Money Spent

Another post that has hung around unpublished for some time. At least I've ticked one thing off. I'm over it, and publish as is. 

In the last years before I retired, I was constantly worried about whether I would have enough money to retire. I did have enough, and then the government gave me a portion of an old age pension, the extra benefits being of many things being discounted.

Before Ray died, we had paid half for our apartment to be repainted and recarpeted. It was a long discussion about whether to change to timber boards, but we decided on carpet. 

While I delayed it for a couple of months after Ray's death, it was done.

Then money from my mother's estate came through, which meant I had money to spend on what I now see as neglecting our place for some years.

In no order over two years;

New microwave.

New dishwasher (the old one failed).

New French door fridge.

New range hood.

New dinner service.

New chair cushions. 

A stand for the desktop screen to ensure I keep my head held high, and a new mat for the computer chair, and then another after the first broke, plus a new desk chair...so comfortable.

Living area venetian blinds cleaned ( a waste as I replaced them the next year). 

Bedroom of Phyllis and Kosov window tinting redone. 

Living area blinds replaced.

Living area and a couple of bedroom window tinting redone (it decays over twenty years).

New lounge chairs.

Range hood fan replaced (the old one failed). 

Extra benchtop lighting added.

New split system air con.

A robot vacuum cleaner. 

The future may see new fan lights in the living room and at installation, have the hard wired smoke detectors replaced, done. While the fan lights are very practical, my living area lights are very old fashioned and to modernise would be adding about ten recessed LED lighting fittings. While these would make the place more modern, I don't want the bright lighting and I'm quite happy with my lamps. Fan lights are what I want.

I might have new floor tiles laid over the top of the old kitchen, bathrooms and toilet tiles. Smart looking in 2026 is quite different to 1998.  

I am adding value in some areas to my home, but I don't care about that and nor am I out to impress anyone. I am spending money to please myself. 

Monday Mural

See what Sami and others come up with for Monday Mural.

Another Sammy became a famous seal a visitor to a town down on along our west coast.

My Sunday

Today, Sunday, Kosov had a long driving lesson. He still needs work with roundabouts and turning right at traffic lights, and while he could drive on his own, he isn't yet ready to sit his driving test.

I've booked a weekend away for us in a couple of weeks. Ostensibly it is a birthday gift for Kosov, but it is also travel I will enjoy doing. I've gone a bit upmarket this time but for not much more than I would normally pay, owing to the isolation of the accommodation. 

I asked HH if she would like our monthly lunch catch up to happen this coming week, and she said yes, but the only day she was free was Wednesday, which was fine with me. When we took some birthday cake down to her last week, she was busy trying to sort out her finances. She is trying to hand all control over to her son, but with shares and other investments, it is surprisingly difficult. She said it was doing her head in, but later said, I can get back to it now after having some company. She is far more social than I am.

As I type, Phyllis is in the kitchen cooking up a storm and talking loudly on his phone handsfree, with the exhaust fan roaring away. I would expect 8.40 on a Sunday night to be quiet at home. No doubt I will get to eat some of what is being cooked at some time. 

Jass had a bath and a haircut on Friday. Her grooming was really well done, even though I thought it was a waste of money, but it wasn't my money. She is looking much smaller now. She certainly isn't a big cat. 

Pleasing to read in our local state newspaper an explanatory article about teeth whitening. No commenter had praise for bright white tombstones. With a minimum of words, one commenter put it perfectly, "Meanwhile, on the other side of the world...".

But then the paper became political. 

"Not only do Democrats seem headed for success in the midterms, fuelled by a swell of Americans who see Trump as a crook, enriching himself while costs rise for everyone else, but the president’s inner circle is going up in flames. Aides are turning on one another and sinking in a cauldron of corruption and boneheaded policies."

Pauline (Bjelkie, Donald, Nigel) Hanson

As has happened around the world, Australia is dangerously close to a swing to the extremist far right, with our political party One Nation. The party is led by Pauline Hanson who has been in and out of politics for decades, with little success. Her fame first rose in the 1990s and put fear into recent immigrants as she gave permission for racist views to be expressed.

One would think that with her long time political partner and sorter of everything, James Ashby, that she would be pro gay rights and gay marriage, but no. 

Her views are very Trump like, pretty well anti everything about progressive society, along with being anti renewable energy. 'Build more coal fired power stations', she cries. "Let's look at nuclear energy".

Her speech at the National Press Club was very revealing. Let's have a look at what Hanson's policies are and could be implemented if she was in a position of power if her extremist party should have enough members elected to influence government policy.

Our multicultural society must become a monocultural society. The ship has sailed on that one, honey.

As she stated in her speech, Australian must reduce immigration, and the party has now released a policy that would see more people leaving Australia than arriving to Australia. That's a decrease in our population. To those with simple thinking may think this is a good idea. Instead think, geez, there will be no one to wipe our arses in our old age care homes. 

Before any public event speech, there will be a welcome to country, often performed by an elder of our Aboriginals, but not always. Some can be too long in my opinion, but she will ban the Welcome to Country speeches. 

She will shut down our multicultural tv broadcaster SBS, and make our ABC national media broadcaster subscription only for metropolitan users, but still free for country consumers of  ABC. Ah, she does not know how pro our public media ABC supporters can come out in force when our treasured ABC is in danger. 

She stated only late term abortions were acceptable, if the mother's life was in danger. Back to the mid twentieth century with dangerous backyard abortions for the poor, and richer women having obliging and expensive doctors.

It seems she thinks Australian workers have too many rights, are lazy, don't come to work, spend too much time on their phones and don't deserve pay rises. Bosses can't sack workers (they can't unfairly sack workers. There is a process). She wants a complete overhaul of industrial relations, no doubt to the disadvantage of average workers. 

In there 1990s the fish and chip business owner's cry was, we are being swamped by Asians. She was then gaoled for electoral fraud and dishonestly obtaining electoral funding  Now her cry is we are being swamped by Muslims. My old school racist mother's favourite nurse was Muslim. 

Australia's richest woman, the execrable Gina Reinhart, bought Pauline a rather smart aeroplane, and the party headquarters will move into a building owed by Reinhart. Reinhart has also donated $$$ to the party. She made her money by building on her father's mining business, plus other ventures. Do you think Reinhart won't want payback should Hanson be in a position of power? Reinhart is revving up to mine more of the Amazon.   

Then her party brought in a former conservative politician, Barnaby Joyce. He was interviewed here a  couple of weeks by a respected ABC Melbourne radio broadcaster, and his incoherent blustering was unbelievable. He is an old bloke who not so long ago ended up falling down and staying down on the footpath when very drunk in Canberra, our national capital city. 

The finances of Pauline's party, One Nation, seem very obscure and I would not be surprised if it is later discovered that there has been some illegal funny business going on.

I conclude with is god help us if Hanson's One Nation party wins enough votes to be in any kind of position of influence in my state and in Australia.  

A fine birfdy

It was not a significant birthday, but one people might make jokes about. I was told not to plan anything for the day by Phyllis and Kosov, so I didn't. I did go out earlyish for coffee and to collect some medications before they arose, and for the rest of the day I relaxed.

HH had left me a gift on the doorstep, a terrific little guide book about the laneways of Melbourne.

The lads went into town and returned with gifts for me aplenty.

An Italian sauvignon blanc from Calabria, with a French accent over its name. I was so excited! Alas, I noticed the name Marlborough. It is from New Zealand, but that is ok.    

My preferred brand of scotch. 

Chocolate cake. We took a large slice down to HH, and stayed half an hour chatting. 

And flowers.

Be ready to go out at 6.15, they told me. We caught a tram to town, and then another to Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. Phyllis made us wait on the street as he had confused a twenty four hour clock with a twelve hour clock and booked us for 17.00 (5pm) rather than 7pm. Up we travelled in the lift. 

Oh wow, a rooftop bar.

It was cool, so the overhead heating was welcome. 

I featured this mural in the past, but I didn't notice the ghost sign above. I need to decipher the sign.

Looking down on another rooftop bar at what may have once been called The Bullring.

Slightly challenging but what a cool venue name, Naked for Satan. 

The rest are just photos I took from the rooftop. Naked for Satan is a great venue and I highly recommend it. 

You did well, my lads.

The sads

I had a case of the sads yesterday. At times I wonder if I should have had a couple of sessions of grief counselling in  the months following Ray's death. Mostly I am fine, but sometimes things trigger me to have a sad day, and it should not be the day after a great birthday.

This morning it was after reading JayCee's post about receiving a new passport. You'll have to introduce yourself to her if you don't already read her blog. Her post spurred me to take a look at Ray's passports. Here is a photo of his English passports, correctly called United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 

The first two have a very solid hard cardboard cover, like a hardback book. He left Australia twice before he became an Australian citizen, once to England with a Singapore stopover and once to Bali in Indonesia, so there are stamps from those various countries, along with the important permission to return to Australia stamps, even though he was permanent resident.

Once he became an Australian citizen, that was no longer necessary. With hindsight, what a waste of money the last passport was, not used having arrived in February a few months before he died. Note the change to the European Union after the hardcover passports,  and then the disappearance of Europe post Brexit.  

And here are his Australian passports. They look progressively more modern, with the third one dabbling with a silver coat of arms, but then returning to gold in the last. You may wonder about why the need for both? While there were advantages to him by using his English passport, the advantage disappeared as he had to wait for me with my Australian passport at any point we crossed secure borders. 

He was cross questioned at Belgium's Midi Station after we arrived by Thalys from Amsterdam and changed to Eurostar for London. He was asked why he was travelling on an Australian passport when he had an English one (the immigration person knew he had an English passport). He explained it was because of me using my Australian passport and there being no advantage, and then the official asked why we weren't together. I don't remember why we weren't, and I've no idea why it might have been a concern. Ray was not my keeper. 

The reason he kept his English passport was that he could return to England to live if he wanted, and by default, I could live there too. We did even think about it a couple of times, but my family being here made it a non starter.

So yes, his optimism in February 2024 to get a new ten year English passport and dying two months later made me feel sad.

But there was more. I don't think it was until the 1980s where we first saw the English tv series 7Up in Australia, and I expect soon after we would have seen 14Up. Every seven years we would tune in to watch the next in the series and this year it was time for 70Up. I thought it was excellent, although I've yet to watch the second part. In its early days, questions were asked and presentation decisions were made that now would not pass the sniff test, and 70Up seemed to recognise this. The show is quite sad at times.

Even if you've never seen the former episodes, and they are available to see in Australia, just watching 70Up includes enough of the older series for it to all make sense. In Australia you can see the programme at SBS On Demand, but I think just watching 70Up is enough. Apparently there won't be a 77Up, which is a shame, and who knows if I will live to my mid seventies. Ray did, but no longer. We would have enjoyed watching 70Up together very much.  

Deflation

I didn't post yesterday, the 14th, as it was my birthday and so I was a bit busy.

A year older and I'm even more certain that whatever goes up, must come down.