Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day and general ramble, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you.
My anxiety levels have been up this week. I haven’t been all that well so I’ve been fussing about getting old and needing another toilet in the house. We have only one toilet and when you have only one house toilet and you live with a house full of people, there’s often a clash of needs. The cost of housing has skyrocketed in Australia. It is now well beyond the reach of first-home buyers, unless, of course, mum and dad can help out. The cost of rent is also astronomical. Canberra (Australia) rents are the highest of any Australian capital city, and that’s saying something. So, the grown-up children will probably be living at home for a while longer.
Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you.
Unfortunately, I’ve had a really shit week. I accidentally got my Covid booster shot during the week. I had a doctor’s appointment late one afternoon and they had vaccine doses left over so they offered me one and I accepted. Gee, the fizzer shot raises your blood glucose level, doesn’t it? My BG has been all over the shop. The day after my shot, I was high all day so I decided to walk that blood sugar down. I felt really good when I started out. That should have been a warning sign. With the pump cannula in my leg (I know, stupid), the intramuscular insulin and exercise slammed me down pretty fast. I started to stagger when I reached my street on my way home. I don’t know why I didn’t stop to drink my Lucozade when I felt the hypo symptoms. Too far gone and too stupid, I guess. But I only had a few hundred metres to go, so I pushed on. I made it to our bin when my legs started to collapse under me. I then somehow made it to the front steps. I don’t know how long I was outside, clutching on to the railing, but by the time I was discovered, I was covered in mosquito bites. I remember whispering, “Help me. Help me.” Very pathetic. My True Love has a sixth sense about these things and he found me on the stairs.
Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you.
Clyde, the evil cat, is asleep on the job, the rodent hunting job that is. He much prefers prey of the feathered variety. I can’t help losing my cool because my neighbour’s open compost pile next to our shared back fence, is a cafe for rodents. Consequently, our life has been hell. This is because our dogs are hunting dogs. They are rodent hunting dogs. They are completely obsessed with catching rodents, and being Finnish spitz, they are not quiet about it. I sometimes hear a scittering when I am in my outdoor art studio and I see occasional rodent excrement resting delicately on my tile stash. Anyway, my dog, Fynn, decided he could also hear and smell the little beasties in my studio.
My True Love (TL) eventually investigated and much to his surprise found a rodent in an upside down self-watering pot. Crafty bugger, the rodent, not my TL. Anyway, the rat had taken up residence in the small, dry water well of the pot. Luxury accommodation. I was there to witness the mayhem at its discovery. I might have even contributed to some of the mayhem. My TL tried to contain the beastie in the pot but there was nothing on hand to trap it and I was frozen in fright so I was no help. Anyway, a rat the size of small Toyota sailed clear over the rim of the pot, whereupon I found my voice once again. Unfortunately, Fynnie dog can’t unsee what he saw. He will never forget the day he saw that rat run under my tile shelves. He will tell us about it. Every. Single. Day.
I reckon we need a song about an evil cat, a lazy cat. This cat’s name was Bill. Let’s listen to Ami Williamson sing Bill’s song. It is the stuff of cat lore. I bet Bill wished he had kept his legs crossed and his mouth shut.
I have begun to think about the next piece in my climate change protest art series. I have time. The Aussie government isn’t in any hurry to beat me to the punch line. Its climate action ambitions do not appear to be high, or low, or whatever. despite its own peculiar protestations.
Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you.
Today I met up with friends for coffee. It was the first time we had coffeed for about six months due to Covid restrictions. It took me a while to engage my mouth again. It worked. 95.8% of Canberrans over 12 years of age are now double-vaxed so more and more restrictions are being removed. To our north, Sydneysiders are also achieving high vaccination levels. Hence, double-vaxed Sydneysiders can now travel to Canberra (Australia).
Anyway, my friends and I did some e-bike baby-sitting for a lady who had come down from Sydney. Unfortunately, I didn’t ask her name but I do know the name of her dog. It’s Evie and Evie is a miniature Schnauzer. The two of them decided to hire an e-bike and go for a ride. Evie rode pillion in her mum’s backpack. It was Evie’s first time riding pillion. She was a little champion. Naturally, I had to take a couple of photos.
Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you.
There was a huge commotion in the backyard late this afternoon. Birds were screeching. Ama launched herself at high speed hoping to join the fray. My True Love beat her to it. One of the three magpie chicks had caught its wing in the dog fence, possibly trying to escape our big dog, Makea. Maybe the chick was already trapped before Makea arrived on the scene to complicate matters. The other magpies were screeching overhead and swooping to fend off the attackers. My True Love untangled its wing and popped it over the dog fence but it was injured and unable to fly.
In Canberra, we have this marvelous system where all vets provide a community service by treating injured wildlife. I was in two minds about whether to separate the maggie chick from its family and take it to the vet. It was pouring rain, the little bird was sodden and hurt, and of course, there was Clyde, our neighbour’s evil, cat to worry about. So My True Love and I reluctantly boxed it up and took it in. All going well, the chick should go to the wildlife carer tomorrow before being released back in the vicinity when it fully recovers. We hope its parents accept it back into the family again.
We are all in shock. We wonder whether we are now off the magpie family’s Christmas card list and will become swooping targets in future. Maybe the chick will become a swooper due to the trauma. Maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about evil Clyde and worry more about my own evil hounds. It is notable that Fynnie, our male dog, remained inside during all the commotion. As far as he is concerned, traipsing around in the rain is strictly for the birds.
How shattered ma and pa magpie must be right now! It breaks my heart. What song could possibly convey that? I dunno, but I am going with Lullaby of Birdland, performed by Andrea Motis, Joan Chamorro, Scott Hamilton and Ignasi Terraza (the latter playing a very special introduction).
Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you.
To travel to my home town, the place of my birth, would take a number of days by car. For a family with small children that journey would likely stretch to over a week. When I was a child, the cost of plane fares was also exorbitant, hence our family rarely visited our relatives in Far North Queensland. I remember a special occasion when our family did make the trip by plane. Perhaps it was my first plane trip. It was very exciting.
Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you.
Canberra’s coronavirus restrictions were eased slightly at the end of last week and will be further eased at the end of this week. Some restrictions will remain but we can now connect again with friends and family, albeit in small numbers. Stay-at-home provisions have applied since Delta arrived here nine weeks ago. During that time, I have taken great comfort from the competent, calm, compassionate and informative approach of public health officials in our local government. The health team and the government could not have been any clearer about what they needed us to do, and because no sector of the community were given preferential treatment over another, Ken Behrens* largely did what was asked of us. I think it is fair to say that at times our Chief Health Officer, Dr Kerryn Coleman, outshone others in the spotlight. I’m such a fan.
One of the many strategies to help us open safely has been to get as many Canberrans vaccinated as quickly as possible. Just prior to lockdown, approximately 48 percent of the Canberra population over 12 years of age had had one dose of one of the Covid vaccines, while just shy of 25 percent of us were fully vaccinated. Now 98 percent of us have had one dose and 83 percent of eligible Canberrans are already fully vaccinated. Howzat! Thankfully the rest of Australia is not far behind us. Unfortunately, a small number of Canberrans have died over this period and our hearts go out to their families. The vaccines are very effective but as we have learned there still can be breakthrough infections. There is also likely a growing group of Canberrans whose vaccine protection is waning and who, therefore, will need to get a top up quite soon. It does sound like there will be no rest yet for the public health team and frontline health workers who have been working so tirelessly to keep us safe.
Today, my shout-out is to Canberra’s health workers, and Dr Coleman in particular. Thanks for caring. As Dr Coleman is originally a sand-groper (that is, someone from Western Australia), I thought I would choose my Friday song from a singer/songwriter from that state. Today, I have chosen Andrew Winton, performing his song Number’s Down. How apt, don’t you think? The chorus is very easy, so sing it with me.
Take care, everyone.
Kind Regards. Tracy.
* Each day over the last nine weeks, members of the ACT government have held a press conference to keep Canberrans informed of how the Delta outbreak was unfolding and the necessary steps to keep us safe. During one of these press conferences, there was a sub-titling error that referred to Canberrans as Ken Behrens and henceforth the name has been adopted wholeheartedly by the Canberra community.
Welcome to my regular (and early) Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you. Today, I am going to get nostalgic.
I can’t remember a time when the house wasn’t dilapidated. The house sat upon tall timber pylons three storeys high, but there was nothing underneath it. The story goes that there were plans for a shop below the house but those plans never came to fruition. To the passerby, it might have looked like a giant birdhouse. This was fitting because two older ladies lived in that house. The younger was my grandmother, the elder was her mother, my great grandmother. My grandfather lived up the road. That was odd, but odd is normal for us.
Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day, ladies and gentlemen, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you.
For reasons that I am ashamed of now, I decided not to send my children to our local primary school. Instead, I decided to send them to a school out of area. Anyway, for entirely different reasons, it turned out to be a good decision. At first it seemed that we might not be able to get our eldest child into our chosen school. This was quite distressing for our son because he wanted to go to the school with the rocket in the playground. My husband and I also checked out the Catholic primary school in the same suburb as some of my child’s friends would also be attending that school. I was upfront with the principal of the Catholic school about our lack of religion. I explained to him that my child was interested in dinosaurs, planetary science and, you know, evolution. The principal was quick to reassure me that the religious education was only a small component of the curriculum and that the bible was not taught as some literal truth but more as guiding stories. I thought that was very enlightened. I can’t imagine getting that type of response these days. However, at that time, almost half the children who went to Catholic schools weren’t actually Catholic. In the end, a place came up at the rocket ship school and so a temper tantrum was avoided and I did not have to deal with my own internal conflict.
Reflections of An Untidy Mind 