So there I was, sitting in a car with the windows down, boot hatch up, babysitting a toddler who’d fallen asleep while driving around Brisbane in the summer heat. Hubby had to go into a shop to buy a special cement paint and so I waited with bubby in the hot car, not only in temperatures of the mid-30 degrees, but also parked in full sun on a concrete/bitumen carpark. It was sort of like those stories about naughty parents who leave their kids unattended in their vehicles while they gamble at the casino. Well, sort of, but without the life-endangering extremes and the possibility of winning lots of money. That sort of excitement we can do without.

A simple trip into the city from the suburbs for an errand turned into a 45-minute wait (excluding travel time) that tested my ability to look coolly nonchalant as my hubby negotiated with salespeople in an air-conditioned depot. I started taking photos of the rusty metal shed beside our car and found that my behaviour was deemed suspicious, as a staff member wandered over and asked what I was doing. When I explained I was taking shots of the artistic rust while I waited for hubby, the salesman looked stumped for a response, and simply nodded and went back into his workplace. (I thought of suggesting he react differently: perhaps he could offer me a cool drink of water, or even bring me a progress report of what hubby was up to. But no, he was quickly swallowed up in the shimmering heat rising off the bitumen.)

Going to Brisbane is always frustrating. We often have a list of things we want to accomplish and are naïve enough to end up feeling very frustrated at the amount of time everything takes to get from one place to the other, the time it takes to navigate through shops and battle the crowds, and wait like cattle in the inevitable queues. 

Yet the traffic is always hectic, and people rush around like ants when walking on the footpaths, or in the shopping centres. I have now realised that the reason why city people dart about in impatience is to make up for all the time they’ve lost waiting in queues – at shops, at intersections, at roadworks, and so on.

We opted for a change of pace the next day and went to the Chermside Water Park. This is built in conjunction with the local council pool but has all the slides and fountains and pools for recreational swimming. Sounded like fun, so after finding some togs stretchy enough to fit myself into, we bundled up the family and set off. When we arrived, we discovered the ‘water park’ section of the pool was not open for another half an hour, so we did what all the rest of the well-trained city people did – we waited. The small pool was open though, so the little kids without the same sense of priority and self-control jumped in and cooled off. Hey, water’s water.

Once the slides were open, we ‘baggs’-ed a bench for our gear, then walked up numerous flights of stairs which oddly enough, smelled like urine. Out of all the places a child with poor bladder control could let it go, why the stairs? And why would so many people do this to the extent that you could smell it - even though the staircase is open to the sun and rain and must surely be cleansed regularly from bodily fluids? I wondered about the effect this acidic stuff must have on the metal stairs, and I hoped I wouldn’t receive the dubious honour of being the first customer to fall through wee-weakened steps. That’s not the kind of notoriety I want. 

At the top of the tower I was delighted to find I had heaps of time to ponder the science of urine and its chemical properties, since kids and adults lined up in a few different queues, and guess what! - we had to wait. A fifteen-minute interlude to meditate on life and other such weighty matters as suntans and swimming costumes for the over-30s…. It was a transcendental experience that ended in a two-minute descent into chlorinated water.

It all got a bit too much and hubby and I questioned why even our leisure time was spent not actually relaxing, but standing in line to take our turns at recreational activities. It seems strange that two extremes of pace exist in the city – stress-inducing haste, and mind-numbing waiting. Surely it makes sense to balance these out a bit, and have a slower approach to life while still making the overall day more productive. Like the tortoise and the hare, we could benefit from the philosophy that ‘slow and steady wins the race’. And while quoting a classic storyteller such as Aesop, I also cite the equally profound singer Prince, who sang about mindlessness of working in a shop: “It seems that I was busy doing something close to nothing, but different than the day before”.* 

Perhaps allowing millions of people to live in one spot and expecting there to be adequate services for all, is a bit ambitious. Brisbane and its expanding outposts are continually pushing the limits of practical ways to enable its residents to commute to work and school in a reasonable amount of time, while maintaining ‘quality of life.’ I am not a town planner or an engineer but this issue has entered my thoughts before. It might seem crazy, but why not get most of them to live somewhere else? And I know Sydney has offered incentives for its residents to sell up and have a ‘tree change’; maybe there needs to be more incentive such as this in all cities.

Currently Brisbane is offering this to its potential home buyers: We are overcrowded; most schools are too big to manage the best educational and social outcomes for their students; the weather is stinking hot in summer since only a minute fraction of residents can live close enough to the beach for a sea-breeze; pollution covers the sky and star-gazing is becoming merely memories for most, and community-mindedness is rare. But what you do get is the chance to battle it out amongst hundreds of other applicants to work in a high-paying career. This will be the means to pay for your overpriced real estate. And if you have too much money from your ludicrous wages, we have shopping centres, fun parks and fuel stations to waste your earnings on things you don’t need to somehow fill that emotional and spiritual void from your stressful weekdays.

And the weird thing is, more than 2 million people look at that, shrug and say, “Yeah, why not? Sounds good to me.”

When I was a girl (said in a Glenn Robbins/ Uncle Arthur voice) we drove from Brisbane to Stanthorpe to visit our rellies, taking the Western Freeway towards the outskirts of Brisbane. There was a long stretch of farmland that showed the distinction between Brisbane and Ipswich. Now the houses and businesses have spread and merged into one big mass and the only way you know you have entered another city is the sign welcoming you to Ipswich. The same can be said for Caboolture to the north, and Redlands to the south.

I know all things must change and growth is seen to be a good thing for the economy and potential of any urban society. But come on! In the natural world, an amoeba gets so big before it divides and grows in separate entities. Surely there must be some limit on how big a population can get before it must divide and set out to form a new community somewhere else.

Apparently Brisbane has the largest population growth for any Australian capital city. It is also the largest of Australia’s six capital cities by geographic area and the third largest municipality in the world, spread over 2,116 square km. Ù Now that may not mean much to you, but it means the whole sustainability of the south-east Qld corner is under threat, with ramifications for the rest of us within cooee. Just mention Traveston dam, electricity demands or the Inland Rail Link and you get my drift.

I glimpsed a document about the inland rail link – ‘a proposal to enhance South East Queensland’s Rail Freight Network’. Any development that means buying up privately-owned land and adding traffic to a previously quiet rural area is always taken seriously. One of the headings on this document is “How the Premier can build a much needed rail freight corridor to the Port of Brisbane without being chased by residents with pitchforks”. Some people would beat around the bush and cushion their language a bit more, but these consultants can see the possible effects quite clearly. I like their approach.

So the issues are many, the urgency is great, and yet, the most pressing question remains – how can Brisbane provide enough services for all its residents to access quickly and easily? And by this, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about specifically. Yes - how can we get enough waterslides so that all visitors to any given water park can ride down with a minimum of waiting time? That is the question.

I’d like to see Anna Bligh respond to that.

 

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LEDs

There’s a Sesame Street music video about the letter B that plagiarised the Beatles song, “Let it Be”. Of course, the lyrics to the Sesame Street version went along the lines of: Letter B, Letter B, Letter B, Yeah, Letter B…  And I think they may have gotten in big trouble for infringement of copyright. (Of course, that was the first and last time an American program ever stole anyone else’s ideas. )

What’s this got to do with Christmas? Well, I retired our old set of Christmas tree lights last year, you know the ‘old fashioned’ sort with the cord in a circuit, and if one bulb is blown or missing, the whole line of lights doesn’t work. How frustrating! …And really hard to untangle and then position on the tree when it’s a circular pattern.

So I invested in a cheapie set from a cheapie shop that must have cost all of $10 and has LEDs or Light Emitting Diodes. These are wonderful, and bright and also have a little control box that can produce half a dozen different flashing and fading patterns. So now we are in Christmas light heaven, using very little power and with great visual effects. I feel like singing: LEDs, LEDs, LEDs, LEDs, shining all around us, LEDs….oohhh!

But I don’t. Well, not out loud, anyway.

So that’s the bit about LEDs. I could say more but I’m in the middle of a Christmas card/last-minute-forgotten-present frenzy coupled with the end-of-a-cold-sinus-congestion, so I don’t really have the energy to string too many words together in a sensible sentence, or even in a sentence that doesn’t make sense. Say that three times quickly.

So in lieu of anything radical to say, I’ll follow in the plagiarising theme and post something I’ve already written before, adapted from an article I had published way back in 2007:

More?

My daughter Jessie is just learning to talk. When she wants something to eat, she no longer points to it with a pleading look in her eyes – she can ask for it. She does this by saying “More?” Initially she learned this word when she had eaten her meal and we offered her another serving, asking, “Do you want more?” Now she associates the word ‘more’ with any request for food, be it first serve or second serve.

I found it funny that she has mistaken the word ‘more’ to mean ‘food’. How can she ask for more, I thought, when she doesn’t have any in the first place? But then I realised - perhaps her limited grasp of the English language points out a profound truth. She knows she is not starving: she has 3 meals a day, plus morning tea and afternoon tea. She is not really lacking for sustenance on a global comparison. Plenty of children in poor countries are blessed if they can have one meal a day. So although Jessie hasn’t even started lunch, whatever food she eats after breakfast is surplus or supplementary: ‘more’.

We live in a land of plenty. Even those on government pensions and social security payments, although finding it a struggle, will not starve. ‘Comfortable’ income earners complain about taxes and debts (mostly self-inflicted), yet they have clothes to wear, and a roof over their heads. The majority of advertising on television and in the magazines, in glossy catalogues shoved in our mailboxes, promotes things we don’t need. If we needed it so badly we wouldn’t require advertising to persuade us to buy it. 

Most of the commercials entice us to buy items of decadence – surround-sound entertainment systems, the latest fashion clothes and accessories, wide-screen plasma tv screens, broad-band internet connections, mobile phone ring tones and wallpapers, a plethora of household appliances and gadgets, prestige cars which cost as much as a cheap house in a country town…. The excesses are sinful.

How confident would we feel explaining our budget to someone in a developing country where basic health care is not guaranteed? …That we destroy our health through our indulgence in sugary, high-fat foods with no nutrition, leaving lettuce and beans to go mouldy in the crisper drawer of the fridge - while many people don’t even get regular meals of rice or beans? 

…That we get fat from sitting around entertaining ourselves with X-boxes, DVD’s, computer games, and chat rooms, escaping only to drive to the corner shop for junk food and the Sunday paper - while many people, including children and pregnant women, have to work long hours every day just to earn a minimum wage?

Or how do we explain that we live in a society where boutique shops to discount clothing stores expect consumers to buy a new wardrobe of clothes each season – whereas only several decades ago, the only good clothes a person owned was their church outfit? Most of the western world’s clothes are made by labourers in developing countries, for negligible wages in arduous working conditions. Why? Do we need more clothes? Aren’t there enough clothes in second-hand shops and many tonnes languishing in boxes in women’s cupboards and spare rooms?

This addiction of needing more – more treats, more entertainment, more convenience, more items to feed our pride and sense of acceptance amongst our peers – is blinding us from the amazing things we already possess. Are we thankful for the blessings we have now, and have had in the past? And not just material blessings, but emotional and spiritual blessings? Do we really need more… or do we have a rich life already?

 

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An interview with multi-talented web-log author, mother and inspiration to many.

 

Interviewer: Good morning.

Susan Johnstone: Good morning.

I: Susan… may I call you Susan?

SJ: It’s probably most appropriate, seeing as that’s my name. You could call me something else if you prefer-

I: How about Lucille?

SJ: Seriously? You think I look like a Lucille?

I: Hmm, maybe not. Okay, what about Margaret?

SJ: Well, that’s my mother-in-law’s name, so that would be weird.

I: Okay, what about Mary?

SJ: Yeah, Mary sounds fine. BUT as I was saying, you could call me something other than Susan – like Mary – but then I would forget that we’d agreed you were calling me Mary, and then when you said, “Mary”, I’d be looking around the room, thinking, “Where’s this Mary chick?” And then that would be really distracting for our conversation.

I: Sure, sure. Okay, how about I call you Susan then?

SJ: Right.

I: Susan, it’s great to finally catch up with you, as I know you have various commitments and projects underway.

SJ: Yes, but I like to take time to have a chat, and connect with people.

I: Yes, that’s one thing that characterises your output isn’t it, the way you connect with people?

SJ: Mmmm… I do try to ensure my actions make a difference in people’s lives, and that I am able to share my love and wisdom with many on a deeply personal, yet somehow, global level.

I: Yes… you do have a lot of wisdom and compassion. You must have many people vying for your attention. How do you handle the pressure?

SJ: Well, nameless interviewer – may I call you that?

I: (Nods)

SJ: …I make sure I spend a bit of time each day thinking about the many needs of this society. And with this knowledge of how truly hurt and desperate - and let’s face it - aimless, many people in our community are, I just can’t help but reach out in love. Without my views on haircuts, wearing layers in cold weather, the state of dirt roads, and so forth, I am not sure how people would survive. Verily, they would be like sheep without a shepherd. I just cannot help but share what I know to help others at this time of earth’s history.

I: (Moment’s reflection) You truly are a guru for our modern age.

SJ: Thank you. And might I say, I do like the way your ear-rings match your top.

I: See? Now that’s another way you pay attention to small details, showing us a glimpse of the thoughtful commentator on life.

SJ: I do try.

I: I see here amongst my research that you have been shortlisted for numerous awards…

SJ: (laughing modestly) Well, my writing is good, but due to its unique voice, I haven’t quite fit the categories for those mainstream awards that other, more conventional writers clamour for.

I: Really, but hasn’t your memoir been shortlisted for the National Biography Award?

SJ: Memoir? Well, my blog is a slice of my life, but I wouldn’t call it a ‘memoir’, per se…

I: That’s strange; I have written here that your memoir A Better Woman was shortlisted for the National Biography Award in 1999.

SJ: Ah, maybe you are thinking of someone else.

I: Susan Johnson? Weren’t you the editor of the Arts and Culture section of the Age newspaper? Haven’t you lectured at New York University and Boston University?

SJ: See, there’s your problem. My surname is Johnstone – John-STONE. Not Johnson.

I: Hmmm.

SJ: Easy mistake. Happens to many people.

I: Okay. I’ll be going then.

SJ: But - don’t you want to hear about my theories on the flat Earth and the existence of bunyips?

I: No. Goodbye.

SJ: Okay, but you’ll be recommending my blog to everyone, right?

I: (slams door)

SJ: (muttering to self) That was a bit awkward. But, we bounce back. Maybe my readers will find this an interesting read - an insight into the complex misunderstandings caused by variations in English surnames. We can always glean wisdom from life’s everyday experiences. Now, where’s my notepad?

 

 

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Mobile phones are sort of like Tim Tams – for years civilisation did fine in their absence, but then the word got out and now we can’t imagine life without them. I remember the old mobile phones that you had to carry along with a large bag containing the battery and the curly cord that connected the phone to the battery pack. They were primarily a business device and not one that ordinary people would want, or feel a need for. I also remember that when mobile phones became available to the public, Telecom advertised the phone rates - similar to the long distance call rates, even if you were calling a few kilometres away. There was the shock realisation that people ringing a mobile phone would even have to pay those rates, not just the mobile phone holder. What a rip-off! I thought. Who would ever agree to such mercenary prices?! (You have to remember this the same person who thought CDs would never catch on because of their inflated prices compared to cassettes or vinyl records.)

But mobile phones truly are expensive and even now I hate the idea of people who are only contactable via a mobile phone, and don’t supply a landline number for you to call them on. I baulk at the way the phone companies have us over a barrel and continually bleed money out of us, whether for making calls, having a phone on our shelf, using message bank or for even looking up a number on directory assistance. 

My husband is even more stingy about spending money on phone calls and will prefer to call a neighbour on the two-way radio before lifting the receiver to make a call. This works fine as long as the conversation is fairly innocuous and you don’t really care if anyone within 40km or so can listen in. But when the other party starts to say, “So, what happened about that weird rash of yours? You know, the one you said you had on your-” it’s time to put the radio handset down and talk one-on-one.

One of the weird things about the high use of mobile phones is the adoption of ‘txt msgs’ into our vernacular. In addition to annoying American signage that has infiltrated our culture with words like “Drive Thru” and “donuts”, text messaging has condensed and perverted our use of the English language. What really drives me crazy is when people send me a message and abbreviate everything despite having lots of room to leave the message in full. Let’s say your phone allows you to have 200 characters in one message, there is no need to say, “OK CU ltr”. Please, for the sake of my brain that has spent 40 years learning English: please, please, please! use the words “Okay, see you later”.

I must admit I am a bit of a grammar freak on my phone and I try to spell and punctuate properly in messages that I send. I am quite annoyed at the fact that I can’t seem to find brackets to really add to my sentence structuring. But when I get to the end of a message and find it has spilled over into 2 messages, my cheap freak takes control and the grammar freak has to make way. So then I have to go back and try to condense things, cringing at being forced to replace the word ‘to’ with the number 2, all to save 25 cents. It is a burden I begrudgingly shoulder, in order to save money.

Another character I can’t seem to find is the ampersand (&) so if I need to key in the phrase ‘trash and treasure’, to condense it I make ‘trash n treasure’, but I really want to correct it by putting in apostrophes so it reads ‘trash ‘n’ treasure’… but of course, that just keeps the tally the same as the original.  That makes me as always, gaze off into space and ponder why ‘abbreviation’ is such a long word, and why ‘dyslexia’ is so hard to spell.

I find sending (and receiving) text messages the ultimate impersonal way of communicating. It seems many people find it so easy to send a clinically short message to someone and then feel satisfied that they have done a good job of conveying a thought. Back in the ‘olden days’ I remember when people would come over and sit down for a good yarn. Have a cuppa, stretch the feet out under the kitchen table and catch up on the news. (Okay, okay, we still do that, but for the sake of illustration, bear with me.) 

Let’s say your neighbour has had an unfortunate incident that involved your dog running out onto the road as the neighbour was driving past, and now little Fido is facing doggie heaven. In this case, the neighbour would come and sit down, ask about the weather, your health, the farm, the kids and compliment your flowering peaches. Perhaps they might share a recipe for a peach flan and marvel at the different ways you can make shortcrust pastry. Then once the conversation dwindles down to a few non-descript sighs, then the bad news would be gently broken. The neighbour might even offer to help dig a hole for Fido, and when they leave, the tragedy of losing the family pet is softened by the fact that now you have a tasty peach flan recipe to try out.

Of course, in the alternative scenario, there’d be no friendly visit but a text message sent to your phone that reads, “Sry ran ovr yr dog”. And to make matters worse, being in the bush, you wouldn’t get that message until two days later when you drive into town and turn your phone on - after two nights of calling out, searching and agonising over the disappearance of the beloved animal. Then to make things even worserer, you discover the neighbours have disposed of the dog down the gully for the wild animals to munch on. And when you challenge them on this issue, they say, “Well, I told you about this days ago – didn’t you get the message? We thought if you wanted the body to bury, you’d have told us.”

But that’s just an example.

You might think that I am violently opposed to mobile phones and using text messages. That is not so; I can see there are perfectly good situations where sending text messages would be discrete and effective. Like if you accidentally stumble upon an Amway convention while wandering lost in a large shopping centre, and have been trapped in the corner by a recruitment officer. Too scared to risk their ire if you say something offensive, you can send a text message to your friend or spouse along the lines of: “GET ME OUT OF HERE!! And by the way, Woolies has dough-nuts on special – shall we get some?” 

But then people can go overboard and text in situations where any sane person would use a more direct way of communicating. Like last week my daughter was standing near a building and a friend of hers, just around the corner, a mere 15 metres away, sent her a message saying, “Come and play handball”. His excuse was he couldn’t be bothered to walk around and ask her personally. Ah, to have such youthful vigour!

There might be other, more crucial circumstances where the use of a text message would be worthless to the user. Like, perhaps you are walking along a path on a cliff admiring the view, when a freak gust of wind causes you to wobble, and lose your balance. All of a sudden, you are teetering over the edge of the cliff and as you fall, you manage to grab an overhanging branch of a fig tree, growing fortuitously at that very spot. So there you are, quite surprised and just a teensy bit terrified, swaying in mid-air. How to get out of this predicament?

The text message-dependant generation may immediately think of their phone and how to get it out of their pocket. So if you are one of those, you marvel at the fact you happen to have your phone in the chest pocket of your shirt. And luckily you haven’t buttoned the flap over the top of the pocket, even though your mother always says it looks untidy not to. So with your teeth, you are able to slide your phone out of your pocket and now there you have your method of salvation. Now what? Okay, a bit hard to type in a text message, but you know you want to, because that is what you always do. With a bit of heavy shaking, you can flick the boots off your feet. Then you scrunch up your toes within the sock on your left foot, and grab the sock off your right foot, and then likewise free your foot from your other sock. Luckily (in a particularly uncanny chain of chance events) you have done yoga since you were little, so while hanging off the branch, you can lift up your leg and flip open the phone with your toes, and start to tap in a message of distress. What a stroke of luck! But somehow the phone service is not responding and the message stays in the ‘outbox’. Oh dear, how on earth can this be fixed?? A little voice comes into your head, a calm voice of reason: Forget the phone, dummy! Shout for help, so those people sitting on the beach below will hear.

Oh, okay – yeah, that will work. 

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There are lots of things to be afraid of – like the time I opened the curtains one morning last week to find 8 hairy legs in front of me! No, it wasn’t 4 construction workers on a scaffold outside my window (although that would have been quite disturbing), but a huntsman spider. There was a moment of panic as I tried to determine whether the spider was outside, or inside.

I did a split-second risk assessment. What was the likelihood of harm, and to what degree? If it was inside the glass, and the spider jumped at me and caused me to fall over backwards in alarm, at which point I knocked my head on our ridiculously large wooden toybox, there was the unlikely (but still possible) chance of major injury or death, resulting in a ‘high’ risk on my mental safety-risk matrix. But, if it was just inside our torn fly screen and still on the other side of the pane of glass, then the most likely consequence would be a little shudder or gasp, with negligible impact. Curiously, on my mental safety-risk matrix (plagiarised from a childsafe document), this still results in a ‘medium’ safety risk. What is wrong with the world?! Is there risk and danger everywhere?

You can rest assured that the crisis was averted, and no fatality occurred. The hairy legs were safely outside, where I watched it over several days, as it hid in the shade of the window frame during the day and ventured out onto the middle of the pane at night to find insects. I wasn’t afraid of the spider when I knew a few millimetres of glass prevented it from coming inside the house, where of course it could terrorise me in the middle of the night as I slept. 

Fear is such a relative thing, pliable and malleable depending on the circumstances. US President Franklin Roosevelt said in his inaugural speech, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”. I challenge that statement. I can find heaps of actual things to be afraid of.

Back to the spiders – I once was having a shower when I noticed a huntsman spider on the wall above me. Holding back perfectly justifiable panic, I held my wits about me (as well as the shower curtain) knowing that the spider was probably waiting for a small flying thing to come and land near it. The spider had no concern for me at all, and would leave me alone. Ha! I laughed in confidence. I am not afraid of you, Mr Hairy-legs! Ha! I laughed again in a slightly maniacal tone verging on hysteria. And then…! the spider jumped at me and landed on my leg! Oh, the horrors! It was as if the spider had read my mind and wanted to call my bluff. From there the carnage was dreadful as the spider fell off me with a healthy coating of soap that broke down its water resistance, and it was washed down the drain, with its multitude of legs scrabbling about for a last minute grasp at deliverance.

I don’t know what the moral of that story is, except never, ever underestimate the creepy ability of spiders to read your mind. However, I’m nowhere near frightened of spiders as I am of fluttering things like moths and grasshoppers, but that’s a whole other story (and many visits to the psychologist).

Other things are scary, too, like running out of toilet paper, and not having any tissues either, and wondering what sort of society we have created for ourselves where we are so dependant on mass-produced items that are also disposable. Is the wide-scale plantation timber business - which creates a mono-culture and hinders biodiversity - okay when we think about the comfort of our backsides? I guess it is, but to be on the safe side, I use recycled toilet paper, which as some people think, is not actually old toilet paper washed and hung out to dry. I believe the toilet paper is made from recycled office paper. I could be wrong. But I think the other form of recycling toilet paper is only done in places like Russia.

I drove to Brisbane last weekend and noticed yet another road being built to service yet another version of the Western Freeway, with stacks of timber cleared to make way for this new slab of bitumen. A little bit scary, knowing that the NSW Native Vegetation Act seeks to protect trees from being cleared, essentially to the point of preventing farmers from even producing and selling firewood on their own property. (And I assume the Qld legislation is similar). The tree police can come in and reprimand you (with a hefty fine) saying, "Watch where you swing that chainsaw, buddy. Firewood doesn't grow on trees, you know."

But elsewhere in the document, the fine print says its okay to clear the trees in cases of ‘state significant development’, mining or road works. So while the little person tries to make a living from their local resources, the people in the city can drive from one side of town to the other, polluting and using fossil fuels, and crying out for less traffic and better direct roads, and so the trees are slain to make way in the name of progress.

Scary, scary. 

And while in Brisbane, we attended the Northey St Organic Markets at Windsor and let the funky/hippy community scene enfold us. We heard a cool busker who sang catchy lyrics with his rhythmic guitar playing, many times better than another busker who had a record of Crowded House memorised that he mournfully sang over and over again. The good guitar busker had a business card that indicated his name was Laurie Agar. Some of his words were “I dunno why I watch so much tv, dunno why I watch so much tv…” I can’t remember how the rhymes went, but believe me, there were other lines with separate words that did rhyme. Maybe you had to be there. My daughter thought the songs were so witty she wandered over and recorded some on her phone. Hopefully she won’t get thrown in jail for stealing music. One song caught our attention with the words “Bob Brown – he’s the one that won’t let you down. Bob Brown.” As far as I can remember in my non-political brain, Bob Brown is the leader of the Greens… or is that Bob Downe? Anyway, I thought that was quite tricky - to get people interested in his skilful entertainment, then throw in some political views or social commentary. Oh, if only I could do that.

I’ll have to start playing guitar. 

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