Recent stats, and another look at May 2014

Yes, a pause after all those 65th Reunion posts

Looked just now at the stats for the month to date. You too may now see what I saw, and what has prompted this post.

Yes, there we are behind the curtain you usually see, where such magic as may be happens. (Speaking of which Games 1 and 2 of the “Magic Round” have gone my way in the Footy Tipping!) You will note 75 have now viewed the main 65th Reunion post, and yesterday’s post is doing fine. And even though Daniil in Russia recently assured us that nothing bad has happened to him, that question we asked still must pop up very high in searches, because my little post has had over 200 views in the past 17 days.

I also see there a lot of interest in my drinks with the Major-General. I wonder why?

I also note a few liked the May 2014 retro post, so here I am taking another dive into the second year of this blog’s history and my fourth year back in The Gong.

The view from my window changed in 2014

Before that the view was dominated by a very old coral tree.

These are not that one:

They were planted all over the Illawarra and Kiama districts last century mainly, I suspect, to provide shade for cows in the summer months. But nowadays, as this item from Brisbane shows, they are regarded as a pest. They are thorny. They shed branches easily.

A broadly spreading tree growing up to 6 m or more tall. Its stems are sparsely covered in sharp thorns. Its leaves are divided into three elongated leaflets. Its scarlet red to dark red pea-shaped flowers are borne in large elongated clusters at the tips of the branches. Its elongated, dark brown, pods are slightly constricted between each of the shiny mottled seeds. A hybrid of horticultural origin, that was probably developed in Australia or New Zealand.

So in May 2014 the neighbours removed the coral tree.

Ten years on and I again have a tree at my window, as a previously unnoticed rival has grown to replace the departed glory of the tree so loved by rainbow lorikeets — though this one does tend to attract the odd black cockatoo.

May 2023

Morning of Mother’s Day 2024

I receive my week’s supplies

Yes, Woolies delivered against quite a spectacular backdrop…

Look to the far left…

On Facebook there was such depressing news coming in from Gaza. Think of the mothers there, eh!

And so many more, so many more….

One clings to the voices of hope and love in these dark times, this from Israel and the beautiful but comparatively tiny jewel known as Hand-in-Hand, a school network for Israelis of ALL faiths and ethnicities.

That was made just THREE DAYS AGO!

My mother Jean (1911-1996) knew many dark times

This was not one of them. My graduation. First in the family to gain a university degree.

Flowers and grief: for my mother

Posted on June 24, 2017 by Neil

Recently I posted about Vermont Street, Sutherland, where I lived from 1952-1955, and again in 1963-4. The circumstances of that first sojourn are well expressed in my mother’s words from the 1960s:

Then in 1945 the guns of War ceased. We hoped so vainly they had stopped for all time–and the father came home. The next few years held struggle of a different kind for the young weary parents whose lives, like so many, had been so deviously interrupted. To return to the normal, the everyday, does not perhaps seem difficult, but it is so very difficult, as so many found. Everything had altered, values and concepts had changed. One thing sustained this young family–the love of man for woman, of woman for man, of man and woman for their children. To hope, to pray, with faith, that some day, sometime, there would be a better world for all to live in. Again the years went swiftly–two years, four years, ordinary troubles, measles, mumps, broken arms, children’s hurts to mend–the guiding, the helping, the encouraging, the children growing, the joys, the laughter.

The babe of 1940 [my sister Jeanette] was now a slight, fair, lovable schoolgirl of twelve. So proud were the parents of this so dear a child who held the promise of the future in her clear blue eyes. The dreams they had–the dreams she had–such lovely dreams, such beautiful golden dreams.

The father and the mother bought a house, their first “own” home. Just an ordinary house in an ordinary street, in an ordinary suburb, in an Australian city. A house with room enough for the children to grow in to live in, to be “home” in all its true and good meaning. Moving day came with all its pressures, its turmoils, but with happiness in the hearts. The unseen figure in the shadows moved closer and struck, taking with it back to the shadows the beloved child, the child with so much promise, so many dreams–the child whose very presence had helped the mother’s war-torn soul through the years and whose sparkling nature had helped the father through the rehabilitation period. The beloved blue eyes were closed to this world forever.

So we were all grieving in that place, I see now more clearly: my father, brother, and myself no less than my mother. I can recall nightmares often involving death, and odd little memorials made of pebbles that I would make in various obscure parts of the garden.

My mother took to growing flowers, even winning a prize in the local flower show for her pansies or sweet peas or violets — I don’t quite recall which. Her flowers were those of that time — no natives among them. That came later when we moved to Kirrawee and had waratahs and wattles and bottlebrush in abundance.

Music my mother loved

Relief through footy tipping and the joy of barramundi

Yea, the world is in haste and the end approacheth, but yea verily there is joy, joy, evanescent joy….

Or in plain Old English:

Leofan men, gecnawað þæt soð is: ðeos worold is on ofste, and hit nealæcð þam ende…

Ah, happy memories of Anglo-Saxon class in 1962 with the lovely and heavily pregnant Dr Meaney, as we laboured through Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Primer! And those mighty words of Bishop Wulfstan as a worker in the ceiling of the room high up in the old building at Sydney University missed his footing and brought a large lump of plaster hurtling down right next to the good doctor…. Which marked the end of that session.

She was not hurt, but could not go on. And it was Bede, not Wulfstan that we were reading that day. As my classmate beside me, Melvyn Morrow, said: “I bet that is the first time Bede has brought the house down!” Yes, the father-to-be of Julian Morrow of Chasers fame.

So if the world is in haste and the end approacheth, as Wulfstan said as the Vikings were in full sail, then listen, O People, to the wise tips (and dietary advice) of The Gong’s very own Methuselah himself!

Yea verily, behold the footy tipping miracle!

Guess who, temporarily at least, at last soared above all the host of the Tipsters of Pottsville NSW, online and on the spot both!

And even the sage of New Zealand, the puissant Kiwi Tipster himself, sank to the dreaded total less than coin tossing — three out of eight! Mind you, am I not also languishing still from the mortal wound I suffered in Round One? Yea, I am forsooth The Fisher King of Footy Tipping!

But to Round Ten, and again The Kiwi and I diverge….

Here is The Kiwi himself:

Wet day and perfect barra — my adventures in The Gong on Monday

Bus again from Mount Keira Road:

Settled into City Diggers, ordered a wine and contemplated the menu. Rissoles? Roast of the Day? Or that protein source that has sustained so many in the north of this country for 60,000 years or more? The barramundi! Diggers is — or should be — famous for their pan-seared barra.

Of course, the barra!

And on the way home dropped into BWS to grab some specials, lashing out to my maximum spend of $15 per bottle. Good ones can be had for as little as $5, but I do not indulge every day….

Definitely for slowly savouring, not guzzling. Some reviews here.