Bye Mum

Our much loved mother of four, grandmother to four and great grandmother to eight died yesterday, Thursday morning. I become teary at times through the day but so far I haven't cracked completely. A visit by the Scottish doctor probably ensured that last night after a very emotional day I perhaps did end up sobbing. It is part of my grieving process and I do have form for the same.

So, a bit busy. Catch you all soon.

My grandfather's clock sat on the shelf

I was thinking this would be the 100th anniversary of the mantle clock given to my mother's parents as a wedding present when they married in 1923. While it plausible that my grandmother could have married at 18, I checked my records and they did not marry until 1931, quite late for those times. I think my grandfather was 37 when he married.  Mother once said to me that her parents must have had sex at least once, or she would not be here. I didn't but I felt like saying, so you and our father had sex at least four times.

Anyway, on mantle pieces the clock has always sat. On my grandparents' home in Centre Road, South Oakleigh then in North Road, South Oakleigh. In North Road we kids loved to play with it. I am sure we turned the hands backwards and forwards but we weren't responsible for the scratches on the face. I think that was my grandfather's watch that did the damage. 

I lived for a short time in my grandmother's house after she died and I decided I would take the clock but by the 70's it had stopped working. It was made by a local jewellers, Dunklings, the chain store was still around, so I took the clock to them for repair. No Sir, sorry we don't repair old clocks. But you made the clock and you should be liable to maintain it and to my surprise they said yes. I think the repair cost around $35, quite a bit of money then but it was well spent.

The clock sat on our mantle pieces in Elwood, East Malvern, Glen Iris, Burwood and Balaclava until here, where without a mantle piece it sits on a shelf. It only gives an approximate time. When freshly wound up, it runs fast and as it unwinds, it runs slowly. 

In the eighties Sister who stayed over with us in East Malvern complained about the clock chime, so we let it run down and left it that way. For some reason I mentioned the clock to R recently and he said the chiming never worried him. I wound up the chime spring and it still worked. Amazing. But it took a lot of work to match the chimes to the hours and it ended up being more arse than class that I made it chime correctly. With our bedroom doors closed, we can only just hear the clock when it chimes and it is comforting sound, or one to mark the time when you can't sleep.

So, with a fix in 1978, the clock still works 45 years later, 92 years after it was made. That's pretty amazing.

 

The steaming

This is nice and easy quick post. Jabblog mention a sadly cancelled steam engine festival and reminded me I found this clip a few days ago. 

English drivers must curse this vehicle on the streets. I have posted a clip before featuring the Whitby steam bus. Note at around the two minute mark where the bus is really struggling as it slowly climbs a hill. I have learnt from train fans that the best place to watch diesel or steam trains is as the ascend steep banks, as they call hills. What fun!

Non-SI

This sentence stopped me in my tracks.

The reservoir at the dam adds 377,000 acre-feet of water to controlled storage on the Tennessee River system.

What on earth are acre-feet? Clearly it is a measurement of water. The standard Australia water measurement is Sydney Harbours, such as 'with a volume of water large enough to fill Sydney Harbour twice'. Everyone knows precisely how much water that is, give or take a high or low tide, even if they don't know any other water volume measurement. 

Non-SI sent me to Auntie Google. I had an idea it stood for International Standards and Fe-fi-fo-fum, I smell the the blood of a French madame and the initials are for a French term, Système International.

So SI indicates international standards. Non-SI means the measurement is not international standard but is recognised as being used.

Now, I think we do have a another measurement for large amounts of liquid aside from Sydney Harbours. I think it is cubic something. My memory is correct, it was once cubic feet and is now SI compliant cubic metres or litres, but that doesn't seem to be what is used here. We just use megalitres, and one cubic megalitre is 1,000 litres. Thank goodness. I understand litres. 

Victoria's Thomson Dam holds a multiple of Sydney Harbours at over one million megalitres. My photo taken in 2013.

Well, don't trouble yourself too much about this post, as I did some learnin'.

Monday Mural

I'm joining with Sami for Monday Mural. 

Sparkling Merlot may be able to tell me the location of this mural. 

This one is at Epworth Hospital in Bridge Road, Richmond. You have to embiggen it to see the detail. Nice.

Sunday Selections

It has been quite a while since I joined Elephant's Child and River with Sunday Selections. Here we go with a random mix. 

I am sure there was an idea in my head when I took this photo. Who knows what it may have been, least of all me.

Humans are disgraceful, yet humans built, installed and funded the river litter trap. It is confusing. 

Aboriginal flag and Ukrainian flags above State Parliament.

The solitude of Westgate Park, but not peaceful with loud hum of ten lanes or so of traffic on the bridge above. It's easy to reach in less than twenty minutes on the 235 bus from the city.

Degraves Street looking toward Flinders Street Station.

Only recently have I noticed this rather attractive building in Flinders Lane at the other end of Degraves Street.

Melbourne's Grand Prix brings them out. This looks a bit like an illusion, but it isn't. On the back of his ute this man has a replica of his car mounted about the tray.

He is even wearing the same shirt as he is in miniature. 

It was quite a head turner.

Prahran Square has grown into its own since it opened in about 2020, yes that year. Pigeons and small children love the fountain and to get wet, no matter the weather.

Because it sits above two levels of underground car parking, it generally can't have large trees but over time more and more manufactured shade areas have appeared. 

I just knew I took a photo of R's English nephew's outside bar room. I couldn't find it at the time. It was last properly used for NYE this year.

Miriam Margolyes scrubs up quite well for a Vogue magazine photo shoot. 

To cats. Do I have any readers who like cats? Cat lovers, you can advise me about the accuracy of this cat stroking diagram. No Mrs Slocombe style humour please.

If you have to deliver bad news, sometimes it is good to do it with humour. The Old Reader provides my feed of blogs I subscribe to, among other things. I pay about AU$2 a month for the service but a more limited service is free.