Silent Saturday

That was all I was going to post as I had no energy to be creative. 

We saw Mother today. R baked a carrot cake and we took some slices for her, and some Maccas chicken nuggets. Sister took her Maccas apple pie yesterday. She loves R's carrot cake. While she was receiving nasal oxygen , she seemed better than when we last saw her. Her voice was not as croaky and she pulled herself up in bed on her own. 

Fifteen minutes after posting some positive news to the FB family group, I received a call from a hospital doctor. Mother's oxygen levels are very low and she is now wearing an oxygen mask. She has fluid on her lungs that the doctors are trying to drain with drugs. The doctor said that in a few hours they will know if that has worked. 

This was a loaded call from the doctor. I read into it that Mother could die soon from fluid on her lungs. 

We shall see, and I am sure I am really cheering you all up with Mother updates. Forgive me. It is my therapy to write. 

Friday Funnies

Not really funny, but cut to the core. 

These I stole from blogger Bob, who I guess stole them from somewhere else.

Isn't this so true, along with parents who dress and make up six year old girls to look like tarts, to compete in a beauty competition. It is a horror show. The hypocrisy is beyond belief. 

I am not sure why Florida became a gay mecca, and an old person's mecca, so hot and humid for most of the year and you can be eaten by an alligator on the street. As for Texas, why would you want to live somewhere where you have to run your air con cooling every day, every week, every year, constantly. Hideous, never mind the leaders of these states. 

Punks

It is only in retrospect that I have come to respect the punk movement which began in the 1970s. Of course at times their rebelliousness went to extremes, but not quite to the extremes of conservative right wing bible bashers, anti vaxxers, freedom protestors and climate change deniers. 

Even now, like with punks in the 70s and 80s, I find current day alternative men very interesting. They seem to hold a promise of something very different to my very orderly life. Dream on old man.

So it was with interest that I checked out these photo panels of punks when we brunched in Acland Street a couple of weeks ago.

Paul Kelly is quite old now but very respected as being a great musician. 

A couple perhaps, or just good friends. Real punks generally accepted those who might have had different sexuality.

At the Crystal Ballroom, within The George Hotel, St Kilda. Former blogger Ann O'Dyne had a blog site dedicated to the memories of  the Crystal Ballroom. 

Great looks? Anything but boring. 

Band, The Boys Next Door, playing at Bananas. Note the centre guitarist, Nick Cave who went on to international fame.

I am not sure where Bananas was, but it seems above St Moritz ice skating rink. This screenshot is helpful. 

I remember Rowland's name but nothing about him.

Nick Cave seems to have rather liked Rowland.

The woman looks familiar. 

I's a wee bit preoccupied

My dearest Mother. You have outlived your parents, my Pop and Grandma by many years. You have outlived our father by two decades plus and our step father by one decade plus. You are now 89 years old and we hoped you would reach 90.

If you can no longer get out of bed and walk, you cannot go back to ABI Brother's home. It will mean high level nursing home care, in spite of you expressing such thoughts of horror. But that is if you leave hospital and that in unsure. Sister's wife, Bone Doctor has her professional doubts.Your health is declining and it is all very up in the air. This public hospital is giving you very good medical care, aside from rather poor food. You can't expect the higher level of attention you received in the private hospital, but to restate, your public hospital medical care is excellent.

Dear Mother, please be reassured our medical system and we your children will do whatever is best for you.

Much love Mum,

Andrew. 

England 21/05 Our last full day

I bet you are relieved that I am finishing my English holiday posts. There may be one more to tidy up some loose ends.

Four cars transported some of the family for about half an hour to Beamish, a former coal mining village and now a wonderful museum of all things back in the early to mid twentieth century. On this warm sunny Sunday it was very popular but it can cope with crowds. Everyone loves Beamish but it can lead you to exhaustion. 

There are various ways to get down the hill to the central part of Beamish. I just followed the family crowd and piled on an old double decker bus. The bus must have been sixty years old but was remarkably quiet and smooth. Sister 1's partner had brought his portable electric scooter which could not get on to the bus. We just left the pair to make their own way.

This was not my first visit to Beamish but it has improved since my last visit.

I am fairly sure this is the bus we caught down to the village.

No risk from the electric pole that transmits power from the overhead wire to the tram motors. You can touch the pole because the tram has a strong earth connection through the tram to the wheels and the steel rails. You will not be a preferred conductor of electricity, unless the tram is off the rails. The you need to...'Exercise great caution.'

The band struck up and made some great music. 

Sister 3, her 8 year old and 20 year old grandsons walked with us to check out a steam train ride from the railway station. We had walked rather a lot to discover the train was not running. 

Fortunately there was an attraction nearby for the young one. 

Around and around we all went.

Followed by a slippery slide. 

And a throw a ping pong ball into a cup. Every child wins a prize.

Some of us lunched in the very good and spacious old cafe.

After a few hours we caught an electric tram back up the hill. At the lower area Sister 1 and her partner had turned up, somewhat to our relief. They had walked/scootered down very slowly, stopped for some things to see and lunched. We all piled onto the tram but the partner's electric scooter beat us up the hill, being driven by Sister 3's grandson. He said he had received some strange looks. 

It was a wonderful finale for our month in England. We said our goodbyes and the next morning Sister 1 and her partner drove us to the station airport. Again we had a restful overnight pause in Colombo and renewed our acquaintance with hotel staff, and it was just so nice to be home, in spite of our apartment taking days to warm up properly for our winter. 

Monday Mural

I can find out who sometimes and I can find the date and location but does it matter? I'm joining in with Sami who lives in our far flung Australian state capital city Perth for Monday Mural. 

It is not the most handsome fish and I hope that is not a parasite inside the fish mouth. The white crawly parasites in fish mouths gave me the horrors in my teens when my father caught fish.

Politics in the USA

Tv quiz game show questions asking for the answer of a country still go on with a continent or conglomeration of countries being an acceptable answer. America is not a country and nor is the UK or Britain a country. Yes, I know about common usage, I at times indulge in that myself, but that does not make the answer in a quiz correct.

Later edit: Apparently America is not the correct quiz answer if the country is Canada. Jesus FC. I am becoming a wee bit cross about this. The US is America but Canada is not.

Not sure why I had a little rant about that, somewhat off topic for what I was going to write. Once again I was annoyed at a tv quiz show for accepting a wrong answer. 

All is quiet on the Eastern Front, that is aside from the usual mass shootings and extreme poverty in a very rich country. Our London friend Marie recently visited St Louis and I found the sign in a photo in her post amazing. You can see it towards the end of this post. I would have thought the no smoking sign was somewhat superfluous but then more amazing was no weapons.

Jabblog touched a little on US politics in this post.  We don't see much of Biden in our media, or now American politics, so I assumed Biden was steering a steady and boring ship (cluster bombs aside), so different to the daily stories about the former President of the US. It seems Biden in just a bit too old to be acceptable to US voters, with his verbal and physical stumblings. Jesus, you should have been around to witness England's best known Prime Minister Winston Churchill, drunk as skunk every night. His retort to a heckler who accused him of being drunk was, 'Madam, I may well be drunk and you are ugly. But I will be sober in the morning'. It was something like that

So if Biden is not acceptable to the general US public at the next election, who can stop either conservative tossers Trumpet or DeSanitiser?

Apparently the current Vice President is not seen as presidential material. It seems Kamala Harris, partly black, attractive, female, well educated, clever and a smart political operator won't wash with US voters as a possible Democrat president. Go figure.

I think world wide we shake our heads, worry and are dismayed by US politics, including the stacked Supreme Court.