At the movies

When I was a girl Mum took me to the movies all the time.  Those were the days when practically everyone in the audience smoked. One looked through a pall of smoke to see the screen.  There was a newsreel cinema in Rundle Street that played the same newsreels all day.  Everyone has a British accent even the Australian presenters.  I remember at the beginning of each reel there was a laughing kookaburra.  I suppose it was on the hotter days that we stayed through several sessions of the news.

At the movie cinemas there were always two films to watch plus you could sit through them as many times as you wanted.  Between the two movies they often played a cartoon or the Three Stooges.  I hated the Stooges because I thought that they were really hurting each other.  I always blocked my ears and closed my eyes so that I did not have to watch the carnage. I don't remember Mum telling me it was all pretend. The favourite movies at the time were cowboys and indians; all so politically incorrect now.  All the good cowboys wore white hats and the baddies black ones and the Indians killed the settler's families.  I especially like Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers.  The theatres were always full and usherettes with low beam torches escorted everyone to their seats.

Instead of having to leave the theatre at interval cinema staff came in with large trays containing icecreams, chocolate and drinks in paper cups.  If you went to the Regent during the interval a large Hammond Organ rose from the under the stage and Knight Barnett played the popular songs of the day. Words came up on the screen so that everyone could follow the bouncing ball and sing along.  I guess that was the pre-curser of karaoke.

I remember that I once persuaded Mum to sit through two sittings of Les Miserables.  It was not the musical but a dark forbidding picture. I was fascinated but Mum hated it.  It fascinates me that I was able to get her to do something that I wanted as she was the authoritarian of the world.

On one Boxing Day at the movies I lost my Dutch doll given to me just the day before.  We went back but no-one had handed it in.  I am still very sad about that and still feel the loss sixty years on.  When we got back to Mount Barker nursing where Mum worked the lady who made me the doll was really angry.  I thought she was angry with me but I believe she was furious that Mum let me take the doll on an outing.

Going to the pictures was a weekly highlight for most people.  It meant a box of scorched almonds, a drink and an icecream for the ladies.  You actually got dressed in your best to go the cinema.  Much much later my soon to be husband used to take me to the movies in his XK120 Jag.  It used to spit little flecks of oil on to my stockings but I really didn't care because I loved that car.  He always bought me a box of Roses chocolates plus the drink and icecream.  I remember going to the premier of Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines and Guess Who is Coming to Dinner.  He worked at Channel 7 at the time and managed to get free tickets.

The ambiance is gone from movie theatres these days.  Sometimes the audience is lacking, you only get one movie, there are no usherettes, no vendors selling sweets or hot pies and pasties plus you only get to watch the movie once.  The pervading smell is of pop-corn slathered in some kind of buttery substance.  Popcorn and icecream and a drink bust the budget and bringing your own drink and chocolate is frowned upon.  I usually sneak them in in my handbag because I do not intend to bankrupt myself buying from the theatre.

The only positive thing I can think of about modern cinema is that you cannot smoke in the theatre.  I love that.  Really I think that I would rather sit in the comfort of my own home and watch dvds on the television than go out in the cold and sit in a practically empty theatre where the sound is enough to deafen me.

Finally, 'when I was a girl' I loved the excitement of going to the pictures.  I loved the fact the it was cheap enough for Mum to be able to pay for tickets and I love that she would always buy me chocolate.  Let's face it I just loved the movies, the atmosphere; the whole experience.

Trains

I was a little tacker in the fifties but I still remember the lovely old steam trains.  The engines were big and black and puffed steam with little cinders from the burnt coal.  I always had my head out of the window and got cinders in my eyes all the time.  Mum fixed them by spitting on a hankie and then dragging the spitty bit over my eye until it picked out the cinder.  I find that all most unsanitary nowadays but in the fifties that was the remedy.  The carriages were beautiful and if you have ever watched Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express they looked exactly like that.  The later trains did not have a corridor along one side but simply two long seats that faced each other. The trains had real leather seats and wooden walls.  There were luggage racks above the seats.  It was possible to place a sleeping child into the rack and all that you had to remember was to get the child down when the train reached your stop.  The windows opened and lowered with leather straps with holes like that of a belt.  At the end of the journey the engine was disengaged from the carriages and driven under a water tower and the boiler filled.  At Semaphore, once the train had taken on water the whole engine was turned around on a clockwork track and then shunted along the secondary line until it reached Military Road and then switched back on to the track where the carriages waited.

One of the things that Mum liked was that there was one non-smoking carriage, however, she was furious if there were no seats left.  She would with bad grace, sit in the smelly carriage with a pained look on her face.  I am sure she would have like to cover her face with a hankie but I don't remember her doing it. My anxiety about trains stemmed from Mum's stressful rushing down the platform in search of our carriage.  I was always sure we would miss the train before she managed to get us boarded.  Once on the train I was fine.  

Part of the railway track to Semaphore (now it is Outer Harbour) rises up in the air just before the Port Adelaide Station.  (That station I must add was then a huge barn of a building not the skimpy platform it has now. The reason for the gigantic station was that the Waterside Workers caught the train there and walked along to the wharves.) The problem was and is that I am scared of heights.  I was always terrified during this part of the journey.  Once past Port Adelaide the train runs around a huge bend and I always sang to myself, "Around the bend, around the bend" until we pulled up in Ethelton.  Even though I am an extremely mature woman now if I travel the line I still find myself muttering, "Around the bend................"  

The absolute best part of the journey was the terminus at Semaphore.  The train journey heralded a lovely day on the beach with swimming and sideshows and Mr. Smith's little kiosk that sold Choc-ices and pink sugar mice with a white thread for a tail.  At the end of the day I had a ride on the Merry-Go-Round and then there was the journey home with a little sun burn and lots of sand between toes and a little tin bucket full of shells.  Train journeys are not so pleasant now and do not engender the same romance of yesteryear. You cannot put your head out of the window, there are no cinders to get in your eyes and there is no leather upholstery nor beautiful wooden walls.  Even though these trains do not grace suburban lines any-more they are still alive in my memory.  Not only are the old trains gone but the line to Semaphore has been replaced by car parking. 

Progress is inevitable I know but I really do miss the old trains, old trams and in fact old anything.  I can feel my 'When I was a girl' coming at any tick of the clock.  Well when I was a girl catching a train was exciting. Catching a train these days is an means to an end there is no pleasure just a swifter service with more seats.  Vale to all the lovely old trains. 

    

Shoes

My dearly departed mother always used to say that one should always wear comfortable shoes.  By the time she had me she was unable to buy good shoes and made do with cheap shoes that were flat and comfortable.  Where once she my have worn leather she was consigned to synthetic and sometimes a little on the nose.   However, when I received a scholarship from the Lion's Club while I was in year 11, she sent me off with a little of the money to buy GOOD shoes.

In the sixties David Jones was the place to go for anything expensive.  At that time the shop assistants were how should I say, a little snobby.  If one didn't look like class and not wearing designer fashions they ignored you.  I remember walking around the shoe department with good money in my pocket and being roundly disregarded.  If the classy shop assistants did look they were just checking to see that the peasant daring to share their space was not about to steal anything.  Therefore, they lost the sale of some beautiful leather shoes.  I really wanted the shoes but I did not want to butt in to their entertaining stories of the last weekend or the next weekend or the who's who of Adelaide.  Let's face it I was actually scared to ask them to serve me. 

My next choices were lovely old John Martins and a rather aged Myer.  They were both great shops and had good shoe departments plus shop assistants who actually assisted.  Myer also had the best basement ever.  You could buy underwear including bloomers at the cheapest prices, in fact there were all sorts of bargains to be had there.  I don't remember which store I chose to shop for my shoes but I did come home with the type of shoe Mum would approve.  They were flat, leather and a lovely tan.  No heels for me!

Once I started work I was allowed to buy my own shoes but was not allowed heels.  Pointy toed shoes with stilletto heels were in fashion at the time and I begged and begged Mum to let me have some.  She was adamant no 'common' shoes allowed.  With her it was always this or that was 'common.'  However, I have come to realize that stillettos ruined women's feet and left them with deformed toes.  I have beautiful feet now and all because the authoritarian old bat was right.  I really hate to say that, but she was.

The current fashion seems to be to make shoes that are not only horrendously high but also almost impossible to walk in.  They are accidents going somewhere to happen.  They do look fabulous on though.  The last time I went to the Festival Theatre I saw a young man carrying his girlfriend up a set of stairs because she could not walk up in her fashionable shoes.  The poor little soul was absolutely crippled.  Enough said.

Nowadays I have turned into an old person and I sport comfy shoes.  I like slippers, Giselle Bundchen thongs, good sneakers, Birkenstocks and I have one pair of black leather loafers that have seen better days but I cannot get rid of them because they fit me like lovely soft gloves.   I do have some leather sandals but my daughter refuses to let me wear them because they evidently look awful from the back.  I can only see them from the front so I think they are fine.  I expect to have them confiscated the next time she comes over to Adelaide.  I also think she has turned in to my Mother.  Scary isn't it?  

My advice is, that if you do want to wear those incredibly dangerous shoes take a pair of joggers with you or some little ballet flats so you can give your poor feet a little breather every now and then.  I am with you really, I love fashionable shoes but they are not for me and never have been.   Even though I cursed Mum at the time I am glad that she was right and I thank her for being an old fuddy-duddy because my feet are gorgeous.  At my age it is not often that you get to say something about your body is gorgeous but my feet definitely are.

V8 or not

I went away for a week and when I came back my car was a V8.  It looks like a Nissan Pulsar Vecta but it sounds like a V8.  At first I thought that I had forgotten just what type of noise my motor produced, however, it is not my imagination; the car has transformed into a formula one racing car.  Now I know that the mechanic will tell me it is the muffler.  I know that, but I kind of like my little car scaring all the other little cars on the road.  I love that I can put my foot down and the engine growls and burbles when I rev it.  My plan is to wait for a police person to tell me that my car has a noisy muffler and I will obediently go straight to the mechanic.  However, until the day I think I will tool around in my sexy sounding car.  I may look like a little old silver haired lady but I am driving a souped up Nissan, just listen you can hear it for yourself.

Electricity who needs it?

Here I sit muffled up in two pairs of track pants, two pairs of thick socks, three long sleeved shirts and a fleecy lined hoodie.  I also have a blanket over my knees.  I am about to go and get the little old dog to add his bit of warmth to my person.  He is like a little old water bottle and I am eternally grateful for his shared heat.  Why am I thus attired I hear you say?  Well it is like this, electricity has gone up and for some reason my pension appears to have gone down.  I may be mistaken in that belief so perhaps it is because everything else has gone up exponentially. My next thought is to go and sit in the car and bask in the winter sun.  An  elderly lady I knew used to go and knit or crochet in her car.  Perhaps the neighbours thought she was a bit odd but probably they applauded her answer to the winter chill.

Although 'when I was a girl' we did not have heating and went to bed covered in layers of blankets I do not wish to lie horizontal all day. So as the Prince of Wales has been known to say,  "If you are cold put on another cardigan."  Thus I am sitting here writing my blog layered in clothes. However, I can only fit so many layers on my tubby body.  Perhaps a Fairy God Mother will appear and whisk me off to Queensland for a few weeks.  Ah Fairy God Mothers they are scant on the ground around my house.  It appears that to survive winter the Sara Lee approach is the way to go, you know layer upon layer upon layer.  Good old Sara Lee she is a champion.  Roll on spring.

Pre-senile ladies rule!

After my experience at Adelaide airport where perfectly lovely Qantas people 'helped' me use the touch screens I was able to make my way back from Melbourne under my own steam.  I used the touch screen to get my boarding pass, check my seating and also get my luggage tag.  Admittedly I had a little trouble getting the silly thing to stick together and also the automatic baggage reader could not read the luggage tag at first, however, I still managed to do my own thing with relative ease.

I am an older person, pre-senile in fact but I do possess a working brain.  I can manage to navigate between cities and time zones.  I am not as technologically incapable as the Child of my Loins seems to think.  I do get cross because people seem to assume that because I have silver hair and wrinkles that I have suddenly degenerated into an old person who needs 'helping' or 'looking after'.  Stop fussing about me I am fine.  When I need your help I will ask for it.  Of course if you see me trying to cross the road to the bus in my snoopy pyjamas then perhaps you should step in.  When that happens you have my full permission to take charge, get the old lady home and start to fuss.  Until then, 'back off.'

Am I bad luck?

Ok I am in Melbourne once again.  I had a lovely flight and was able to manage getting off the plane without help.  I found the child of my loins and my luggage, so I am not entirely incompetent.  However, I must get around to explain how I believe that I am bad luck.  While I was here last Christmas the child and I went down to McCauley Street for coffee and witnessed a poor young man who had come off his motor bike on the corner.  On Monday we went down and had a lovely brunch and then heard someone outside crying; this turned out to be a lady whom I believe had fallen over in the same place.  Her nose was bleeding and it also looked as if she had a large lump on her forehead.  We did not go to help as there were several other people with her.  Now I thought to myself am I bad luck?  Do I eschew the coffee to avert another potential disaster or do I selfishly go there regardless?   I would love a good cup of coffee but I just don't want to precipitate any more dramas.

While one might say that the above accidents are a co-incidence the following disaster may or may not be entirely my fault.  While the child and I were watching Foxtel (I do love Foxtel) last night, the windows and and blinds shuddered.  The coffee table went for a bit of a waltz and everything rattled madly.  I actually thought that the windows might break but luckily for us all was well.  There were several after shocks that did not engender much confidence in the ability of the house to withstand the shocks.   Obviously an earthquake is an act of God not a negative reaction to me holidaying in Melbourne.  Of course in reality I know I am not bad luck.  I can no more effect a disaster than I could, (I was going to say fly through the air but as I came here on a plane that is just silly really!  Anyway, I am sure you get the idea.  It is not my bad luck, it is the bad luck of those to whom these disasters happen.   Bad luck, me never!!!!!!!!

Little old lady

I never think that I look like a silver haired old lady but obviously I am mistaken.  On my way to Melbourne I was using the Qantas touch screen to get my boarding pass and luggage label using the touch screen that I have used previously with no trouble at all.  So was amazed when a young Qantas man came to offer assistance.  I had not asked for help, however, I did not want to appear rude so I patiently waited while he demonstrated how the machine worked.  I did learn something new so it was not a complete loss.  I may work things a little more slowly than others but I always get there in the end.  Once the young man had safely placed the luggage label onto my case I wandered over to the automatic baggage counter.  Just as I was about to use the touch screen and put my case on the belt another young Qantas person came over the did it all for me. 

Now I am not complaining about being helped, it was lovely to have someone actually give good service but I am still amazed that I look so decrepit that everyone wants to help me.  God forbid that I ever have a nap in public because I am sure I would end up on a defibrillator or some kind of heart monitor. I will be rushed off in an ambulance to a 'little old lady hospital.'

All that being said of course I have decided to play the ditzy old lady card whenever I can.  That way I don't have to actually take responsibility for anything.  I can get muddled up, give the wrong change, not know how to catch anything from a bus to a train and no-one will mind in the slightest.  They will just smile and tap their foreheads and shrug, thinking to themselves, "She is old, she can't help it, it is only to be expected."  So folks don't mind me, I am a little old silver haired lady; beware you will never know what calamitous thing I will get up to next.

Packing

I love to go away on holiday but I hate packing.  Last time I went interstate I started packing an hour before I had to be on the plane.  I did the old pack then take half out.  So when I arrived in Melbourne I had four pairs of track pants and three t-shirts.  It would also have been a great idea to take my medication with me.  Luckily I did have my scripts.

This time I am more organized.  I started packing my case yesterday and I don't go away until tomorrow.  I have written copious lists. I have tagged plastic bags for my phone charger and computer cord and dongle.  I am about to make more lists so it will be almost impossible for me to forget anything.

I do tend to pack for any eventuality but as it is Melbourne that is probably the best thing to do. For anyone who doesn't know, Melbourne is prone to having four seasons in the one day.  Once I went in to town on the tram in the sunshine, walked along the street in the rain and boarded the tram again in hail and by the time I alighted from the tram it was bright sunshine again.  It is much worse in summer.  One decides on the bbq in the park when sucked in by the lovely sunny weather, only to get rained out by lunch time and battered by gale force winds on the way home.

My little old dog is going to stay with his brothers and sisters, aunties and uncles at the breeders house.  If she did not mind him I would not be able to go away. He loves to go there but I am sure he will be cold as he is used to sleeping on my bed and sometimes on my bed but under the bedclothes.  My catlet is being looked after by my next door neighbour.

Miss Rosie just came over to help me tidy the muddle in the spare room.  I could not go away and leave it because anyone seeing it would realize I am the untidiest person ever.  I only managed to get the room that untidy because I had tidied up the rest of the house.  The spare room is now manageable.  One can actually walk across the room to the window.  The cat had also made a mess in there because she loves paper and there was a lot of paper.  After her attention the paper is now confetti.

I am looking forward to going away because I get to stay with the fruit of my loins.  I get to play with her cat Gypsy and watch her Foxtel.  I also get lots of exercise going up and down the stairs.  No matter how much I eat over there I do not put on any weight.

So now I have procrastinated I will brave the packing again.  Did I say I hate to pack, I think I did, of course my pre-senile brain has ceased to function as it always does when faced with a suitcase.  Pack the ultimate four letter word.

Nevertheless, now that the spare room is tidy and I can see where I am my packing is going full steam ahead. Lists and preparation are the way to go.  I will try not to pack enormous amounts of clothes.  I an only there for a week so how many clothes am I going to wear for goodness sake.

What does that mean?

I have decided to take Shank's pony to the shops.  What is Shank's pony I hear you ask?  Well you see Shank didn't have a pony.  So if you take Shank's pony it means you are walking. Enough said.

Penny in the slot gas

When I was a girl (yes I know, here she goes again) we had penny in the slot gas.  We used the gas for cooking and heating the hot water for our baths.  Needless to say we were not rolling in money, so cooking was a sort of athletic sprint race.  How much could one cook for a penny when a penny is all you had?  I don't think we ever did a roast except if we won the lottery (that of course did not happen.)  As this was an exceptionally long time ago I don't remember eating uncooked food.  In fact, the way Mum cooked our meals were hard grey meat accompanied by soggy vegetables.  I do remember Mum tutt tutting when the gas started to sputter though.

Then there was the problem of the gas bath heater.  Washing was less important in those days; well it was for us.  We did have baths but how often they happened is lost in the mists of time.  I do believe that sometimes the baths were not as hot as they needed to be.  So the outcome of the bath saga is that if you didn't have the pennies for the slot then you did not bathe.

Although it may appear that I am going off the subject, everything came down to pennies when I was young.  A penny was the difference in how you cooked, how you bathed and also how often you went to the toilet. An old message scratched on the doors of the public toilets said, "Here I sit broken hearted, paid a penny but only farted."  At the Adelaide Railway Station the toilets were penny in the slot.  It was possible to put a penny in the slot and find that someone was inside.  Mum needed to make sure that she did not waste a penny so I was always dispatched to look under the doors for an empty loo.  I was only little at the time so I guess people did not take much notice of me.  I just peeked under and if there were shoes the toilet was taken.  Ladies had to pay a penny and men did not.  Staggeringly unfair!!!!!!!!!

In the fifties, pennies were the difference between the haves and the have nots.  Probably the well off had accounts for their gas usage.  I don't know.  I never lived anywhere but in the poorer parts.  So if you had a penny or two you could cook to your hearts content.  You could bathe every day whether you needed to or not.  You could visit the public toilets to fart or not to fart.

These days it is hard to pay the gas and electricity bill and one does have to ration the amount of time that the heater is on in the winter.  However, it does not come down to having a penny or not.  A penny made all the difference back in the fifties.  I am now on the pension but I do not consider myself as poor.  I have money, not a lot but enough to pay my bills, I have somewhere to live and I even run a car.  So the penny in the slot life is not the life I live now and I am eternally grateful for that.

Too hard up to buy meat

I guess the cost of living is getting dearer and dearer.  I seem to spend a lot of time window shopping at the meat counter.  It looks good, very good but I can't afford to buy any.  Sometimes I buy something that is reduced.  It is never steak though and never lamb.  When I was younger lamb was the cheapest cut of meat.  We used to feast on huge great legs of lamb with roast potatoes, pumpkin, carrot, onion and mint sauce every Sunday. The good old Aussie roast dinner. For those of us who could not always afford lamb we bought hoggett.  Hoggett came from older sheep.  It may have been a little more chewy but it certainly had plenty of flavour.  I wonder why we can't have hoggett these days?

 Once upon a time chicken was a luxury.  Most people could only afford it at Christmas and now it is one of the more affordable cuts of meat.  I remember watching Mum pluck chickens on a Sunday morning.  I doubt if she actually killed the chicken but she did dip it into very hot water and then strip of all the feathers.  Every part of the chicken was used.  Even bought chickens had giblets left inside, but now you just get the chicken. 

So now we get back to me trawling the meat departments of supermarkets.  I look, I like, I don't buy.  I am thinking of borrowing on my pension to be able to buy a nice bit of steak or a leg of lamb that would cost say twenty-nine dollars.  My biggest meat purchase is a few sausages or sometimes, sometimes I buy some mince. My diet seems to consist of bread, muffins, crumpets, cereal and fruit. 

I have just realized that sometime down the years that museums will showcase meats.  Old people will take their grandchildren to the museum to see actual meat.  They will tell long boring stories about how they once ate a sausage or on some special occasion had dined on a chicken leg.  Our Museum might be called the Authentic Meat Museum of South Australia.  

My stories will start, 'When I was a girl."  I will go on to wax lyrical about all the meat I used to eat and just how good it was.  Come to think of it, I can do that already.  When I was a girl I used to eat porterhouse steak.  Steak, amazing, who would have thought?         

Listen to me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whether you are mature, a granny or grandpa or just pre-senile like me have you noticed that no-one really listens to you any more.  I just had a Devonshire tea for some of my friends.  They are all younger than me, some more than twenty years younger and I had to actually raise my hand to get them to notice that a. I was present and b. that I wanted to say something.  Maybe once a person gets to be sixty-six they really have nothing to say or what they do say is not interesting.  However, I do sometimes have something to add to the conversation.  I might be wrinkly but I have lived a long time and experienced things that they have not.  Perhaps I might be able to give good advice but only if I put my hand up.

I believe it is time to insist on being heard.  I am a person, a sentient being, a mature individual who refuses to be silenced by age or dismissed by the greater part of the population.  I am not ready to fade into the wall paper and I damn well won't shut up just because younger people dismiss my little gems of wisdom and gems they are.  I have managed to live through a very tumultuous relationship with my mother, a marriage breakdown with a person I considered the love of my life, I have had a child who has grown to be a lovely woman and finally I have managed somehow or another to deal with being bi-polar coupled with an anxiety disorder.  If this is not experience then I don't know what is.

Listen to me I might be helpful.  Listen to me you may see things in a different light.  Listen to me you may learn how to forgive.  Listen to me and take note to do things a little differently and not make the mistakes that I have made.  Just listen to me.

Even if you do not listen to me I will not be silenced.  I will keep on talking until my pre-senility becomes senility and then I will finally shut up.

Sara Lee clothes

Yes folks I am wearing Sara Lee clothes, you know, layer upon layer upon layer.  I am tempted to buy some granny underwear.  My Mum used to wear bloomers and revolting singlets.  I really hated them and knew I would never ever wear anything like them.  After she forced me to wear singlets for years right up until I revolted when I was about nineteen.  Revolted about the revolting!  Needless to say these items of clothing were not on my Must Buy These For The Winter Months list.  However, now I tend to think that maybe she did have the right idea.  Naturally I will not wear bloomers.  I don't think they even make them any more.  I won't wear granny knickers either.  However, I am seriously thinking that I might buy myself a couple of spencers and maybe some long Johns.

My coming trip to Melbourne is spurring me into action.  It is just so cold over there and an extra layer or two can only be a good thing.  Sitting on the platform waiting for the train is cold even on nice days so I am sure you can imagine the wind whistling along the railway lines and freezing any bit skin that is not covered.  I wear  the warmest track pants possible, long sleeved jumper, scarves, gloves and woolly socks but I am still freezing.  I am sure that the Long John's will do me the world of good.  So it is Sara Lee clothes for me.  Underclothes, clothes and over clothes clothes.  Yep me and Sara Lee we are a team.

Rain on the roof

Here I am freezing in my little house.  I am wearing layers of clothes, three pairs of socks and have my trusty blankie over my knees. I am also trying to entice the little old poodle to sit on me to act as a sort of hot water bottle.  I cannot afford to have my heater on all day so I choose to suffer a little in the morning in the knowledge I can put the radiator on about four o'clock.

While all this seems a little sad, you know, poor old woman, pensioner and not much money, spare a thought for the homeless.  If I am cold tucked up in my house how cold are they?  How do they keep warm?  The answer is of course they don't.  Some homeless people are lucky enough to get a bed for the night at a refuge but for others it is a very very cold night.  Where exactly do they sleep? The terrible thing is that I do not know where they sleep or whether they had some kind of bedding.  If they do have a blanket or some kind of covering where do they keep it in the day time?

I once said to a friend how I loved hearing the rain on the roof.  She gently pointed out to me that while I enjoyed the sound of rain I was not out in it.  I wonder again how do the homeless stay dry and warm? Now when I start to enjoy the sound of the rain I do spare a thought to the street people; rarely.   Do I actually do anything for them, no I don't.  I feel virtuous giving money to St.Vincent de Paul for their blanket appeal but I don't really put my money where my mouth is.  Luckily, there are people who offer practical help; Fred's Van for instance.  A cup of hot soup means everything to these street dwellers. The gift of a blanket is a gift beyond price.

When I was very much younger than I am now, my Mum was the recipient of two lovely grey woollen blankets from a charity.  They replaced several threadbare old blankets that you could actually see through. I still had one of blankets when I got married.  I used to wrap it around me under the bedclothes.  My husband hated it but it was my security.  At some stage I dispensed with it but I remember how much it meant to both me and my Mum at the time.

Why is it then I that I rarely think of people less fortunate than me?  Perhaps it is because I was once one of the less fortunate.  In reality, that should make me more thoughtful, kinder and generous.  I should in fact, do something practical for these people but at the moment when I am about to switch on the heater I find I only pay lip service to the poor and to those who fall between the cracks of the welfare system.

So next time you enjoy the sound of rain on the tin roof and enjoy your central heating, spare a thought and perhaps a donation to the poor, the mentally ill and all the less fortunate people on the streets in Adelaide.

Fluster genes come out to play

Ok, today my fluster genes came out to play.  These are the genes that make me forget how to speak English, how to read English and especially make it impossible for me to communicate in any way shape or form.  The fluster genes struck last week when I was doing a maths exam but I had been expecting them that day. Today however, I was happily getting ready to do an oral presentation and well you might say get ready for the fluster.  I was thinking of course that it was no biggie.  I can talk through a paper bag, under water in a full scuba suit, so a little presentation is nothing.  I am not scared of talking to people, actually it is usually how to stop me talking to people that is the problem.  I think the main problem was that the teacher told me about ten minutes before the presentation that she was going to tape my talk.   FLUSTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  After the genes attacked I muddled up all my cheat cards, forgot to do a full introduction and gabbled on and on about nothing.  I talked for too long about too little and made no sense whatsoever.  I of course take no responsibility for this state of affairs, I did not open the fluster gene door the teacher did.  Basically she set the train of events into motion when she mentioned her little tape machine.  So basically I am entirely innocent of any wrong doing.  I prepared my work, knew everything about my subject but was sabotaged by a tape machine and the human operating it.  Flustered, you bet I was.

What I am grateful for

I am grateful for a great many things and in this pre-senile stage there are many more to celebrate.  Physically I am thankful that I am not incontinent and my farts whilst being loud do not stink.  I am also grateful that I still have my own teeth and can still eat apples and steak.

It is great to remember the plot of programme from either the night before or even half an hour after I have watched it.  Really the only way I know what day it is is to try and remember what I watched the night before. Of course if I cannot remember what I did watch then I am lost.

It pleases me when I remember not to say a muggachino and a serve of scones at Donut King that is a huge plus.  I usually ask for a serve of scones.  They know me now and just write my order down before I even have to ask.  Actually if I always go to the same coffee shops they tend to remember me after a while so pre-senility is not such a problem. It is wonderful when I can still work out my money so I don't make a complete idiot of myself getting young shop assistants to do it for me. 

I am also grateful that people get up and give me a seat on the train or bus.  I also think it is wonderful when I am able to scare other drivers when they see an aged person with white hair driving toward them.  Of course this could be that I have mistaken the lane I am supposed to be driving in.  I do jest!!!!!! 

I love that I can wear unfashionable shoes and no-one cares.  I don't have to bare my mid-riff, show my bra straps and slop around in pants that need taking up.  I can run a comb through my hair and don't have to sport dread locks.  I don't need to get tattoos or go through the pain of getting them.  I am pleased that I only got my ears pierced once.

I am happy to be able to do things when I want to.  I can have my hobbies.  I can not cook tea if I want or I can eat my dessert before my main course.  I can eat a sandwich any old time of the day.  I can have cereal for any meal I like.  I can have porridge with granulated sugar and a large dash of cream.  I am very very glad that I can do exactly as I want.  I love being pre-senile and by the time I am post-senile I won't remember anyway.  Above all I am glad that I share my life with my daughter, my dog and cat and all of my friends.