2nd anniversary

As posted on FaceBook.

It is hard to believe it is two years since our Ray died. I did admire his adventurous spirit, from having elephants walk over him, to kite flying behind a boat strapped to a Thai man, to zip lining in Canada and South Africa, and riding an ostrich in the latter country.

Everyone misses you Ray. Here he is holding an ostrich chick. He loved our South African holiday so much.

The good Christians of south eastern US

Melbourne's Burke Road stretches from Caulfield to Ivanhoe, and in the 1970s our then Prime Minister called it the longest street of bible bashing bastards in Australia. No one in the road voted for him, so he had nothing to lose by the statement. 

Step forward to the mid 2020s and many huge houses that contained a family have been demolished for pairs of upmarket townhouses, containing a downsizing elderly couple, widow or widower. This has done nothing for the shortage of housing in our country. 

While I doubt there are too many are church goers now, the residents are still wealthy and will still vote for the conservative party. It's all about the share market and their tax beneficial self managed superannuation funds.  

But for the better, the good burghers of Burke Road would have possibly supported gay marriage, are probably not anti abortion, and truth be told, many would have a social conscience, and like to see their taxes helping the less fortunate in life.

Ok, I am comparing apples to oranges, I think. But could the US bible belt with its social attitudes move on as the demographic residents of Burke Road did?

Could I add to this map the anti abortion protesters too? Is there anything else US citizens could add to this MAGA stronghold? Is this the area of Hillary's 'basket of deplorables'? 

Apologies if I stole this from you, and to whoever you stole it from.

Castlemaine 1

Unrequested by me, Phyllis had prepared the car for my journey, wiped down the exterior, vacuumed, P plates removed and filled with petrol. 

There was no point setting off early when I couldn't check into my motel room until 2pm. I left home at some time after 11 and with a break for sustenance at a truck stop, (services in England. I don't know what they are called in America) I still reached Castlemaine early. I visited the nearby supermarket for supplies, and then it was near enough to check in time.

The room was nice enough, and the aside from the tiny brown floor tiles in the bathroom, it had been updated to modern and fresh.

 

Not that I saw anyone use it, and not knowing if it was heated, the pool and spa did look rather good and well maintained. 

Celebrating the gold miners of Castlemaine, in the middle of a roundabout is this statue and the water wheel works, filling and pouring out water.

I can't remember what this was. 

Like many country towns, there are huge open storm water drains at the sides of streets.

I drove around a bit, becoming familiar with the town's layout. Up a steep hill was the Burke and Wills monument, they being two explorers who set off inland in the mid 1800s and perished during their attempt to travel Australia south to north. 

Erected by public subscription AD 1862.

The views of the town below were rather good.

I wanted to see one more thing before my late afternoon rest, and that was the Alfred Passalaqua Memorial Lookout. It was a twelve minute drive from where I was. The photo of the escarpment does not do it justice. It was quite something. I should research how it was formed, but I won't. 

With some zoom, this could be Mount Alexander in the distance. 

As you can see the gravel road is very steep. I selected manual gear option and the car held first gear down the hill. It still reached an unbraked 25km/h.

I returned to the motel for my late afternoon rest, and then had my usual pre dinner drink, and realised I couldn't legally drive to get dinner, so I walked to the supermarket and bought a bachelor's handbag. Very naughty but very nice.

Musical Monday

Thanks to Linda for reminding me of this song, and so many decades later it is still great. I am bit too young for The Beatles (take that, kapow).

I've never really taken notice of Ringo Starr which led me to check him out. Yeah, I like his looks and the last photos are of him in his eighties. Absolutely amazing. Sexiest Beatle, for sure. He had style, he had grace, Ringo gave very good face.

The song is quite brief, as were songs at that time. I have tried to train my ears to be more sophisticated about music, really listening closely to whatever I choose. The sounds quite sophisticated to me, especially for the time.

I enjoyed the rabbit hole I partly went down as I checked out Ringo. I didn't look at his Wikipedia entry or any bio.

Windows 11 update seems to have turned on autoplay a next song, which I thought I had turned off. It was nice to hear too. Go on. Wallow in some nostalgia with Mary. 

Sadly I also knew this next to play one too, Mouldy Old Dough. The seventies were a crazy musical time.

YouTube's algorithm that curates my music feeds has kept me up very late at night in the past. Grand Designs, England, with its superior being Kevin is about to appear on my tv screen. I might just have an evening of music. 

Friday Funnies

Nothing too hilarious just a couple of vids that grabbed my eye.

I will be away for a few days. I vont to be alone. I do have a post scheduled for Monday. See y'all soon.

The old lady seems to be doing rather better on the conveyor belt than staff. But note how the luggage is all lined up and out of ther way. That is not my luggage carousel experience. 

While Romania might have modern trams, it could really do with spending some money on its tram tracks.

They're only words

It was a tragic case a couple of years ago when a man who was losing access to his children after a marital sepa took his infant on to a very high bridge and threw her over the edge, with very unhappy ended. He was convicted and gaoled but it was recently in the news again as the criminal had been assaulted in prison. 

The point of mentioning it is that the tv reporter said the crime happened at 9.15am in peak hour traffic on the West Gate Bridge. No, while the time can be argued about peak hour, but it certainly not after 9.00am. Why do we call in a one hour when it generally accepted as being two. 7.00 to 9.00, but that depends a little on the area where you are. 

It could be said that the evening 'peak hour' is from 3.00pm to 7.00pm from school pickup time at 3.00 onwards. I think in America it is called the rush hour, although if like the traffic here, in peak travel times you won't be rushing anywhere. The roads nearby in red as I write this post are stationary traffic.

Happy hour at pubs and bars where priced drink are reduced in price and can be for anything up to five hours, and rarely one hour. 

A place I patronise at least once a fortnight has a happy hour, and believe me, 6pm is the cut off time, and not a minute later.

Funny, not funny. An Australian Rules footballer has been suspended for nine matches and fined after it was found he offended for a second time by calling an opponent a faggot. His defence was that he called the player a maggot, not a faggot. There is some history to football and maggot. Umpires used to dress in white and might be called a white maggot or just maggot when someone didn't agree with their umpiring decision. Lance Collard was not believed and suitably punished. Photo from The Guardian Australia.

The electricical

The spelling of the subject line is as Eva Gabor used to pronounce the word in the tv show Greenacres. I thought this post might be of interest to those overseas who haven't experienced our power plugs and outlets.

Our sockets and plugs are known as Type 1, and used in Australia, New Zealand, PNG and some Pacific Islands. Oddly, they are also used in China and Argentina. These are to carry 240 volts, unlike the North American standard 110 volts,  and Japan's 100 volts. The history of the use of 110v versus 240v is very interesting, and 110v seems problematic as at times things need a higher voltage. 240v is much more dangerous than 110v. You'll be very quickly fritzed.  

These are the original overhead lights in my apartment. I have two incandescent 100 watt bulbs in each, which totals 400 watts of electricity when they are on. That is an extreme amount, and worse, they don't actually light up the room that well. They are probably only used if one drops an earing and needs to find it. As they are so rarely used, it makes no sense to change to LED.

I am thinking of replacing them with fan lights. At times all you need is a bit of breeze, rather than air conditioning. 

The lights are on a dimmer though, which we had installed. 

I was going to use my own photos but there has to be as mix. This is the typical Australia socket. Generally people do use the on/off switch. I always turn power points off. I don't want the the electricical leaking out. The angled plug outlets are for the positive and neutral and the vertical for the earth plug. Tourists who aren't accustomed to turning switches on and off can find their phone has no juice when it should be fully charged. 

You can get very fancy power sockets but I think they look rather gauche. 

The prongs are partly plastic coated and once the full plastic is shown as you remove a plug, the prongs are no longer in contact with the socket. That is really the only safety aspect to our plugs, unlike English plugs that are incredibly safe but very bulky. 

As you can see the normal plugs is not very bulky.

And this one an earthed plug. My washing machine has an earthed plug, and I think the dishwasher, but not much else now.