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.  

Let the theremin rip

My first experience of the musical instrument called theremin was at Melbourne's Southbank, where there was a huge operational theremin, a few metres squared and perhaps a metre tall. It operated by moving around the instrument. I think I only photographed it at the time and I did blog about it sometime in the 2000s. 

I brought it up again in the twenty teen years (help me express those years better) and below this video you can read the comments at the time. I remember first hearing the term 'pensioner porn' from a blogger, but who knows which one. The term refers to tv perennial tv programmes like Doc Martin and Midsomer Murders, avidly watched by many older people.

I find the instrument quite fascinating. 

Wow, so many former bloggers commented, and some current ones. A different MC commented back then.

11 comments:

1. 
   diane b7:52 am

   You learn something new everyday from blogging. Midsomer Murder is Bill's favourite show and Gattina another blogger.

   Reply
2. 
   smudgeon10:04 am

   Theremins are fascinating instruments. I have one in kit form, just waiting for me to pick up a soldering iron (yuck) and put it together.
   
   "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys is another good example of a theremin used well.

   Reply
3. 
   Andrew11:18 am

   Diane, some knowledge you can sprout as the opening credits roll on Sunday night. I like the show especially for the scenery and the buildings.
   
   And then Smudgeon, you have to learn to play it. I am surprised that I had not heard of it. I just listened to the BB track and I can hear it clearly.

   Reply
4. 
   Rubye Jack12:08 pm

   Oh, I've seen these before - somewhere. Simply lovely.

   Reply
5. 
   Hels5:06 pm

   I too had never heard of the Theramin, as the first electric music machine ever made or as an instrument making sound tracks for horror movies. But it was and is totally brilliant.
   
   How old is the film footage, by the way? I loved hearing the Russian...it tapped right into my family's collective unconscious :)

   Reply
6. 
   Andrew9:33 pm

   Rubye, note that any pretender who like to conduct an orchestra would have great fun.
   
   Hels, Theramin invented it in the late twenties, so I imagine the film is not much newer than that. It is a cool and weird instrument.

   Reply
7. 
   River10:04 pm

   Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory has a Theramin, that's where I first heard of them. it's an interesting sound.

   Reply
8. 
   BlissHill9:02 am

   I have never heard of one either! If you close your eyes, the sound is very close to a wavery soprano. What a great little machine.

   Reply
9. 
   Andrew11:36 am

   River, good that it is in popular culture.
   
   Bliss, it is something I would like to play with. It is very high pitched isn't it.

   Reply
10. 
    Middle Child2:52 pm

    Wow - thannks for that - you learn something new every day of the week some weeks...now How can I slip that into my conversation? Maybe wait till i hear one in a theme track and say, "Isnt it amazing what a well played Theramin" can do"
    
    You are a fount (or is it font) of knowledge

    Reply
11. 
    Andrew3:11 pm

    MC, I just heard a tiny bit about it and forgot the name. The rest I found on the net.

    Reply

 

Remembering Sue

It is one year since the treasure of the blog world Sue, aka Elephant's Child, went to her big kangaroo and cockatoo ground in the sky. I still miss her muchly, and you know she was a very early riser, and when I chose a time to set for my blog posts, I scheduled them for 5am eastern Australian time, so that she could see them hot off the press.

She was a step above being a decent and kind person. 

I won't go on about it, and you can read what I wrote a year ago here and you can check out her last post here, when the love flowed once we learnt of her demise.

Dearest Sue, you are so missed.

Where is she?

I am concerned about disappearance of Janice of Jabblog. It would have been nice if she could have posted 'Back soon folks', and we wouldn't be thinking she's been in a terrible accident or had a serious and unexpected medical issue. 

Of course you owe you blog family nothing, but personally, if I don't post for more than a couple of days and I haven't mentioned anything about being away on my last post, you can think the worst. 

High Seas

This is an interesting video from our ABC. Note the mention of tide height. I've never seen the presenter before but he does a well enough job.

At 12 metres/49' I thought we had the highest tides in the world but no. For that you must visit the east coast of Canada, to the Bay of Fundy (thanks Jackie) with its shores being in both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick provinces where tides can be up to 17 metres/56'.

Check out this video with commentary and time lapse video.

Or this purely visual and luscious video. 

I don't know if I should continue to occasionally publish posts like this. They take time to get things right, and find the right clips, let alone that I am using the work others.  

Senior Moments

Ray's sister gave us a money box, which if you had an incident of a senior forgetfulness, you were required to put a coin in the money box.

For some years, from the beginning of Covid, I never paid cash anywhere. Now at times I do, and I get change back, with coins going into the Senior Moment money box. Today I emptied it into the device at the bank and it slowly counted the coins, rejecting one foreign coin, and the total was $30. Amazing how it mounts up.  

Senior Moment fell out of fashion for 'brain fog'. 

Call it either, I have no idea where I was going with this post below. I really should have pasted in the FB link, and I would have remembered. But wait, I did put the link in that takes you to Huffington Post but to nothing specific. Oh well. Tough tittie. My words of wisdom will not be written. 

A horrible irony: The Internet was a boon to introverts, who have found a social life they never had and "met" countless people on Facebook, etc., and who are very comfortable in correspondence, such as in interviews like this,

Repost from 2017 (I forgot about this even after this post)

 

I know nothing

When you have been with your partner for 38 years, you would think there wasn't too much you didn't know about them.

We were watching the English tv show Vera last night. The show is set in and around Newcastle in the north of England, where R hailed from. The scene was set in a pub.

R: I worked in that hotel. It was at the base of the High Level Bridge.

Me: Fascinating dearest. You've worked in so many places, it is a wonder you can remember.

R: Yes, my brother in law to be and me both worked there as we were saving to go to Butlins (a holiday camp of the most ghastly variety, but this is with hindsight) and of course that was where I met Cat Stevens. The hotel has changed........

Me: Stop! Now! What did you just say?

R: About meeting Cat Stevens?

Me: Yes, you've never told me that before?

R: Thought I had. Cat Stevens was Irish (I didn't know that) The pub was owned by an Irishman and he was a friend of Cat and he came to visit him once at the hotel and we were introduced.

Me: How come you have never told me this?

R: I thought I had. He was only semi famous then.

I used to find Cat Stevens so sexy before he became a weird religious Moslem nutter who agreed with murder of those critical of the prophet Mohammed. I am quite perplexed as to why I did not know R had met Cat Stevens.

My eyes deceive me

Some posts are fun to construct, and this is one of them.

I've known Ingrid/Gattina via her blog Nonna's Castle for what must be 15 plus years, maybe longer. Ingrid is 80+ and lives in a retirement home, a former castle in Waterloo, Belgium. Yes, that Waterloo of battle fame.

While her age has now restricted her adventures, she looks outwards to life, and has become somewhat of spokesperson to management for residents in her home. 

That almost sounds like an obituary, but she is alive and well and has been playing with AI, especially with old and newer photos. 

I hoped to get permission from Ingrid to use her photos to show what can be done, and she was quite happy with that, so here are some of her efforts. I am just imagining the commands she gave to fix and alter the photos. This is the original with her late husband Rick.

With their baby son.

Boring background?

 

Just whack in a back drop of the Rocky Mountains. When I saw this it made me rather afraid for the future, let alone family history.

Show my cat Rosie biting my nose.

Shorten my son's hair, and add a red shirt and a nice background.

Show my grandson smoking and drinking beer. Note the librarian dog going about its work.

Ingrid was wearing black pants and her cat Arthur was not sitting at her feet.

Son and grandson on holidays.

Put my son and grandson in diving wet suits.

This was funny, when she pointed out it was raining cats and dogs.

Me, me, me. Let me have a turn.

Raining cats and dogs made me think of the Weather Girls' song It's Raining Men. Nah. Too many boring older men, along with a number of Mary Poppins wannabees. 

Rain me some hot looking men. There, much better.

This photo of Ingrid and her bodyguards, her son and grandson, amused me. Her son and grandson are 2 metres tall, 6'6", and Ingrid is not tall, but I don't think this photo is quite right.

You will be tolled

I began this post quite a while ago. In January 2025, New York City introduced a traffic congestion charge in part of the busiest borough, Manhattan. I am not sure when these details were published, but I will guess at some point in 2025, maybe a few months after the charge was introduced, the charge I believe being about US$9.

Here is a copy and paste of some of the earliest stats.

What’s changed since the toll began?

Cars on the street

Fewer

Traffic speeds

Faster

Peak commute times

Faster still

Local buses

Faster, less delayed

Traffic outside the zone

Not worse

New Jersey commutes

Faster

Transit ridership

Up, up, up

Yellow taxi trips

Up

Citi Bike trips

Up in and out of the zone

Car crash injuries

Down

Parking violations

Down

Traffic noise complaints

Down

Fire response times

Slightly down

School bus delays

Fewer

Visitors to the zone

Up

Restaurants, Broadway

Holding up

Pollution

Too soon to say

Lower-income commuters

Too soon to say

Public opinion

Not great, but improving

Here are some details one year after the congestions charge was implemented. I now understand the charge begins south of 60th Street, pretty well south of Central Park, so it is a very large and very congested area. 

The number of vehicles entering the area is down 11%. That may not sound a lot, but it is 73,000 fewer cars daily.

One killer stat is the killing of  people by cars is down 20%. It's worth doing just for that alone. 

PM2.5 pollution, whatever that is, is down 22%

Subway ridership was up by 5%, with number of trips up by 9%.

Express bus trips up by 8%, and local bus trips up by 8%.

Public transport crime in 2025 was down 5% over 2024 figures.

Until November 2025, US$518 million has been collected by the charge, funding 18 new projects, and budgeting into the the future will see US$6 billion extra spent on public transport.

This really is a success story in New York City, as is the congestion charge in London and Singapore, and I really think it should be implemented in Sydney and Melbourne, within the Central Business Districts, in Melbourne with the exception of King Street and Victoria Street, which are such through routes. There could be an argument about the eastern end of Flinders Street. 

Melbourne City's traffic is mostly at a crawl, as hundreds of delivery drivers mix with motorists looking for cheap on street parking. King Street, Victoria Street and Lonsdale (our east west bus street) move quite well.

Now if Boud hadn't sold her car, I could send her a $50 cheque to cover her costs to drive into Manhattan for a personal report. But I haven't written a cheque since the 1990s. 

The Digital Mess

I am quite organised, even to the point of mostly knowing what I am doing tomorrow.

Jackie in Toronto posted this about organised  people.

Yes, I tick most of the boxes as being organised. Not being organised would give me great stress. Ray was the same. Phyllis and Kosov are terribly disorganised. I never run out of anything, but they do and have to make a last minute trip to somewhere for something.

My email organisation is up to date, as is everything else, with one exception.

In the mid 1990s when we bought our first computer and connected to the internet, someone who I was chatting to on a rudimentary chat site, maybe MIRC, sent me a photo of a bunch of flowers, followed by a dick pic. How amazing that this machine can do that! I saved the photos, and I probably could find them now if I needed to, but it was a downhill slope from there. I saved and I saved, everything. Photos, videos, messages...everything. My oldest email address still operational is from the nineties, a Rocketmail eddress, which became a Yahoo eddress. Not often, but I still use it.

However, over the years I had organised things, almost everything. Photos are filed in folders, stored in the cloud and on an external ssd drive. The problem is that I didn't name all the folders appropriately, and with near two gigabytes of photos, I struggle to find individual photos.

My brother asked me about a photo he had seen of Mother with her four children standing in front of the fireplace at the Dick Whittington Hotel in St Kilda. I just cannot find the photo, but I have now worked a way to narrow it down. He brought his dog Cobber into the hotel, and he was asked to take the dog outside. Cobber died suddenly soon after. So I need to ask him what year Cobber died, and that will narrow the search down to one year. Wow, I've just remember Jo was there, crawling around on the floor crawling around on the floor and checking out the contents of women's handbags. She must have been two years old, so I need to look at 2009. That's so much earlier than I thought.

Or were these two different visits to The Dick. We went there so many times over so many years. Btw, The Dick has a drive through alcohol outlet where apparently you can pick up your Dick Liquor. 

When I have something stored, while it might take some time and thought, I can usually find it.

The afore mentioned guy who sent me photos in the 90s might be this guy. The photo is all of 45 kilobytes.

A good blog but beware of tour guides.

Frogdancer travels rather a lot, and her blog is a good read as she writes with wit, humour and some self deprecation. As I write she is about to visit Machu Picchu by train.

During a recent tour she posted about something a guide told her group. A quick Google and AI check definitely says this is untrue, in spite of how cruel the Spanish were.

The Inca men had long ponytails down to their hips. The Spanish would tie the men’s hands behind their backs, then tie their ponytails to their testicles. Then they’d castrate them.

I can't remember the 'fact' we were told on the open topped New York hop on, hop off bus, but I was suspicious and I checked and it was totally wrong.

This photo taken from the top of the bus, and I don't know what the statue is about, probably in lower Manhattan. Of course I could Google it, but maybe one of you already know. 

Rottnest Island, Western Australia, to paraphrase the tour guide, "We don't have an electricity connection to the island from the mainland, so we generate all of our electricity here on the island, and any excess goes back to Perth (mainland)". I guess that is by osmosis. 

Quokka barrier at the Rottnest Island supermarket. 

Away and some nostalgia

I am away again, this time with Phyllis and Kosov. HH assures me she can manage to feed Jass in our absence. 

Our weather has turned from temperatures last week of low to mid 20s/70-80 to today as I type 13/55. Isn't that just great when you are going away although it will be a few degrees warmer for the next few days.

The task of sorting things out on my computer goes on. It is quite a task when there is around thirty years of history, much of which was filed and forgotten about. I have surprised myself with odds and sods I've found floating around. 

I came across a link to a US gay guy's website I used to read way back in the nineties, and to my surprise, the website still works. It ran from 1996 until 2000. Justin would have been twenty years old then.  If you'd like to take a look,

Justin's Koool Page

He started a new site in 2001 and it continued until 2003. The final entry mentions he is 27, and is using crutches to get around. Justin would now be fifty years old. Hmm, the whiff of nostalgia is very strong.

Justin's Life

Later:  I've realised his real name is on his website, Justin Clouse. I will turn to stalker mode....that wasn't hard. He's on all the social media sites, and the only other Justin Clouse is a dead soldier. 

April the first somewhere

In my former blog, I think about three times I wrote an April Fools joke post.

The first was a bit cruel, as people believed it. I had fallen on hard times and will have to move out of The Highrise into a shabby one bedroom flat. I remember being hopeful that there might be an internet plug at my new shabby flat.

The sympathy comments flooded in but no one seemed concerned about what would happen to Ray.  

Now I forget the order between these two. This one, Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance is a stunning war memorial. But it is on a purpose built mound, with steep sides.  I reported that the beautiful grassed area around the shrine would be flattened out and paved as parking for the convenience of very aged veterans who wanted to visit the shrine. Commenters were generally horrified, but some were sympathetic towards making it easier for veterans to visit the shrine. 

I think my best one was about the Maltby Bypass, which is a sign you see along the motorway between Melbourne and Geelong. Obviously the bypass avoided the town of Maltby, about which I described the lovely town in some detail, and to enforce the point of it being an April Fool's joke, I concluded with, "For some reason, the town has the highest rate of incest recorded in Australia". 

In spite of that, still people fell for it. There isn't a town called Maltby. Maltby was a road engineer and part of the road, a bypass, is named after him.

Bits

I visited the car repair shop today. Photos were taken and I will be called with a quote for repair. The business was personally recommended to me by two different people. Because I live in the inner city, I know the price will be higher than if I was in outer suburb. 

An electric notice went up in the lift, wishing all a Happy Labor Day, or is Labour Day? I didn't see how the lift lighting killed the photo, but I can assure you, the top says Labor and the bottom says Labour. Australia has a bob each way with this. Our Labor Party represents the labour movement, for workers rights and care for the less fortunate in society. Most good public policies such as our public health system, decent conditions for workers and social security has come from the Labor Party.

Our misnamed Liberal Party is socially very conservative, anti worker, anti union, anti gay, anti trans pro big business profits and eff the less the fortunate in society. Historically it is pro immigration of labourers to work for peanuts and break down Australian workers' rights. 

Ah well, off on a tangent I went. The Labor Party  has used the spelling since the early 20th century, in a time when both spellings were acceptable. There was some influence from American unions at the time, but I put the alternative spelling down to be wanting to seem progressive with the new world of the Americas, rather than old Mother Britain.

I've just checked and the public holiday is spelt Labour Day. 

Bone Doctor, sister's wife, will arrive here at 11.30 tonight from Queensland where she attended the funeral of her 101 year old grandmother. I will be asleep and I meant to leave a dram of scotch in the bottle to help her sleep after such a big day. Alas, I finished the bottle. There's some port on the drinks trolley, and one medium strength beer in the fridge. We'll probably have breakfast out in the morning. 

Phyllis is working a cleaning job. The job is not bad, but a long way away and the dust is affecting him. He is wearing a mask now. Today the first job was to clean a massive modern two storey house in the outer northern suburbs and the team called the boss. It was in such a disgusting and cluttered state, they could not do the job, and it wasn't.

Sunday was lovely, with a birthday party for Oldest Great Niece who has turned twelve. So Fun60, your granddaughter must be 12 too. Or do I have the terribly wrong. 

Much sympathy to River whose cat Lola has died.

A snip of an exchange between me and neighbour HH.

Hi H. Is it just me? Two consecutive weeks of aggressive looking white football players in the lift display, and this week a very aggressive photo display of Jimmy Barnes who is performing in Melbourne. Do residents want to see photos of aggressive looking men in the lift? Maybe it is just me.

She replied and had not really noticed what I observed, but she understood my point. I remember this from the time many years ago.

Your thoughts remind me of some years ago when I had to make an official complaint about men travelling in the lift from the pool without tops on, I didn’t want to see that either.

I replied, 

I appreciate your point about topless men in the lift, but I rather liked seeing them 😛

She replied with hands over eyes emoji. 

It's raining, a nice soft steady rain, not like the floods in northern Australia. As we southern Australians always say, 'we need the rain'.