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Rainwater Tanks Save The Day

rainwater-tanks-dams — Leslie Dam (reservoir 1,260ha) at 28%. Photo by BW.

Yay – the dams are full, creeks and gullies are running; rainwater tanks are spilling over. Everyone’s happy.

Our three rainwater tanks are full, as you might expect of a region where two water-starved dams reached 100% capacity in just two days.

Not so long ago (2018-2019), things were dire on the Southern Downs, with Warwick’s Leslie Dam at 7.66% (it’s now 28%), and the Granite Belt’s Storm King Dam virtually empty (now 100%).

In January 2020, a national news story told of the local council carting water to Stanthorpe from Connolly Dam in Warwick. The cost, borne by the State Government, was $800,000 a month. Carting ended last week after the March rains brought Storm King Dam back to capacity.

As you might expect, the district deluge was met by the relaxation of severe water restrictions which have been in place now for several years. Southern Downs Council had lifted daily water restrictions from 80 litres to 120 litres in mid-2020. Last week the limit was raised to 200 litres per person per day. There are caveats on this, however, with permanent restrictions applying to the use of hand-held hoses to water gardens or wash cars.

How quickly our mindset changes. We’ve gone from leaving the toilet water to mellow for days and collecting shower water in buckets to using a hose (between 7am-9am and 4pm-7pm) to wash cars. Last time I washed our car I used tank water in buckets.

It’s not so long ago that academics were advocating the use of recycled water to drought-proof houses. Writing at a time when at least seven New South Wales regional towns were in danger of running out of water altogether, Professor Roberta Ryan of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) wrote that the only real obstacle to using recycled water for a range of purposes was community acceptance.

“Household waste water (which is what goes into the sewerage system from sinks, toilets, washing machines and so on), is a more consistent supply, with 80% or more of household water leaving as waste water.

“Furthermore, waste water goes to treatment plants already, so there is a system of pipes to transport it and places which already treat it, including advanced treatment plants that can treat the water to be clean enough for a range of purposes”.

You might recall that stories like this in 2019 and earlier were met with community opposition. In 2006, Toowoomba, Australia’s biggest inland city, voted against introducing recycled water.

Those advocating re-cycled water (extracted from treated sewage), suggest using it to operate washing machines and toilets in homes and to irrigate parks and sports grounds. Many Councils already use recycled water for those latter purposes.

As the Millenium Drought (1997-2009) worsened, State and local governments started creating rebate schemes to encourage households to buy and install rainwater tanks.

It’s been a hit and miss affair, with rebate schemes ending as quickly as eager queues started forming. Australia’s building code requires tanks to be installed and plumbed in to all new houses, although this differs from State to State. For example Queensland’s local governments can opt-in (or out).

In 2013, the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that 2.3 million households (26%) used a rainwater tank as a source of water, an increase from 1.7 million (19%) in 2007. The ABS said the increase from 2007 to 2013 may be attributed to water restrictions, government rebate schemes, water regulations and water pricing.

South Australia had the highest proportion of households that used water from a rainwater tank (46%), followed by Queensland (34%).

In the absence of an update, extrapolating the annual rate of growth assumes Australia now has close to three million rainwater tanks. This estimate could be rubbery, however. The unknown factor is the numbers of tanks which are self-installed without going through Council.

Although authorities generally do not recommend that households drink harvested rainwater, the supply can be used for a range of purposes, including washing, bathing, laundry and gardening. In some parts of Australia, it may be the main source of household water, while in others, it can supplement existing mains or town water supplies.

Rainwater Harvesting Australia, a committee comprised of irrigation industry leaders, advocates use of rainwater tanks as part of a blueprint for urban water management. A strategy is suggested (for South East Queensland), to consider re-use of storm water to improve the diversity and resilience of water supply. The strategy also recommends rainwater tanks and a basic form of passive irrigation for street trees.

The main criticism of rainwater tanks is that they breed mosquitoes and testing has shown sufficient pathogens in the water to dissuade many Councils from recommending it be used for drinking.

Despite the development of waste water recycling and desalination plants, Australia is still highly dependent upon rainfall as its main source of town water.

A Productivity Commission draft report in 2020 found that direct rainfall (surface or bulk water) or indirect (groundwater) accounted for 89% of all urban water in 2017-2018. The balance was attributed to recycled water (6%) and desalinated sea water (5%).

The report argued for a (national) integrated approach to urban water management, citing seven impediments to such an approach. The key stumbling block is the management of storm water, much of which flows out to sea.

For purposes of this discussion, the report criticises State government policies for mandating recycling or rainwater tank installation without a full cost benefit analysis.

“Many governments, for example, set recycled water targets, mandate the installation of household rainwater tanks or specify that recycled water is to be used in particular applications (such as for flushing toilets).

“These policy decisions are often set without clear and transparent evidence and analysis. They have driven significant investment and have sometimes resulted in higher costs than alternatives and failed to deliver their expected benefits.”

The report cited Marsden Jacob Associates, which found that the costs outweighed the benefits by more than $2000 per tank in most cases. Harvesting rainwater tends to be more costly than supply from centralised supply systems. For example, research in south-east Queensland found that the average cost of tank water was $9.22 per kL, substantially higher than the $4.40 per kL for potable water at the time.

The intangible benefits associated with rainwater tanks include reduced town water and storm water infrastructure costs and environmental benefits (reducing local storm water flows).

They also allow households to have flourishing gardens when water restrictions are in place.

A recent study by the CSIRO (apparently a first), found that 96% of participants identified benefits with their rainwater tanks. The most prominent were: watering during restrictions (88%), reduction in water consumption (82%) and benefit to environment (71%).

Cost-benefit analysis aside, I’d advocate for an integrated approach to installing rainwater tanks in every home and business in Australia. Surely we can solve the apparent downsides (including mosquitoes, water-born disease and contaminants (ash and debris from bushfires).

The key may be for Councils to implement an annual maintenance inspection and issue show-cause notices to those whose systems need work. As the CSIRO study found, only 58% of respondents in an ABS survey claimed to undertake any kind of rainwater tank maintenance. At present, householders have no legal obligation to undertake maintenance other than to minimize public health risks.

The practical advantage of a good rainwater tank system is that it ensures your allotment will dry out quickly once the rain stops.

Meanwhile, we have 9,200 litres of water stored to irrigate gardens through the traditionally dry winter.

It can’t be a bad thing.

FOMM back pages

Proposed Sun Tax Riles Solar Users

solar-sun-tax — Caloundra Uniting Church – a subliminal message for today’s story about a proposed Sun Tax

If you are one of the prudent people who installed solar panels over the last decade, you may end up being penalised by new energy market rules. The Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) has recommended that energy retailers be given the option to charge solar owners a fee to export surplus energy to the grid.

Lobby group Solar Citizens wasted no time dubbing the proposal a ‘Sun Tax’ and it’s hard to see it any other way.

Solar Citizens says the proposal is ‘iniquitous’, as big coal and gas producers do not have to pay to send electricity to the network.

According to the AEMC, the levy will not greatly reduce the credits solar users earn from the network. AEMC’s modelling showed that the proposal would reduce the annual benefits for a typical solar household (4 to 6 kilowatts) from $970 to $900.

Households without solar will be better off by about $15 a year as the fee/levy/tax adjusts inequities in the system.

Electricity producers and retailers are seeking a solution to the ‘traffic jams’ caused by a two-way energy flow.

The nature of the domestic solar network means that electricity suppliers often receive surplus power when it is not needed, leading to power surges and blackouts. In other words, the network providers are looking to develop more efficient ways of handling the extra power. Some electricity utilities have already blocked solar users from exporting to the grid, or are restricting them to a narrow time band.

One might ask how the network got into this state – it’s not like solar power was invented yesterday.

But the AEMC says doing nothing is not an option, given that solar users will be financially penalised by being blocked from the grid. For example, a solar user who is blocked 50% of the time would lose about $300 a year in benefits.

The AEMC compiled a report on this sensitive topic in 2017, concluding then that the sun tax proposal be abandoned.

“Further work is needed in order to understand whether distributed energy resources create benefits, or impose costs on the distribution network,” the report said.

It would now seem the AEMC has decided the latter applies. The AEMC’s chief executive Benn Barr said traffic jams and blackouts were occurring now and would get worse as more solar connects to the grid.

“The grid infrastructure was built when power only flowed one way. Within 10 years half of all energy users will be using home energy options like solar.”

“We want to reassure solar customers that we’re not proposing they should all start paying export charges,” he said in a statement. “We expect networks to deliver pricing proposals in close consultation with consumers, which may include options where they don’t have to pay for exports.”

Opponents of this proposal say it is coming at a time when feed-in tariffs (the price paid for surplus solar power), are dropping.

It seems improbable now to look back at our first home solar system (2004) when the feed-in tariff was 54c per kilowatt hour. This has now dropped to an average of 8c kWh. I always thought the dual purposes of a solar system was (a) to cut greenhouse emissions and (b) reduce power bills as close to zero as possible.

Choice Magazine investigated this topic when it sent 10,000 domestic power bills to be analysed by Solar Citizens. The conclusion was that retailers are paying many Aussie households below ‘spot market’ rates for their excess solar (the spot price being the wholesale market).

Choice being Choice, the article suggests monitoring prices paid for excess generation and be prepared to switch retailers when there is a better deal on offer.

Energy economist Bruce Mountain told Choice there is no obligation on electricity retailers to pay for the power that is fed in to their network.

“Some offer nothing while others offer very high rates because they want to attract customers with solar.”

On the most recent data (2018-2019), Australia has 2.6 million households with PV solar systems. FOMM would like to think the main reason people decided to install solar is to lower our collective greenhouse emissions. In truth, solar has become more affordable and the competition to strike a deal is red-hot. Also, solar converts no doubt assumed they will at least reduce the cost of power (by earning credits from surplus power fed to the grid) or even have a zero power bill and be ‘in credit’.

CanStar Blue’s survey of household power bills in 2020 highlighted the reason for increased demand for solar. The average annual power bill for a non-solar household is $1614. In our first year with a 6 kilowatt solar panel system, our power bills were less than 20% of that. Now, according to She Who Pays the Bills, we are in credit to the tune of $108.

“Can we cash that out?” I asked hopefully, heart set on a new set of Hohner harmonicas. (Wait til winter’s over.SWPB)

Energy Locals founder Adrian Merrick advised Choice readers to use all their solar energy generation before feeding in to the grid.

The best way for households to use as much of the energy they produce is to use energy-hungry appliances like washing machines and dryers during daylight hours.

Merrick also suggests investing in emerging technologies such as solar diverters and buying storage batteries as battery prices come down.

If you have been thinking this is much ado about nothing, consider how governments are continually working to increase tax revenue, openly or by stealth.

Who would have imagined the four-year punitive regime Spanish solar owners endured. In 2015, Spain’s conservative Popular Party introduced a new tax ‘Impuesto el sol’ which, as you’d guess, is a Sun Tax.

Spain’s Photovoltaic Union (UNEF) said in 2015 that self-consumers would pay double tolls for each kWh imported from the grid, compared to non-solar users.

“The new law makes it uneconomic for households and businesses to install PV with the latter endangered to lose in competitiveness too,” UNEF said.

The law also prohibited PV systems up to 100 kW from selling electricity. Owners were required to donate the extra electricity to the grid for free.

Fortunately, a new Spanish government scrapped the ‘Sun Tax’ in late 2018. In its place, as Forbes magazine reported, was a system to encourage ‘collective self-consumption’.

The new energy regulation brought Spain in line with its European neighbours and closer to achieving the EU’s energy targets for 2030.

It also encourages collaborative solar ventures between neighbouring buildings – easier to do in population-dense Europe.

We might be drawing a long bow citing Spain here, but consider this insight on the AEMC proposal from Victoria Energy Policy Centre economist Bruce Mountain.

“It is like arguing that bicycles should be charged for using the roads,” he told Renew Economy’s Giles Parkinson.

“The uptake of solar was the one big success we have had in the energy transition.”

The AEMC is seeking submissions on its proposal, with a May 13 deadline.

FOMM back pages: https://bobwords.com.au/solar-no-easy-energy-fix/

Further reading https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-tax-networks-will-be-able-to-charge-households-to-export-solar-power-to-grid/

JobSeeker and the $50 ‘bonus’

jobseeker-unemployment — Contrary to popular opinion, almost half the people in this study relied on NewStart (now JobSeeker) for less than a year. Graphic courtesy of Wes Mountain and The Conversation.

You know how it goes. You’ve finished ferrying 16 items down the checkout conveyor and the assistant says: $142.99 – cash or card?

“How do the poor people get by?” I ask of no-one in particular.

Later, I went to the butcher ($47) and the organic fruit and vegetable shop ($56), all up $245.

She Who Pays the Bills said: “But we only needed a few things”.

Now if we were on unemployment benefit, such profligacy would leave us with just $375 to cover the next 13 days (rent, bills, fuel and more groceries).

It is timely to write about the cost of living, and how the reality appears quite different to the official inflation rate (1.2% in December). The Federal Government’s superficially successful $100 billion wage subsidy programme (JobKeeper), ends on Monday. Businesses that claimed JobKeeper passed on the subsidy to people they employed, regardless of how turnover and profit was tracking through the year that the programme was in place.

The last day of March also signals an end to the scaled-down Covid-19 supplement paid through JobSeeker. In the first few months of its origins, JobSeeker initially doubled the benefits paid to unemployed people.

JobSeeker, which replaced NewStart and associated benefits from March 21, 2020, introduced three levels of supplements paid through the first year of the Corona virus. From April 27 2020 to September 25, recipients were paid $550 extra a fortnight. This was then reduced to $250 extra per fortnight until December 31, 2020. The final supplement of $150 a fortnight was paid from January 1 until it ends next week.

Welfare groups had long lobbied the government to raise the unemployment payment beyond the poverty level.

The government made much of its decision to raise the rate paid to those on JobSeeker by $50 a fortnight ($3.57 per day).

As of next week, welfare recipients will have to learn to live without the additional $150 a fortnight – reverting to $620 a fortnight, excluding other payments like rental assistance*.

Economist Ross Garnaut’s latest book proposes that successive Federal governments, in cahoots with the Reserve Bank, have deliberately kept unemployment high since the mid-1980s. He writes that governments have ‘allowed’’ hundreds of thousands to languish in unemployment as a means of pursuing a policy to suppress wage growth and inflation.

Garnaut says this deliberate policy has ‘immiserated’ people.

He told ABC business reporter Gareth Hutchens that Australia should use its many resources to push the unemployment rate down to 3.5% by 2025. You may not remember, but unemployment was at this level or lower for decades between 1950 and 1975. This was an era when many Australians had permanent jobs in factories that made things.

Garnaut says the government and Reserve Bank have to stop guessing the level of ‘full employment’ (at which point the RBA starts lifting interest rates, as a means of combating inflation).

He says the budget deficits needed to sustain full employment should be funded directly or indirectly by the Reserve Bank. It is complex, but if you are interested, read more here.

The Conversation’s in-depth study of unemployment benefits busts a few myths. Research by a team drawn from the Brotherhood of St Lawrence, RMIT and ANU studied benefit payments between 2001 and 2016.

The premise of the report is that Australians receiving unemployment payments are often portrayed as “a relatively small group of people with personal or behavioural problems that stop them from getting a job.”

The research was conducted to challenge long-held perceptions of ‘us and them’.

One of the most startling conclusions clarifies myths about the long-term unemployed. The research found that nearly half of the Newstart population of 4.4 million (47%) received the payment for less than a year. Over two-thirds (68%), received it for less than two years. The study uncovered a concerning trend in the number of welfare payments suspended for not reporting income correctly or not meeting job-seeking targets.

“Our study found rates of suspension increased dramatically over the study period, from 2% in 2001 to 11% to 2016.

“Successive governments have increasingly sought to enforce this, leading to more uncertainty around the payment”.

So, while the unemployed go forward living on a minimum $44 a day, how will things go with the end of JobKeeper, the flawed business subsidy scheme which kept 3.5 million people off the dole queue?

As business editor Ian Verrender noted in an analysis for the ABC, JobKeeper turned into a profit mill for businesses that boomed during the lockdown. Billions of taxpayers’ dollars were paid to wealthy businesses, without the mutual obligations associated with welfare. The only reason we know about this at all is the corporate regulator’s belated decision to force listed companies to disclose their taxpayer handouts in the December half corporate results.

Verrender, an investigative scribe, laments the lack of a public register of JobKeeper recipients – “despite the scheme being among the most ambitious (of its kind) in the world”.

But it is not just the blue chip public companies that scored a windfall; tens of thousands of private partnerships, sole traders, charities and small to medium-sized businesses also prospered.

Many of the heads of Australia’s biggest businesses feature in the timely release of the Top 250 Rich List by the Weekend Australian. I say timely because it suits my purposes to mock the rich. What else can you do when the 250 individuals named in this list are collectively worth (in monetary terms- Ed.) $470 billion. As former journalist union chief Christopher Warren wrote in Crikey – that is equivalent to 25% of Australia’s GDP. Even the lower echelons on this list have a net worth of $450 million or more – $449 million more than the collective net worth of your average self-funded retiree couple..

Wish, the glossy magazine lift-out supported by full-page ads by Mercedes Benz, Cartier, Giorgio Armani and the like, is a supreme example of what The Australian calls ‘aspirational’ journalism.

For those on JobSeeker who aspire to getting best value from that extra $50 per fortnight, here’s a slow cooker recipe for lamb forequarters (large chops that are too tough for the barbeque). You can probably score a kilo for $15 or so. Buy 1.5 kilos each of onion, carrots, potatoes and the cheapest green vegetable (about $10 all up). Add a can of red kidney beans ($1.67) to flesh it out and cook the lot in a slow cooker while you are out applying for one of the 15 jobs a month needed to justify your welfare payment.

If you chucked in the right combo of herbs and garlic and made a gravy worthy of ‘Sir’ Paul (Kelly), the lamb will just fall off the bone and you’ll be eating this for days.

Buy an $8 bottle of red while you still can (he said, one eye on the coming of the cashless welfare card). Invite someone over (‘a loaf of bread would be great, thanks’).

Enjoy every casserole.

Antarctica or Bust.

antarctica-penguins-icebergs — Antarctica photos contributed by JH

For most people who like to travel, Antarctica is probably not on the list of places they aspire to visit. I say that because, although visitor numbers to the frozen continent have risen 50% in recent years, the numbers are tiny on the mass tourism scale.

People with some curiosity about the seventh continent can satisfy it by reading books or viewing any of these recommended documentaries.

Armchair travel obviously did not do it for the 73, 991 people who took a tour to Antarctica in the summer of 2019-2020.

For many people, following in the footprints of Scott and Shackleton is more than a bucket list item. For them, touring the South, snapping multiple photos of penguins and albatross or kayaking in the path of mighty icebergs, is a lifetime ambition.

A family member, John, realised a long-held ambition in 2017 when visiting Antarctica with his wife and daughter. On the 21-day cruise, the ship re-traced the voyage of Ernest Shackleton. In 1914, the explorer crossed from South Shetland Island to South Georgia. He and a five-man crew then set off on foot, the first crossing of the island. The latter day tour included stopping at Shackleton’s grave and toasting him with Irish whiskey. Some comments from their tour:

“Each day we’d go ashore in the morning and view seal and penguin colonies.

“We also visited an old whaling station where they carried out whaling on an industrial scale.

“After South Georgia we sailed to the Ross Sea, but we didn’t get very far because of large icebergs. We were constantly changing course to avoid them.”

Icebergs ahoy

Antarctica does not belong to any one nation, so no visa is required to visit. However your country of residence must be a signatory to the Antarctica Treaty. It’s a long way to travel, expensive, and there is no direct route.

Most tourists do it with a combination of air and cruise or cargo ship travel. One common route is Brisbane-Sydney-Ushuaia (a southern Argentinian resort town and port), then by ship to Antarctica. As an alternative to the return journey, adventurers may travel from the Ross Sea to Invercargill/Bluff in New Zealand then fly to their home base from there.

The travel advisory for Antarctica is currently at level two (exercise increased caution). Just how many people travel to the continent between November 2021 and March 2022 depends on the status of the pandemic.

US citizens (who comprise 34% of visitors), will need to prove they are Covid-free before re-entering the US. This may or may not be a deterrent.

Antarctica expeditions are probably out for Australians this year, given a ban on leaving the country for other than compelling reasons. Likewise, Argentina has a travel ban in place, which makes it difficult for many tours that use the South American country as a launching pad.

A writer friend, Dale Lorna Jacobsen (left), first travelled to Antarctica in 2013. She was one of 25,284 visitors who set foot on land that summer. On her return she wrote a book, Why Antarctica: a Ross Sea Odyssey, which chronicles the fulfilment of a childhood dream.

“When I told my friends I was finally going to Antarctica, the most common question was: ‘Why Antarctica?’. I didn’t bother replying. You either ‘get’ Antarctica, or you don’t. If you do, there is no need to ask. If you don’t, words could not explain why.

I have been fascinated by the 7^th continent since, at the age of eight, I discovered the existence of a place filled with mountains, ice, snow and wild weather; all the things I love.

My first expedition was in 2013, and incorporated a 32-day semi-circumference from the Peninsula to the Ross Sea. A dream come true for an Antarcticophile, getting to step into the historic huts of Shackleton and Scott; walking for hours in the Taylor Dry Valley. I knew one trip would never be enough. I returned in 2016 on an action-packed 12 days, camping in a bivvy bag on the ice; snow-shoeing; kayaking. Then in 2017 I repeated the 32-day semi-circumference.

I am chuffed to say that the ANARE (Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions) Club commissioned me to write the memoir of Centenarian, John Russell OAM, who still loves telling tales of how he and nine other Aussies were first ashore to set up Mawson Base in 1954.”

Dale produced a companion book of photographs to her first book. I bought mine as an E-book, files tucked away inside the USB body of a cute rubber penguin!

You have to assume there will always be ‘Antarticophiles’ like Dale and John, passionate about visiting and even re-visiting the South. It will be interesting to see what authorities do when visitor numbers inevitably creep towards 100,000.

The Antarctic Southern Oceans Coalition (ASOC) says the number of visitors has been doubling every couple of years, along with the establishment of “mass tourism destinations”.

The US leads the pack in terms of visitor numbers (18,942), followed by China 8,149 and Australia 5,077 (2018-2019).

Paul Ward’s website CoolAntarctica is a trove of information about the frozen continent. We sourced some of the visitor information from this site. Ward notes the ban after 2008-2009 on cruise ships carrying 500 passengers or more. Large cruise ships were spending two or three days in Antarctic waters, often as part of a broader cruise, but not landing.

“These large ships were a great concern as an incident involving an oil or fuel spill from them would have been very significant,” Ward writes.

“Any kind of rescue or evacuation would also have been very difficult, owing to the large numbers of people on board”.

The global pandemic was just emerging as the 2019-2020 tourism season came to an end. The next cruise season, still seven months away, is likely to attract even more visitors to the South, Covid-19 restrictions not withstanding.

The International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO) plays a pivotal role in ensuring its members adhere to environmental and safety protocols. Formed in 1991, it requires all members to abide by the Antarctic Treaty. Cruise ships co-ordinate with each other to ensure than no more than 100 people are onshore at a landing site at the same time.

Despite these precautions, there are signs the continent may be at risk of being over-loved. Scientific studies have identified human interaction as one possible cause of sickness in Emperor penguins.

The Science Magazine published an article in 2018 based on research by a team of scientists from Spain. They discovered the effect of reverse zoonosis on bird and animal populations. Reverse zoonosis is the term used to describe humans passing pathogens on to animals.

The study found human-linked pathogens in bird poop, revealing for the first time, that even animals on this isolated, ice-bound landmass can pick up a bug from tourists or visiting scientists.

“This newly identified infection route could have devastating consequences for Antarctic bird colonies, including population collapse and even extinction.”

Regardless, if Antarctica is on your bucket list, a visit in the summer of 2021/22 will depend on how relaxed your country is about letting you leave. Still, we can all dream.

Further reading:

Impractical man approaches roundabout

roundabout-impractical-driver — Stage one (drainage) is done for the new roundabout coming to this tricky corner on Churchill Drive, Warwick (Qld).

Considering I once entered a roundabout the wrong way, I’ve so far managed to survive life as an impractical man. If you’ll permit me to misquote a line from that Kinks song (Lola): “Well I’m not the world’s most practical guy..”

Such thoughts emerged last week as I haplessly searched for our car in the local shopping centre car park.

“What does it look like, mate?” asked a passer-by, trying to be helpful.

”It’s a white SUV”

“Mate, there must be 60 white SUV’s in this car park – could you be more specific?

“Um, it’s new”

“What’s the rego?”

“Um, it starts with a 9”

She Who Used To Teach Geography sometimes remarks, a tad scathingly, about my wayward sense of direction. And these days she has been known to point out that not everyone can play guitar and harmonica, sing and remember lyrics of a song they wrote, all at the same time.

She inherited practical skills from her builder father and honed her sense of direction training as a geography teacher. Hence her exasperation when she says ‘go left here’ and I almost always gravitate to the right.

I rationalise this as a left brain/right brain conflict. We creative people are more right-brain dominated. Isn’t that true, Nic?

Therefore, while I can knock out a 1,200-word blog in 40 minutes, I’m almost certain to hire a handy person to mend a broken mailbox, call the RACQ when we have a flat tyre or try four screwdrivers before finding the one that will actually do the job. (Ed: It actually needed an Allen key.)

My practical skills have improved somewhat after years of frustrated tutelage from SWUTTG. One example might be that I can dismantle my own coffee machine to clean the filter and run a de-scaling solution through it. Another time I changed a light bulb.

Sometimes I come up with practical solutions all by myself. After a year or more of trying to put a cover over our caravan on windy days, I decided the solution was to roll it up and place it lengthwise along the roof, then roll the ends down the front and back of the van (after SWUTTG pointed out that the front of the cover is marked ‘Front’.). Eventually I will stop praising myself for this. When I next mention it she may well say “What, do you want a medal?”

It was difficult growing up in this part of the world in the 1950s and 1960s, when every second bloke (and a few girls) could replace a clutch plate and do their own grease and oil change. Some in my age bracket seem determined to keep these skills alive.

Just last weekend over lunch a friend was telling me how he planned to obtain a new engine and gearbox from the wreckers for his 2004 Ford ute, which has done 300k+. He says he plans to do all the work himself. I shuddered. The women scoffed.

My knowledge of motor vehicles is limited to: fuel goes in here, check tyre pressures, tighten wheel nuts before towing and stay on the left of the white line.

That was (my) number one reason for buying a new car (with a five-year warranty). I figure it might see me out.

What no jumper cables?

Some years ago we were staying at a caravan park between Georgetown and Clermont and when we went to leave, there was nothing doing when I turned the key. The battery was not just flat, it was dead. The closest RACQ was 80 kms away in Georgetown.

Eventually a bloke who used to drive trucks for a living backed his vehicle up to ours and connected jumper leads.

So we got started and drove to Clermont where a mechanic fitted a new battery after first commenting on the old one: “There’s no water in this battery, mate, none at all.”

He gave me the same scornful look Aussie blokes give when SWUTTG drives into a caravan park (and then flawlessly backs it into the designated space while I stand around haplessly waving my arms).

An old mate with great DIY skills has just retired and bought a large ex-ambulance which he is busily converting into a motor home. Last I heard, he was underneath the vehicle working on the plumbing (fresh water tanks and ‘other’). One of his ingenious plans was to build a bed platform on hydraulics which is neatly tucked away in the roof during the day.

This topic stirred up a couple of old memories, not all of which I am proud. There was the time SWUTTG’s Dad came to visit and decided (with my help) to build a timber fence across the front of our house. The old fence had pretty much fallen over and our two dogs were apt to go walkabout. So Dad, being the quintessential Canadian handyman, went on down to the ‘lumber yard’ and then persevered with my lamentable efforts as an offsider.

After a bit of swearing at the density of Australian timber, we got our posts set in concrete and Dad went off to hire a nail gun. It seems unfair that after we moved, someone bought the quarter acre block, removed the house and bulldozed everything else.

The other memory was prompted by roadworks going on not far from home. The local Council has acquired funding from the Federal ‘Black Spot’ programme to build a new roundabout between the Condamine River weir bridge and the railway crossing off Churchill Street.

My research uncovered the Council’s notice of roadworks, which mentions everything except the cost of the roundabout (about $380,000).

A small investment, but no less important than the $25 million the State Government will spend on an election promise. Work has started on a notorious ‘black spot’ intersection 12 kms from Warwick. An overpass will be built at the Cunningham and New England highways intersection; work to be completed by 2022. Known locally as the ’Eight Mile”, the intersection is used by vehicles travelling between Brisbane, Warwick and Toowoomba.

Keep left at all times

Which brings me to a confession and a 30-second video filmed at a roundabout on Vancouver Island in 2004. The confession part involved my stopping off at the Yatala pie shop circa 1995, a diversion from the Gold Coast motorway. When navigating a newly completed roundabout, I entered it the same way you would if you were driving in Europe, the US or Canada. I’m not sure how that happened and I swear it only happened once.

“Dad!” said the teenager in the passenger seat, “WTF are you doing?”

Fair call.

Now that I have managed to write 1200 words made up of self-deprecating anecdotes, I must return to a small list of domestic chores:

Vacuum house;

Finish washing and hang out clothes;

Re-set mouse traps;

Take dog for walk

SWUTTG’s list looks like this:

Sharpen secateurs;

Fit new hose connections;

Lubricate squeaky door hinges;

Clean tank filters (Bob to hold ladder);

Proof-read this and scoff a lot.

Don’t verb that noun, my friend

verb-noun-grammar — Image: This clever, tongue-in-cheek meme has been doing the rounds on social media – creator unknown (but thanks)

It doesn’t take much to cause members of the Ancient Order for the Preservation of Proper English (AOPPE) to fly off the handle.

A misplaced modifier, a literal, verb confusion, homophonic confusion (a pear of undies) or noun-verbing will do it every time.

There are old phrases akin to ‘fly off the handle’ (to lose one’s temper), in Tony Maniaty’s memoir of a half-Greek kid growing up in 1950s Brisbane.

Maniaty employs sayings of the day like ‘stone the crows’, ‘drunk as a skunk’ and (the book’s title), ‘all over the shop’. The latter means in every direction, in a disorganised and confused state. It’s a British sporting term, originating in the 19^th century.*

I was thinking about this topic when realising how many erudite people read my weekly musings – authors, artists, academics, folkies, historians, lawyers, photographers, politicians, proofreaders, poets, property developers, teachers, university lecturers…it’s a long list.

I’m impressed that they stick with me, given that every week, the SEO (search engine optimisation) programme in WordPress suggests that readability could be improved.

Most of us in the over-70 cohort, brought up on old-school grammar and spelling, will realise we are members of the aforementioned Order (which would, if it existed, have a lodge with disabled access, smoke alarms and a fire extinguisher, a white board and an urn for making herbal tea).

For this lot, spelling, grammar and syntax matters, as does punctuation, even when you overdo it, like I do; not that I make a habit of it – or end a sentence with a preposition, but.

You are certain to see members of the AOPPE emerge from the lodge clutching placards at the first sign of someone grumbling about the mangling of the English language. Let’s take just one example, a news report describing a group of people as ‘that’.

‘A group of concerned citizens that (who) did something’.

The more worrying thing about the Australian language in 2021 is that it so lacks the colourful sayings of my youth. There are examples aplenty in All over the Shop and Hugh Lunn’s memoir, (Over the top with Jim). They include choice phrases like ‘the cat’s got your tongue’ or ‘you look like you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards’. We all knew what they meant.

In my newspaper days, a young colleague did me a great favour, to which I responded, ‘your blood’s worth bottling’. He, a double degree graduate of our best university, said “Excuse me?”

I explained it was a supreme compliment but he said he’d not heard the expression, which originated with young diggers on the Western Front (1914-18).*

Maniaty uses Australian-isms of the 1950s when describing Brisbane at a time when many of the city’s timber houses were 10 foot off the ground on wooden stumps. He appoints himself narrator – right from the moment of birth. It’s an amusing artifice, a four-year-old dispensing futuristic wisdom. He tells Dad he ought to make yoghurt in little plastic pots and sell it in the shop, like ice-cream.

Dad laughs “Who’d buy that stuff?”

“Not on your life,” says Mum, “that’s our recipe”.

By the bye, many scholars have tried to track down the origins of ‘stone the crows’. All agree it derives from Australia and fits nicely with other mild oaths such as ‘stiffen the lizards’. Most would agree that expressions like ‘strike me pink’ or ‘strike me up a gumtree’ don’t really mean anything. They are just mild versions of ‘s*** a brick’ or similar.

Phillip Adams lamented in The Weekend Australian, August 1996, that most of the slang words of his childhood had disappeared. Or at best they appeared only in Dad and Dave jokes, copies of the Sentimental Bloke or the Macquarie Dictionary. Check and see if he’s right (words starting with D): drongo, dill, dinki-di, dinkum, dole, dukes, dag, daks, decko, darl, dazzler and daisy-cutter (an obscure AFL term). How many of those 12 words do we use in conversation today? (2- Ed.)

Adams reckons there are 120 Aussie terms for inebriation (and 30 for vomiting). I recall one choice phrase: ‘talking to God on the big white telephone’ which manages to encompass both.

Tony Maniaty’s Mum had a couple of mild phrases to describe drunken behaviour such as ‘drunk as a skunk’ or ‘full as a boot’.

The rollicking days of Bazza McKenzie not withstanding, our unique language has been infiltrated by Americanisms and the abbreviated ‘language’ of social media.

As Hugh Lunn said in the introduction to his collection of old Australian slang terms: “If we adopt the language of another society we lose the rights of memory in our own kingdom.”

Lunn amassed a vast collection of Aussie-ims from the 1940s and 1950s when writing his memoir, ‘Over the top with Jim’.

Later, he wrote amusingly about the vernacular in another book, ‘Lost for Words’ (which sold 40,000 copies). When I pulled this 2006 tome from the bookshelf, I found the Adams article, which I had been using as a bookmark.

Although I was born in the late 1940s, I confess ignorance of sayings in this book like, ‘It’s snowing down south’ (your knickers are showing) or ‘he’s all mouth and trousers’ (referring to a boastful person).

The misuse of the Queen’s English is another matter altogether. There are many instances like the one in last Saturday’s Weekend Australian), where the reporter or sub editor literally put his or her foot in it. They reckoned the takeover of ME Bank by BOQ was ‘no shoe-in”

My pet peeve (or bugbear), is when reporters and others use a noun as a verb. A classic example oft-used on TV news is ‘residents were impacted’. Ahem. They would only be impacted if they had an unfortunate bowel or tooth condition. The proper word is affected.

Grammarians refer to verbing a noun as denominalisation. This explains the process by which nouns (passive words), slink their way into the domain of doing words (verbs).

Instead of saying ‘why don’t you sell it on eBay” the noun becomes a verb – “Just eBay it.”

The BBC’s Brandon Ambrosino chose a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon to illustrate an article on noun-verbing.

“I like to verb words,” Calvin tells Hobbes. “I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs,” he explains, citing the word “access.” “Remember when access was a thing? Now it’s something you do.”

As Strunk and White’s Elements states: “Many nouns lately have been pressed into service as verbs. Not all are bad, but all are suspect.”

So, whether your blood is boiling or worth bottling, you should not replace proper English expression with millennial nonsense like Dude!, Whatever, Just saying, LOL (laugh out loud) or OMG (which people of my era may think means Oh My Giddy Aunt).

As Adams wrote 15 years ago, “our verbal biodiversity is being replaced by the mealy-mouthed and mass-marketed.”

Strewth! Strike me pink, Bluey. You can say that again.

* www.wordhistories.net

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Good afternoon,

It appears that my posts are not being sent to people who signed up with their WordPress account. Bear with me while I figure out what’s going on. As you can see, I’m still posting every Friday.

It would be helpful if you see this message to let me know as I deactivated some plugins to see if it fixed the issue.

Facebook’s news ban – what was that all about?

Facebook-news-ban — Graph supplied by Chartbeats/NiemanLab

Nothing better demonstrates the irrelevancy of Facebook’s news ban than this tweet from elder statesman Everald Compton.

“My friends in Parliament tell me that meeting between #CraigKelly and #Barnaby was to create new #conservative party with Barnaby as leader.

They will be joined by Christensen and Canavan and sit on the cross benches. #Morrison will lead minority government. Happy Days.”

Compton, who many would know through his long-running blog, Everald at Large, posted the 45-word tweet at 5.30 on Tuesday. An enterprising friend took a screenshot and emailed it to me, which is one of the myriad ways enterprising people circumnavigated Facebook’s too-much too-soon decision to ban the sharing of ‘news’.

Twitter consumers would simply ‘retweet’ so their 654 followers will see Everald’s tweet too. Just so you know, the usual Facebook sharing route would be for a friend to ‘retweet’ on Twitter and, subject to your own Facebook settings, share it as a post. Said friends would then re-share (on Facebook or elsewhere). But as you know, that was briefly not possible, until this morning.

The alternative, copying a news link from a publisher and emailing it to a few friends, is a poor substitute for assuming that your 654 friends will read long articles like Ross Garnaut’s theory of ‘voluntary unemployment’. (by which he means a deliberate government policy of maintaining an unemployment rate, not another term for ‘dole bludgers’. Ed)

While Facebook today re-instated news sharing on its platform, as it has promised, during its week-long hiatus, Facebook regressed to a state where every second post was either an ad (sponsored), an attempt by zealots to bypass the news sharing ban (cut and paste and share) , or paid ads from conventional news outlets. The latter usually said something like ‘If you are looking for (our) news here, you won’t find it – go to our website or download our app.”

I briefly wondered if conventional media paid Facebook for these ads or whether it was some sort of good faith gesture. Unlikely, given the speed with which Facebook unleashed its mysterious algorithms; which not only shut off news sharing, but inadvertently shut off access to government websites, hospitals, emergency services, charities and even humble not-for-profit blogs.

Everald Compton’s tweet also demonstrates the gulf between the way people used to consume and disseminate information and what they do now.

In the not so long ago world of journalism, a person privy to such intel would have quietly picked up the phone and dialled the number of their pet journo (“mate, you didn’t hear it from me”).

The immediacy (and brevity) of Twitter allows someone with Compton’s media skills to distribute this hot rumour to the world in general in a heartbeart.

Is it accurate and does it really matter?

Craig Kelly’s sudden resignation from the Liberal Party to sit on the cross-bench raises all manner of scenarios. He will be wooed by the National Party and others on the fringes of politics and the suggestion he may buddy up with Barnaby Joyce, Matt Canavan and George Christensen is wholly on the cards.

So far the ‘traditional media’ is having nowt to say about the possibilities of a new (some have said ‘Trumpian’), political party. Compton’s view on the matter would seem to be that whatever happens, Prime Minister Morrison will lead a minority government. He will have no option but to do deals to get legislation across the line.

Facebook’s decision on February 18 to ban news sharing on its platform was triggered by mooted legislation that would force Facebook to pay media companies for sharing their news content. While the legislation has been amended in the Senate, the draft legislation now has to go back to Parliament. But deals have clearly been done.

The business risk to Facebook was a potential loss of custom from people who decide to source their news elsewhere. The clearer risk to publishers is the quantum drop off in traffic to their news sites.

According to Harvard University’s NiemanLab (and Chartbeat), the ban sent the hourly rate of Facebook traffic to news sites from within Australia tumbling. Chartbeat’s analysis concluded that when Facebook traffic dropped off, overall Australian traffic did not shift to other platforms.

“This drop has been seen most dramatically in traffic to Australian sites from readers outside of Australia: Because that readership was so driven by Facebook, overall this outside-Australia traffic has fallen day-over-day by over 20% (or more)”

NiemanLab had speculated that if Facebook’s news ban were to continue, dedicated news consumers might adapt in ways that are positive for news publishers. For example, they might visit a publisher’s website more often, or sign up for a daily newsletter.

NiemanLab’s Joshua Benton concluded: “Casual reader of news on Facebook – and that’s most users, given that news stories make up only about 4% of the typical News Feed, might just skip news entirely.”

Australian economist and blogger John Quiggin says the real problem is advertising. Facebook and Google are able to offer advertisers much better targeting of ads than either news organisations or traditional broadcasters.

“Much of the content used to make this targeting work is links to content prepared by traditional news organisations,” Quiggin wrote in The Conversation, a not-for-profit news portal.

“The entire debate about who benefits most — the organisations that do the linking or the organisations that are linked to — misses the point.

“We have always put up with advertising in order to get the information produced by news organisations.

“Now the advertising revenue is flowing to Google and Facebook, and we have no model for funding news media in the future.” Quiggin, who is Professor of the School of Economics at the University of Queensland, suggests the solution may be direct public funding, “perhaps financed by a tax on advertising.”

Quiggin notes that his own blog, www.johnquiggin.com, had been affected by the ban, even though it carries no advertising and does not seek payment from Facebook. WordPress automatically posts this weekly missive to Bobwords, my blog page on Facebook. But when I tried to share it to my personal page last Friday, I got the same message as when trying to share Prof. Quiggin’s post yesterday afternoon:

In response to Australian government legislation, Facebook restricts the posting of news links and all posts from news Pages in Australia. Globally, the posting and sharing of news links from Australian publications is restricted.

Now hang on a minute, didn’t Facebook say (on Tuesday) it would re-instate news links? Like the Queen Mary, it took a long time to turn around.

If you have not already done so, sign up for The Conversation’s (free) newsletter; stories written by academics and curated by journalists. They need us now more than ever.

Motorbike nostalgia

By Laurel Wilson

motorbike-GOMA — Photo L Wilson: An Indian ‘Chief’ motorbike, 1940, but much fancier than a dispatch rider’s bike- from the GOMA Exhibition, Motorcycle Design, Art and Desire

Dad didn’t talk much about his war experiences, but he did mention that he had been a dispatch rider at one stage – roaring through the English countryside at night on an Indian motorbike without lights. Fortunately for him (and us, his unborn children), he soon decided that riding dispatch was not a healthy occupation.

Perhaps his tales of riding that big thumping motorbike sounded exciting. Perhaps it was because several of my friends during my university days had taken up the then new fad of riding ‘dirt’ bikes. At any rate, as soon as I could scratch up the money, I bought a 125cc motorbike, later trading it in for a 185cc Suzuki trail bike.

Being the cautious type (despite buying a motorbike) I invested in a full face helmet and a later a set of ‘leathers’ – black, but with red hearts on the knee pads and a rather fetching red leather jacket.

I can recall one memorable ride when we set off from Toowong to ride over the top of Mt Coot-tha and through various forestry trails until we reached Esk and promptly went to the pub. The barkeeper’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head when I took off my helmet – a ‘sheila’ amongst half a dozen or so male motorbike riders.

For some reason, I thought getting into competitive motocross or ‘scrambling’ was a good idea. There used to be a track during the Redland Bay Strawberry Festival, but the main one was at Tivoli raceway, outside of Ipswich, which is apparently still in operation. The big dirt track had several humps, which you’d become air-borne over, if you were going fast enough. There were often muddy patches too, if it happened to have rained recently.

Some generous, but possibly foolhardy chap once lent me his ‘flat track’ bike to race at the track designed for this type of racing. This was a specialised 4-stroke BSA with gears, but no brakes as such. Instead, you have to rely on engine braking. Well, it was exhilarating and I managed to get around the track and stop in one piece, but my career as a flat track racer was pretty short..

At that time, there were only two or three women who were competing. Sometimes they’d give us our own race, but often we’d just race with the men. I still have a cheque for $1, which was my prize for coming second in one of the women’s races.

I’d ride to the meet, strip the bike of lights and put on my racing plate. After the meet, reverse the process and ride home again. Eventually I bought an EK Holden Ute (for $300) and would drive to meets with the bike strapped on to the tray.

Of course riding also involves falling off, sometimes at fairly impressive speeds. Somehow I managed to avoid breaking any bones, but after one particularly painful spill which required a week off work, I reluctantly sold my two wheel machine and have stuck to four wheels ever since.

It seems I haven’t completely forgotten my love affair with motorbikes though, as I was quite excited to read about the exhibition currently showing at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art (Stanley Place, South Brisbane), titled ‘The Motorcycle Design, Art and Desire’. It’s a ticketed exhibition ($25 adults, $20 concession); well worth the price if you have any interest in motorbikes. Great bit of nostalgia too.

There’s even a Vincent Black Lightning, if you know that famous Richard Thompson song about Molly, the red-headed girl. https://youtu.be/j0kJdrfzjAg (live video – song starts at 0.30)

(that’s not the bike in the photo!)

Bob’s postscript

You might have gathered I sat this week out, given we had a ready-made topic (and photos). While I wait two weeks (or it could be three) for the town’s only cardiac holter monitor to become available, I’m a bit spooked about palpitations. I fear anything might set them off – sitting, typing, farting. But I did some research on Laurel’s topic, of course I did.

She is right, a female trail bike rider in the early 1970s would have been a sight, especially a beautiful one with hair down to her waist.

I might also observe that her investment in a full-face helmet was also a rare thing; helmets were not made compulsory until 1972.

Women now represent about 20% of Australia’s 2.2 million people with motorcycle licences. But there’s no way of knowing which of our 870,000 registered motorcycles are ridden by women.

Our devotion to motorbikes is miniscule compared to Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia or the Phillipines. Those who have tried to cross a city road in South East Asia will not be surprised to learn than more than 80% of households in those countries have a scooter or a motorbike.

We’ve written a few pieces in this blog about motorbikes and the various adventures people get up to on two wheels. While true bikers might not describe a postie’s bike as a motorcyle, ex-postie bikes have been pressed into service to raise money for charity. And of course there’s the Black Dog Ride, which raises awareness about depression and suicide.

And there\s the 70^th birthday confessions about motorbike dreams, in which I posted a photo of She Who Sometimes Writes, circa 1970 (left). Some artist genius should colourise it – we’d like that.

Long live the Green Man

john-thompson-grief — Green Man camphor laurel carving by Sarah-Jane Abbott (Facebook page Chisel & Bow). Reference to the song, Long Live the Green Man (John Thompson)*

Today we’ll be talking about death, grief and hypochondria (mine). So if any of those topics catch you at a bad moment, look away.

We lost two good friends last week and, to misquote Pink Floyd, we’re feeling uncomfortably numb.

Many FOMM readers would have either personally known or known of the renowned Australian folk-singer, John Thompson. John had been battling cancer for several years until his death last Wednesday, aged 56.

Mr Thompson packed a lot of achievements into five and a bit decades, including a career as a criminal barrister and later, as a folk-singer/comedian. He also worked in professional theatre as the Songman in the touring play, War Horse. In his last decade, John become known to the wider community for his services as a civil celebrant at weddings and funerals.

But what he was best known for was a splendid, wide-ranging tenor voice and a brilliant ear for harmony. He had spectacular skills as a presenter and comedian.

A Maleny musician friend reminded me of the time John handed him a postcard on which was written: “Folk music – it’s not as bad as it sounds”. That is a good example of the wit John could display on any given day but no more so than when performing as a duo with Martin Pearson. The last time I saw them regaling a crowd was at the National Folk Festival in 2019.

Though not officially on the festival bill, John was invited to participate in Pearson’s daily ‘brunch’. The hour of what seemed to be unscripted comedy was endearingly funny as the two old friends kept trying to have the last word.

We all knew how unwell he’d been and how much worse it would get. But John took every opportunity to wring music and love out of the situation. His was arguably the most publicly documented case of terminal bowel cancer. He would post detailed summaries of his treatment and reactions to it on Facebook. Hundreds of friends and friends of friends left messages of love and support. Late in the day, he posted a selfie from his last stay in hospital while doctors were adjusting his pain medication.

Before then, musician Steve Cook posted a message, ‘Thinking about my friend John’, which a few people construed to mean John had already passed. At one point John popped up among the ‘RIP’ comments with, “Me too”.

Maleny people would remember John from the numerous times we featured the band Cloudstreet at our home. John, his partner Nicole Murray and later band member Emma Nixon never failed to entertain and amuse.

John and Nicole stayed with us when they were recording Dance up the Sun at Pix Vane-Mason’s studio in Conondale. Laurel (aka She Who Edits, etc), asked John if there was anything he didn’t eat.

“Elephants,” said John.

Though we were from different generations, I valued John as a friend, mentor and musician. He was the first person to give me practical tips to warm up the body and the voice before performing. Everyone wanted a piece of John, but I was always happy just for him to know we were there.

Hard as this was, last Friday we got completely unexpected news of a dear friend who died suddenly. Rob (Oss) Simcocks was a Stanthorpe district identity, known for his work with the rural fire brigade, the local pipe band and a long association with the bluegrass group, The Bald Rock Mountain Boys. In his last few years, Oss formed a new band, Too Much Fun and they were all of that and more. Long-time friend Mr Shiraz described Oss on Facebook as a ‘ bush polymath’ because of a string of interests and achievements including building his own home in the bush, working on landcare projects, gardening, viticulture, pottery, blacksmithing and making large iron sculptures.

He learned some piano when he was young and was taught bagpipes in high school at Scots College, Warwick. He also taught himself to play many instruments including banjo, mandolin, guitar, clarinet and spoons. He often found a way to turn various household items into music. His wife Teri tells me he once even ‘played’ an electric fan.

Oss was an artist. He painted, created found object sculptures, exhibited his works and in recent years wrote songs, poetry and short stories. He was an irrepressible gardener and almost always sent visitors home with a plant.

Curiously, these two sad events happened in the same week I received a communique from a local council in Scotland. I had inquired as to the state and status of our family burial ‘lair’.

In Scotland, the tradition is that a family owns a burial plot in perpetuity and it is passed on to the eldest son.

My father’s parents and his two younger sisters are interred in this lair. Dad’s parents died in the mid-1930s of bowel cancer and his young sisters died earlier still of scarlet fever. The plot, marked by an 86 year old sandstone tablet, is in the old part of a cemetery in a small coastal village. The Angus Council referred me to a local stonemason who quoted $800 to clean the headstone and re-letter it. Grandad Wilson was himself a stonemason, so there is some irony there.

There is some hide-bound Scottish tradition in play here that puts the onus on the eldest son (me) to do something about it.

These are four people I never knew and Dad’s ashes have since 1991 resided in a crematorium wall in Hastings, New Zealand. What I will more likely do is spend the money refurbishing Mum’s plaque, next to Dad. Mum died of cancer in 1966, so the lettering has faded.

But, as I wrestle with this, and feelings of grief over my friends Oss (met him in 1978) and the honourable Mr Thompson (early 1990s), there is a more pressing matter.

I did say at the outset I would write about hypochondria. It is 90% certain that sporadic palpitations which come upon me for no rhyme or reason, are likely to be psychosomatic (Ed: though no less serious).

Nevertheless, the GP has checked me out (normal) but because this happened once before (also normal), he referred me to a specialist.

Apparently I have to wear something akin to a bra for 24 hours. The chart will then go to a cardiac specialist who will review the result and report back.

At times like these one should drag out a Cloudstreet CD and play life-affirming songs like Thousands or More, Time is a Tempest or John’s quirky song, the Homeless Beaver. This three-minute parody of the sea shanty Drunken Sailor, necessitated a three or four minute droll introduction about Idaho Fish and Game employee Elmo Heter and his efforts to re-home a colony of 76 beavers. (They ended up putting them in self-opening cages and parachuting them into their new location). True story.

Meanwhile, I’m using my ‘idle’ palpitations as an excuse to avoid mowing, gardening, housework lifting or anything more strenuous than sitting here reflecting on mortality.

Yours and mine.

A private family funeral was held for John Thompson earlier today. It was live streamed and can be viewed via this link at a later stage.

https://mailchi.mp/42d987343acc/vale-john-thompson-online-funeral-link/

A public memorial will be held in April.