise in direct proportion to our state of mirth, as we watched incredulously while the whole process repeated itself a third, and then a fourth time before unfolding into a fore runner of the sort of reaction described by Julian quite recently.

A teacher of mine once remarked (see I did listen sometimes), that if you do something once it could be considered a feat, to do it a second time is OK as it proves it wasn't a fluke, but more than that is just showing off.

Why would one want to show off about running into a picnic shelter while riding a bike?

The Rooster Booster

I have it must be said, been called a snob when declaring my affection for our one true national media network and the manner in which it consistently provides content of something approaching acceptable quality.

The ABC, or "Auntie" as she is known in what I suspect was direct plagiarism from a certain other country's national broadcaster, is the last bastion of locally produced content. By dialling ABC 1 or now ABC 2 on the good old "I'm glad we didn't get a Plazma they're sooo 2005" television set, we could at one time settle back and fill in a mindless or even mindful hour with informative and often entertaining brain fodder.

One of the truly inspirational programmes for many decades has been a seasonal offering originally titled simply "The Inventors", but more recently reinvented for reasons best known only to those responsible for such reinventions, as "The New Inventors". Am I the only one to have noticed that the inventors who do appear on this programme are mostly decidedly not at all new?

I must confess that I haven't seen any of that particular programme for some decades, but a casual conversation over dinner last night drove me to find the clip from part of this week's show. It's a shame that the adjudicating panel were not given time to adequately address the benefits of the Rooster Booster.

Having held a lifelong belief that if water is so cold that it will cause embarrassment after swimming in it, one should never have left the boat in the first place, I can only think that the sort of person who would possibly consume this product would be the sort of person who:

a) didn't have a spare pair of socks to sling down the budgie smugglers,

or

b) if he did, would be more likely to put them down the back.

Perhaps the manufacturer of these extraordinary items could do well to consider that where I come from, embarrassment of the type described is completely unknown, and when it comes to lack of inadequacy, discretion is usually assured with the wearing of board shorts which are close to knee length.

I've had a pathological fear of dentists for half a century.

That's how long it's been since my first dental work in the Dental Surgery above the pearl agency on Thursday Island, where the elderly Ceylonese (in the days long before Sri Lanka was again known as Sri Lanka), pearl dealer was also the community dentist. I imagine that he was in fact a qualified dentist, but it didn't seem to matter too much as the old pedal powered drill vibrated an ever increasing hole in whatever tooth it was treating.

In those days the amalgam filling was mixed on the spot with mercury as an admixture, and I'm not sure if anaesthesia was common in dental work, but there was certainly no evidence of it there. If we had been quiet and still during whatever procedure had taken place, the dentist would occasionally give us a little mercury in a matchbox to take home.

It's a fairly well known fact these days that mercury is perhaps not the most people friendly substance known to man, but no one seemed to bother too much about the very likely possibility of it causing any long term damage, and we'd while away a few minutes or more, rubbing it carefully into a penny to turn it silver, in the vain hope that we could pass it off for two bob at the fish shop.

And people get excited about fluoride! If we'd had fluoride in our water instead of a few other miscreant chemicals, there's a very good chance that I would not have spent enough money to buy a small car, to say nothing of enough time to see the movie Australia four times, over the last few weeks, rescuing yet another tooth.

At least now, there's no vibration, no pain, the dentist is young and gentle although she does come from another far off isle. I ascertained that when she told me she was going "beck to New Zilland for a widding".

Instead of clenching my eyes firmly shut (if indeed that's possible) and gripping the arms of the dental chair as though my life depended on it (well there aren't any arms these days), I have happily watched every episode of Seinfeld in Dolby stereo, while a team of expert engineers whizz around trying not to spoil my view.

I've now got my third gold crown (that's one for each of the girls after my demise), and I can only say that I agree with my father at least on one thing.

Those who pine for the "good old days" are sadly disillusioned.

Embarrassment

Sometimes the least embarrassing path can result in the most embarrassment.

A good few years ago, we could often be found on our boat, floating in some quiet anchorage in company with a number of our friends. Often we'd get together on one of our boats partaking in substantial amounts of conviviality long into the night.

Our boats were small, but most had the conveniences of home, and given the amount of conviviality going on some nights, conveniences were convenient indeed. Except that is, on the boat belonging to one of our number where the said convenience was located in the open cabin, right next to the kitchen sink.

The owners of the boat thoughtfully provided a small canvas bag that one could put over one's head to provide a little privacy if one needed to avail oneself of the facility.

One evening, one of the young ladies in our throng, perhaps just into her teens at the time, failed completely in her efforts to persuade us to leave the cabin, while she went about her ablutions. Her father gave her some fairly detailed instructions as to the correct use of the stern rail (or pushpit as it's known) for her purposes, and with some trepidation she retired into the darkness to go about her task, returning it should be said, with a certain glow of accomplishment.

The glow was only to last until the first of we guests began to leave, stepping into the darkness into a rather slippery spot in their dinghy. In the still of the night, it appears that the tenders had taken it on themselves to huddle together hard against the stern of the boat.

I am pleased to note however, from the above photograph no such fate awaits our Grandboy! There'll be none of this "going over the stern" nonsense for him.

He'll take the bag over the head every time.

Australia Day

Recently in between other distractions, I've been readying my father's journal for print, so that future generations of Midges can see what the old bloke was thinking.

He'd have been delighted with yesterday's Sunday paper, giving away a free flag with each edition, and I reckon he might even have got one of those that you hang from your car window.

All in all, wiht all the flags flying around here, I think he would have approved.

Here's his entry from 26 January 1991:

There was a time when I would have said forget Australia Day, maybe have a holiday on the first Monday after, but let it go at that.

I’m sure this attitude came about during the war when the Yanks were always waving their flag, the good old Stars & Stripes. I became so sick of this, I was glad to be Australian because we used to hide our flag. Of course, doing this no one knew what our flag looked like, and that was one of the big reasons for changing it. But if we did get a new one, no one would know it either if we didn’t show it. Now I believe we should be like the Yanks and show it all the time. The Union Jack in the corner doesn’t worry me at all, whether we like it or not it was part of our heritage. And besides, it’s very handy to fly upside down, (for when a flag is upside down it shows you are in distress and goodness, Australia seems to need to fly it upside down fairly often these days,) and it’s easy to tell.

I was pleased to receive a letter near Australia Day with the above stamp on it. (Edit: The stamp in question was a coloured print of an Austrlaian Flag) I only saw one, mind you, but there should be more of it.

Let’s try to make more of our country and show off a bit, not knock it as some do.

One thing about having the holiday the Monday after, you can celebrate twice, at least.

Communication

In the blur that is my life, I've missed another posting day!

Once upon a time there was only sea mail to communicate with those in far flung corners of the world, so if one were to be two days late in posting a letter, one wouldn't be discovered. In the event that an economy was melting on one side of the earth, it would take months for the details to become clear on the other.

Life in the Antipodes was simple then, and venturing off our shores was literal, undertaken in an often arduous sea journey which itself took months to complete.

In those days, communications with one's far flung off-spring was simple and to the point. No one worried unduly, as long as a reply was received within a reasonable timeframe, and given the available modes of transportation, reasonable could be anything less than six months.

A letter would be dispatched and some months later, and a reassuring response would simply as if by some sort of magic, appear in one's letterbox.

Mothers had no need for concern. As there was no hope of receiving a logical reply in a timeframe which made any sense at all, instead of asking questions, they'd make statements: "I hope you are keeping warm enough." "Remember to eat lots of oranges", and so forth, and in doing so, subconsciously assured themselves that indeed all those things were being taken care of.

Sadly, with the advent of technology mothers worry endlessly. Reality is not in itself reassuring.

The video conversation is the worst culprit:

He didn't look at all well did he? Perhaps he's past the worst of it, or is he lying? Maybe it is serious?

Her hand transplant seems to be working well enough, although it would have been nice if they'd told us about the mistake and that she now has two right ones.

Was that a hospital bed they were calling from do you think?

Do you think we need to go and see if they are OK?

No.

Let's just write a long cheery letter filled with descriptions of blue skies and sunny beaches, and send it sea mail.

Terror

The Kawana Uniting Church presents a Christmas Festival annually, usually with a terrific interpretation of the events of 2000 years ago, which gave us the reason to celebrate Christmas.

The whole shooting match is topped off with live animals replete with shepherds watching their flocks by night outside the building, and this is a source of great entertainment to the children of the assembled throng waiting to visit the display.

2001 was an interesting year. In September there'd been arguably the most spectacular and perhaps the most spectacularly successful terrorist attack on New York City, and the world was still on high alert, and due to a quirk of Americanism the date will forever be etched in our minds as 911. That's an anagram for the eleventh day of the ninth month for those of us living in the civilised world!

That one event took away our ability to file our nails or aeroplanes, or to carry a tube of toothpaste on board if it contained more than 100 ml. It was not only spectacularly (if accidentally) successful in destroying one or two of the symbols of capitalism but it also really did leave the world looking over its shoulder.

There we were on the other side of the world, under a clear starry night thinking deep and meaningful Christmas thoughts about as far removed from that act of terror as one could imagine, when our peace was interrupted by the shrieking of an hysterical five year old coming from the direction of the sheep.

This wasn't just some child playing, anyone could have recognised the shrill wail of terror emanating from a small body paralysed by fear.

His parents rushed over, as did many others, fearing he'd suffered an amputation by rabid goat, or worse.

"It's that bad man from TV" he screamed and sobbed, pointing to a shepherd with a long false beard and a teatowel on his head.

He was too young to know who Osama bin Laden was, but he had been exposed to enough of the incessantly sensational newscasts to know he wasn't good, in fact he should be very afraid. The terrorists had achieved their aims, we are probably safer from attack than we've ever been, but dint of excess security, but our freedom has been curtailed. We have played into their hands.

Each year when I see a shepherd I think about that little boy, and reflect on the Christmas message. The one about peace and joy and good will to men, and wonder why we humans just don't get it.

So Osama old chap, if you read this maybe you could enlighten me.

Or are you occupied terrifying five year olds?