» Kids

You can fool some of the kids all of the time - -
Master Nearly Four and Miss Five were entertaining me in the back garden of my parent's home in Brisbane as their mother chatted about plants and gardens to my parents.

"What's that down there?" asked Master Nearly Four, pointing to the long building down the hill.

"That's a block of flats." I said. "They are like little houses built together and people live in them."

"Daddy has gone away and is living with a lady in a flat." said Miss Five.

"Don't tell anyone we told you," said Master Nearly Four. "We're not supposed to know."
(Mon 21st Apr 2008, 13:11, More)

» Pathological Liars

Not too sure about this one
Used to work with a bloke called Luigi, who claimed -

1. He was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt.

2. He had gone to art school there and learned to paint in oils and watercolours, portraits, landscapes, still life, murals, you name it.

3. He fought in the Six Day War against the Israelis. They marched out into the Sinai Peninsula, sat there ten days, saw nothing then were recalled to find that they had lost. He said it was very hot there.

4. On moving to Australia he had lived in northern New South Wales and he had taken up clay pigeon shooting. He claimed to have a lot of trophies for this.

Yes, Luigi, we believe you. Thousands wouldn't, but we do.

One day he asked me to give him a ride home as his car was being fixed. It was one street out of my way so of course I did. he said "Come in for a cold beer". So of course I did. There was a case in the living room filled with trophies for clay pigeon shooting, competitions in northern New South Wales towns. Engraved in his name.

There were artists materials in one room and picture framing equipment in a shed. Later I found he was teaching colour theory at a local college and is now known as a muralist. I have bought two landscape oils of his.

Was he Alexandrian? Did he fight in the Six Day War? We'll never know.
(Sat 1st Dec 2007, 8:58, More)

» Helicopter Parents

Bert, the most unforgettable character I have ever met.
I'm the only surviving child, my sister and brother died in infancy. I must be about the only Australian who can't swim. A friend of my mother drowned in a flood when I was just a little tacker so any mention of deep water gave her the shivers. I was never given the chance to learn. Apart from that, there was no pool and the local river near our little bush town was too thick to drink and too thin to plough. So there's another excuse.

But for all that her hovering didn't approach the levels I see here. So this story is about Bert. I won't give you his surname, you'll only laugh. Well, all right, it was "Hoare".

I first met Bert when I my parents moved to a new city and sent me to the local boarding school as a day boy. He buttonholed me on the first day.

Imagine a large head, nearly albino-blonde hair cut with a basin and clippers, plastered down with Brylcreem, a pale complexion that had hardly ever seen the Sun decorated with a couple of strategically placed moles. Add thick, thick spectacles, both eyes palest, washed out blue and one of them turned slightly so you were never quite sure which way he was looking.

You could have tolerated it if he kept his distance. But he stood a hand's breadth from you as he rattled on about something or other and if he thought your attention was wavering he'd touch your shoulder. Occassional flecks of spit leapt across from full lips. Put all this on top of a chicken neck, narrow shoulders, wide hips clad in the ugliest and most old fashioned shorts his mother could have found, skinny white legs and you can see the attraction.

After a few minutes I managed to escape and later I was told about him. He was a full 18 months older than most of the rest of the class, which made him close to 19. He'd been kept back a year in primary school, being slightly younger then, and this year was repeating his final year at secondary school as he had not matriculated last attempt. He was still bottom of the class.

His parents ran a furniture shop "The Home of Chrome", that was next door to the biggest cinema in town. They belonged to some odd sect and never let Bert out of their sight except to go to school. Bert had never been to the pictures. He was the only one in the class driven to school and picked up afterward, though his home was little more than a mile from the school.

The end of the final year came, I matriculated pretty well, nothing brilliant but more than adequate. Somebody told me that Bert had failed again and was now studying with a crammer. I flunked first year at university, got a bank job then a rather well paid laboratory job, all board and lodging heavily subsidised. I saved heaps of money since I didn't drink much and stopped gambling after a bad bet on a horse. Bastard totalisators.

Five years later I enrolled for a chemistry degree at a polytechnic as a mature age student. Start of fourth semester I walked around a corner and there was Bert coming the other way. He was wearing the school blazer, a maroon-red affair with the school crest on the pocket. Shit. I quickly selected reverse. But it did no good. Bert had transferred from another polytechnic to mine and was in my lecture group. Aw, strewth, not him again.

In six years he had just managed to matriculate, had been to three different tertiary instutions, been kicked out of all three for gross failure and had just managed to complete a first year and a half of a chemistry degree, picking up bare passes here and there. When the women saw him they quickly disappeared, so most of the blokes tried to as well.

He failed a trial examination and showed me his examination paper, asking what I thought was wrong with it. It was written with a beautiful copperplate hand. His answer was better than mine for that question. But he only answered two of eight questions. Got good marks on them though. I advised him to write rather more quickly and if short of time, put his answers in note form, not to try to write an essay. That would show that he knew the stuff, which he probably did. It must have made some impression because he made it into third year.

A few of us lived along the same suburban rail line. So did Bert. If I stayed working after lectures in the library or lab, he would magically appear as I stepped out and walk to the station with me, or one of the other few. We all noticed he just appeared from nowhere. One warm Friday afternoon a few of us were passing the student's pub with Bert in tow. Someone suggested a couple of coldies. "Did you want one, Bert" Er, yes, he did. We had maybe three or four and called it a day.

Funny thing was that he never made a point of tagging along after that. Sure, sometimes you'd meet him on the way but there was no desperation about it. Maybe he decided he'd been accepted.

I graduated, got a lab job out of town with a company with several labs around the country including one in the town where the old boading school was. Three years later I was back there on a special temporary job. Consultant, I was. Ha!

Then Ronnie, one of the assistants asked me if I knew Bert. Well, yes, I did. They had given him a job in the lab once, he had lasted one day. One day! She had lived next door to him as a child and was just a year or two younger. He was not allowed to speak to her, for she was Roman Catholic. She never saw any other children in his yard, and he was barely allowed out of the house. Every few minutes after getting out of the house his mother would be calling him. He was driven to school all his school days and picked up and driven home. In those days that was all but unheard of.

That was all long ago. I occasionally wonder what became of the poor bastard. A social disaster and unemployable to boot.
(Sat 12th Sep 2009, 11:15, More)

» Stuff I've found

A handy find
I was walking down to the local garage with a can for some petrol. Near the bottom of the hill I thought that it was a pity I hadn't slit a piece of garden hose to slip over the wire handle.

Perhaps ten paces futher on I saw something blue on the roadside. It was small, longer than wide and cylindrical.

Surmise led to conjecture, conjecture led to speculation, speculation led to astonishment.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a piece of pre-slit garden hose.

Length? It fitted the handle nicely.
(Sun 9th Nov 2008, 2:30, More)

» DIY disasters

Lattice
My maternal grandfather was a builder and farmer, my paternal grandfather was a fitter and blacksmith. The practical bit seems to have skipped a generation in the male line though. Give Dad a paintbrush or roller and he'll do a wonderful job but anything else, not really a good idea. Got no idea of leverage, torque, pressure and that sort of thing. Example - sanding disk. Rubber backing disk, actual abrasive disk, biggish sheet metal washer, big screw holds it together, what's to go wrong? Well he put a new abrasive disk in and the thing disintegrated. Why? No sheet metal washer. "I didn't think it was necessary" says Dad. Er, Dad, the makers would not have put it there if it wasn't needed.

My own disasters have been pretty minor. I've got an inflated idea of my limitations but I've changed engine head gaskets, ground in exhaust valves and put new rings on a mower piston, honed brake cylinders and engines still ran and brakes still worked. Ask me to drill a hole in a particular spot and it might be a millimetre or two off though.

Bought a house in tropical Queensland, lovely old place, built about 1925, all good timber and a veranda out the front, partially enclosed by timber lattice, made from strips about two fingers wide. Someone had painted it nicely outside but inside it was peeling and blistered. Wore out an old B & D drill with sanding disk on it, then set about repainting. A b@stard of a job but the finished lattice would look great.

Yours truly has a bright idea. I'll be painting against the light and with white gloss over white undercoat and I won't be able to see where I've been. A hint of blue pigment in the undercoat will make the top coat appear whiter and I won't miss anything.

Of course I used too much pigment. The finished topcoat was patchy but palest blue and had to be done again. Big lattice panels take a long time to paint. You really don't want to paint them three times when you can do it twice.

The place had gorgeous skirting boards with ogive tops and matching architraves. Fretwork ventilators above the genuine 3-panel doors, a picture rail and really high ceilings. I scoured local lighting shops for fittings that were close to 1920-ish and got a vintage looking ceiling fan. Took the brass window latches off the 8-pane windows, cleaned off years of tarnish and paint splash, polished, lacquered and put them back on freshly painted windows. Lovely.

A few years later moved away, then when passing through called in on old neighbors. While I was there the third set of owners after me called in. So I used to own the place? Well, yes. Oh, we have been doing some work, come in for a look.

They'd ripped out out the lovely old skirting boards, the architraves and the picture rails and sheeted over the timber wall boards with featureless plasterboard. The 8-pane hinged windows that caught every stray breeze were gone, replaced by sliding aluminium framed panes that caught nothing. The interior looked like it had been built the week before.

That's a DIY disaster.
(Sun 6th Apr 2008, 11:19, More)