Disappearing acts


 

By Guest writer Lyn Nuttall

Introduction by Bob

I did say last week I’d be serving up items from the FOMM archives while I’m away, but could not resist this post by Lyn Nuttall, curator of the website Pop Archives (Where did they get that song?).

The other day some bloke tweeted, “Anyone remember Dionne Warwick?”

Dionne Warwick answered, “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

When I wrote about a Top 20 hit by Sydney singer Jennifer Ryall I said that she was “lost to history”. I hadn’t been able to find out much about her, and there was nothing after the mid-1970s.

Jennifer Ryall finally emailed to tell me she wasn’t lost, and her own history turned out to be rich and varied. In the following days she gave me a lot of information, full of interest, which I used to write up a decent account of her career.

I now avoid suggesting that people are lost, or that they disappeared or vanished, just because they haven’t released any music for a while.

It’s a trap that fans can easily fall into. When a performer we know only through their media persona stops performing, there is a sense that they have literally disappeared.

We might even sympathise with them for their downfall, even if we have no idea what they are doing these days. However fulfilling their life away from the music (or film or TV) business might be, their absence suggests that they no longer do anything. They exist for us on the public stage and when they’ve gone it’s as if they don’t exist.

The jazz trumpeter, composer and bandleader Red Perksey migrated to Sydney via France in 1951. He soon established himself on radio and records, and in live gigs, and he became Musical Director for a Sydney record company.

Red and his orchestra had a hit with (A Little Boy Called) Smiley from the film Smiley Gets A Gun (1958), and they backed Vic Sabrino on his version of Rock Around The Clock (1955), a record some call as the first Australian rock’n’roll record. He was clearly a bright and likeable personality who pops up here and there in the newspaper archives.

Red Perksey 1950s (photo)

In 1958 Red was photographed joshing around poolside at a deejays’ convention, and he was giving lunchtime concerts at a Sydney music store. Then there is nothing. No more listings in the radio guides, no more gigs advertised, no more affectionate write-ups. He disappeared?

I had written what I believe is the definitive biographical sketch of Red Perksey. He was born Siegbert Perlstein in Berlin in 1921, of Jewish German-Polish background. I traced his progress from Berlin in the 30s, to Palestine in the mid-40s and Paris in the late 40s. He and his wife Zizi came to Australia by refugee ship in the early 50s, and were later naturalised here. The only later date I had was his death, in 1995, but from 1958 until then, nothing.

Eventually, someone emails. A niece, probably his only surviving relative, emailed from Paris with some answers.

To Australian audiences, to the Sydney newspapers, and (retrospectively) to this archival forager, Red Perksey had disappeared.

Meanwhile, a couple known as Bert and Anne were living in a remote French village where Bert painted, sculpted and made furniture. Bert was also a musician, and sometimes he joined in with local groups.

To us, they had disappeared; in France, Red Perksey and his wife were in plain view to their fellow villagers.

I guess my point is, there are more places in this world than the public stage.

ends

(Lyn later emailed me to explain how he tracked Red down).

“At the French National Library (BnF) I found song copyrights from 1950, which helped place Red in France and active at that time.

“I got a lead from a French book of pseudonyms at the Internet Archive that gave me his real name. Then he was easy to find at the Israeli national archives. They had had facsimiles of loads of documents to do with him and his wife when they applied for Palestinian citizenship in the 40s, including passport photos, dates of birth etc. A Jewish refugee agency had passenger lists from refugee ships going out to Australia.

And there they both were!”

Postscript by Bob

While I greatly admire Lyn’s dogged pursuit of facts supposedly lost in the dross of pop culture, I probably spoiled it for him with my obscure comment on his blog.

I asked did he know that the Ron Sexsmith wrote a song called ‘Disappearing Act?” This of course had nothing to do with Lyn’s blog other than his headline. Then again, Ron is a brilliant and prolific artist who rarely makes headlines and for a time there (between 2008 and 2011) he too seemed to disappear.

I was never so happy to learn in 2011 that his career was being revived by Canadian heavy metal producer Bob Rock, resulting in Long Player Late Bloomer, Ron’s first album since 2008. A strange coupling but it worked!

I recall Ron Sexsmith appearing at The Zoo, a daggy Fortitude Valley music club, in 2008. Tickets were $45 and the show was just Ron, his baby face and an acoustic guitar. Not a minder or a roadie to be seen.

Happy to report the award-winning Canadian singer-songwriter is this month releasing his 18th album – The Vivien Line. I have no idea what it will be like, but given songs from his back catalogue like Disappearing Act, Gold in Them Hills, Cheap Hotel, Fallen, Whatever it Takes and Secret Heart, I’ll be ordering one. Still not ringing a bell? Ron’s songs have been covered by famous singers including Rod Stewart, k.d Laing, Nick Lowe, Michael Buble and Emmylou Harris. Coldplay’s Chris Martin recorded a duet with Ron of Gold in Them Hills as a bonus track for the 2002 album Cobblestone Runway. That’s the same album featuring Disappearing Act and one of Ron’s best.

 

Why our media mostly ignores New Zealand

New-Zealand-News
Photo of Auckland with rain looming by Bernard Spragg https://flic.kr/p/2kXpL9W

The young New Zealand journalist broadcasting from down town Auckland described the rain storms which drenched Auckland last weekend as ‘completely apocalyptic’.

This may not be overstating the case. as Auckland received 284mm (nearly a foot in the old measurement) in the 24 hours from Friday to Saturday –  and it kept on raining.

As The Guardian reported on Monday, intense rain on January 27 brought more than 200mm in 18 hours, as recorded by most of Auckland’s weather stations. Some parts of the city were hit with more than 150mm in three hours, prompting flash flooding and landslides. These totals are almost 300% of a normal January rainfall and beat the previous record set in January 1986. You have to go back to 1969 to find more rain that that – 420mm in February 1869.

New Zealand is not unaccustomed to rain – you can tell how much the country gets by how green are its valleys. But Auckland is not at all used to cloudbursts on a scale more often associated with northern Queensland or the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast hinterland. ABC Breakfast crossed to a Kiwi correspondent on Monday morning, who used the A word but also added ‘it’s still raining’.

By Tuesday, it had eased to ‘light rain showers’ with precipitation at 19%  and humidity at 89%. As we all know, any amount of rain closely following a 300mm deluge will wreak havoc with saturated catchments.

Generally speaking, you won’t see, hear or read much about New Zealand on Australian media. If it’s not an earthquake, a volcanic eruption or a mass shooting, they usually don’t bother. One of the reasons for this is that Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd does not own any newspaper or electronic media in our Pacific neighbour country.

But journalists and others who support Kevin Rudd’s campaign against News Corp’s monopolistic approach might be disturbed to read this.

News Corp did report on the deluge after it initially discovered that two people had died, and there was scary looking footage on a couple of TV networks. Auckland is built on a chain of extinct volcanoes, so many residents live in houses perched on hillsides. Excessive rain causes landslides or slips, as they are called over there. One news channel had footage of a house in Remuera (think Ascot or Toorak) which in Kiwi parlance was ‘munted.’

I’m due to arrive in Auckland next Thursday. For purely selfish reasons, we hope the rain has gone by the time we get there. Among the news stories to emerge from the wet weekend was the cancellation of Elton John’s two concerts at Mt Smart Stadium, better known as the home of the Warriors rugby league team.

Our contact said Elton was also trapped in Auckland as all flights were grounded during the worst of it. One dejected Elton fan could be heard, wading through the drowned streets, clutching a bottle in a soggy paper bag, lustily singing: “I guess that’s why they call it the blues”.

The Australian chimed in later this week with a report, not so much about the death toll of four, but criticism of Auckland’s Mayor for not doing enough. When do Mayors ever do enough eh?

One of my old friends from newspaper days was a Kiwi who was recruited during a little-known period in Australian newspaper history when there was a dire shortage of sub-editors.

Publishers advertised abroad and subsequently hired experienced people from New Zealand, the UK, Canada, South Africa, Northern Ireland and the Pacific Islands. My friend, now retired, hails from Otago. As I recall, he would arrive 10 minutes early for his shift and sift through the AAP news agency feed looking for stories about New Zealand. These would be copied to an internal directory so that those of us in the building whose accents were often chucked off at could keep up with what’s going on at home.

I’ve not done in depth research, nor could I find any, that makes findings on the Australian media’s scant regard for what happens across the ditch. Jacinda Ardern of course got more column inches than any Kiwi politician since Rob Muldoon. Earthquakes, eruptions and mass shootings also attracted the mainland media pack but not much else. It has to be quirky news, like this week’s announcement of the first All Black rugby union player to come out as openly gay.

The online new website Stuff said the former All Black decided to “open up that door and magically make that closet disappear”. Known as All Black No 1056, Campbell Johnstone, who played three tests for the All Blacks in 2005, did confide in some teammates and his family during his playing days. He made his debut against Fiji and played his last game against the British and Irish Lions.

Statistically speaking, of the 1207 Kiwi men who have played rugby union in the famous black jersey with silver fern, 53 of them would be gay.

That this rates as a ‘news story’ from the Australian perspective is a solid example of editors’ approach to selecting New Zealand news. As Jerry Seinfeld would say ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

We have read stories here about the incoming Prime Minister, replacing Jacinda Ardern. Fair to say he had no media profile in this country, unlike Jacinda, whose shock resignation made headlines in New York, London, France, Canada and Australia.

She may be criticised for not doing enough policy-wise, but she dealt with an unprecedented series of catastrophes in her country that marked her as an international leader of substance. She may be taking time out  to be a wife and mother, but I’m sure we have not heard the last of her in politics or academic life.

One example of big news stories from New Zealand which probably did not rate here are those about three Nobel Prize winning scientists.

The most recent was the late Alan MacDiarmid (2000), while Maurice Wilkins (1962) and Ernest Rutherford (1908) also took out the honour.

Meantime, I’m trying to finish the notes for a Basic Computer Skills course that starts three days after I get back from a family visit to New Zealand. As always, I’m trying to balance spending time between family and friends and also having what young Kiwis used to call a ‘OE’ (overseas experience).

As part of that, we will be attending the first major rugby league game of the season, the Indigenous All Stars vs NZ Maoris at Rotorua. She Who Got Up at 10am New Zealand Time claimed early bird seats and also found (with some difficulty) a place to stay.

Next day we are heading off to Gisborne to spend a few days with my sister before travelling further south to catch up with the rest of the whanau. We will take the inland road through Waioeka Gorge because, something that probably didn’t make the news here, a cyclone has destroyed some parts of the East Cape road.

We were going to take the slow drive (5.5 hours) around the Cape to Gisborne for sentimental reasons. It is a beautiful, unspoiled, under-populated part of the country.

I’m taking a rare holiday from FOMM so the following three weeks will feature (a guest blog) then episodes from my Back Pages (curated from almost nine years of archives). Kia Ora and Aroha.

Physiotherapists in demand

phsyiotherapists-in-demand
Image by Matias Maiztegu, www.pixabay.com

Every day I walk anywhere, I silently thank the physiotherapists who got me back on my feet after a serious motorcycle accident in 1969. Too long ago and yet still traumatic to relate, so I’ll skip the detail of the accident and fast forward to the rehab centre.

Once out of plaster, able to use crutches and manage a flight of stairs, those with serious injuries were packed off to a rehabilitation centre. Those physios, I remember well, were relentless in the quest to restore flexibility and muscle strength to wasted limbs.

I’d fractured both kneecaps and had them removed, so on release from hospital had limited movement. My quads were so far gone I could hook an umbrella around my thigh.

Enter the first physio who introduced me to the pedal-driven lathe, on which we made wooden collection plates, cheese boards, wine goblets and other items that required hours of repetitious pushing up and down, first one foot then the other.

Then it was into the (heated) pool to developed further flexion through weight-bearing exercise. There were sessions with muscle-stimulating machines, weights and frequent massages to break up the scar tissue.

We were given three good meals a day and then sent off to bed at 8.30. One night we all sneaked out and found a pub down the road; discovering it was by no means an original idea.

My knees got better with time, although I still can’t squat down and kneeling is something I’ve learned to do as seldom as possible. If I get a flat tyre I call the RACQ.

I was musing about this on day three of the great rose garden refurbishment project, spending more time on my knees than I’m used to. Once the day warmed up, I’d shower and retire to the lounge to watch the Australian Open. I’m a fair-weather tennis fan and only get engrossed when we’re into the quarter finals.

He Who Was Deported for not Being Vaccinated is back again, and, despite a troublesome hamstring, seems destined to take home the AO trophy. As all the leading tennis pros do, he brought his own physio. He may even have brought two if you peruse this story.

No doubt you have all had dealings with a physio at one time or another. It doesn’t take much. Common complaints referred to physios include lower back problems, broken wrists, ankle sprains, knee injuries, shoulder conditions, achilles tendon and pectoral strains, tendinopathy, arthritis and the dreaded hamstring strain. Novak Djokovic has had a dodgy hamstring since he set foot in Australia but his physios are obviously skilled at keeping him on the court. He is in superb physical condition too, which helps.

Given the dominant form he displayed against Alex de Minaur (6-2 6-1 6-2), his hammies are just fine.

As Novak said early on: “It’s up to God, and my physio to help me. Let’s take it day by day, I hope I’ll be able to recover.”

The hamstrings are the muscles at the back of the thigh, attaching above the hip joint and below the knee joint. Adequate resilience of the hamstring muscles and their tendons, which attach the muscle to bone and are essential for movement, is essential and fostered by sport-specific exercise.

Retired ballet dancer Martin Collyer has just finished undergraduate studies at UQ for a degree in physiotherapy. One of his placements was at a former workplace, Queensland Ballet headquarters in West End. Like all elite athletes with a retirement age around 35, he made plans, initially working as a yoga teacher.

He said he chose to study physiotherapy despite some disappointing experiences with physios on the few occasions when he suffered injuries as a professional dancer.  He related an anecdote from a group he was teaching about a long-term yoga teacher who was studying for a bachelor of physiotherapy. She chose to stop, after four years and much effort.

The reason cited was that physiotherapy was, “too focused on individual joints and muscles; too narrow,” leaving the individual feeling that yoga was a more ‘holistic’ approach. Martin was asked for an opinion.

“I said that while there are tremendous physios, the individual may matter more than the modality. There are great chiropractors working from the evidence base and using exercise as treatment, just as there are physios who may disregard the evidence base.

“Physio’s origins are in massage, but the profession has evolved a great deal over the years. Increasingly, the evidence supports exercise as best-practice management for a majority of musculo-skeletal conditions. This means that the training physios receive, with an emphasis on manual therapy and other passive techniques (e.g. ultrasound), may not adequately support them. While exercise was covered in my physio undergraduate degree, it was arguably insufficient.

“Because of my prior experience in movement and movement coaching, I feel confident with this aspect of practice, but what about the individual who had little experience with sports and exercise prior to studying physiotherapy?”

Through four years of study, Martin said it dawned on him that the issues physios treat are public health problems.

“If more people were more physically active, far fewer people would suffer from musculo-skeletal complaints. The best sort of exercise is the sort you’ll keep showing up to.”

The popularity of physiotherapy as a study course appeals both to those who want to be practitioners and those who use it as an entrée to medical school.

The Australian Physiotherapist Association (APA) tabled recent data that showed there were 35,290 registered physiotherapists in Australia. Physiotherapy continues to be a female-dominated workforce (66%) and a Gen-Z profession with the majority of registrants aged 25–40.

The stumbling block for most people who are referred to a physiotherapist is the cost. Typical fees for a 30-minute or 60-minute session are between $80 and $120 per session. Your GP can issue a chronic condition treatment plan (subsidised) but this has limitations.

The Grattan Institute recently released a paper advocating a review of Medicare arrangements for allied health services.

Grattan Institute author Anika Stobart advocated scrapping the existing Medicare items for allied health and re-directing funding through local Primary Health Networks. These networks would contract providers to perform services with no (or very low) out-of-pocket fees for referred patients.

Stobart says that even though services are subsidised, they can still be very expensive.

“Last year, only 56 percent of allied health services were bulk billed, and patients paid on average $55 out-of-pocket per appointment.

Just this week there were news reports of a pending review of Medicare and its funding model. The Albanese government’s Strengthening Medicare Taskforce recommends moving from subsidising GP consultations alone to wrapping in care provided by nurses and paramedics.

Health minister Mark Butler said the current system is “no longer fit for purpose” and flagged changes in the May budget. Given that one in six GP presentations are for musculo-skeletal conditions, there’s a good case to review the Medicare treatment plan system.

I ran into the treatment plan limitations when seeing a physio for a rotator cuff (shoulder) injury some years ago. I quickly used up my “free” sessions but opted to keep going at around $70 a session. My physio claimed credit for the reduced inflammation and increased mobility over time. I said the symptoms eased once I started taking magnesium tablets. She politely but firmly disagreed.

Seniors becoming savvy about digital technology

Early PC, complete with floppy disk drives source Wikipedia

During a frustrating hour or two updating our websites, I realised I am more savvy than the average 74-year-old when it comes to digital technology. Or so I thought. Later, you will read about how Covid-19 prompted many older Australians to start interacting with Skype, Zoom, WhatsApp and other communications systems.

In what has been a busy month (editing the U3A newsletter, updating three websites, updating our self managed super fund and writing a new song), I am finding time to create a short course in basic computer skills for U3A members. Most of our members are in the over-70s age group and a few do not have access to the Internet. I am hoping some will find a use for U3A’s laptops, which have been in hibernation since Covid broke out in early 2020. In preparation to run the computer course, I took these laptops home and updated them.

It wasn’t too difficult, but these laptops were a reminder of how quickly digital technology becomes obsolete. I was reminded of that last Friday when the WordPress website which hosts this weekly essay “broke”. That’s WordPress community geek-speak for not doing what it’s programmed to do. Therefore, WordPress followers who had subscribed to the blog did not get last week’s email with a link to the website. The blog was still posted to the website, but the electronic sharing didn’t happen. It turned out I’d been ignoring reminders to ‘update your PHP’, which is the software within WordPress that interacts with plugins (or apps) that make the website work efficiently.

(That sound you hear is me snoring, having fallen asleep. Ed)

I am convinced that everyone who uses a computer has a ‘blind spot’, that is, a technological advance with which they cannot cope.

My blind spot would be anything to do with coding, editing the registry, updating drivers or any one of a dozen under-the-bonnet programming tasks. In this case, I asked Craig P from Inmotion Hosting to do the hard work updating PHP (the older versions are ‘deprecated’), and I’d take care of the detail.

Computer hardware and software companies are continually updating their products, to fix glitches in the system and to improve security. They also do it to sustain cashflow. There was a time when you could buy the complete Microsoft Office programme at a retail store and use it seemingly forever at no extra cost. Now they want an annual subscription (which includes updates and support).

I’ve been using a computer at home since the mid-1990s and came into daily newspapers at a time when they were leaving the old technology behind. I learned a lot, but don’t ask me about programming.

She Who Sometimes Shouts at her Computer told me the other day she studied Base 2 in grade seven. Base 2 is a field of mathematics that is particularly germane to computers.

As Wikipedia explains, the base-2 numeral system is that in which each digit is referred to as a bit, or binary digit. Because of its straightforward implementation in digital electronic circuitry, the binary system is used by almost all modern computers and computer-based devices.

Got that? You can log back into Facebook now and carry on regardless.

While kids are learning computer science and coding at school, we of the older cohort rely on the ever-changing versions of Microsoft Windows to make it easy. There have been 11 versions of Windows since 1985. Some, like Windows ME, 2000, Vista and Windows 8, were not perfect, so Windows moved on to 7, 10 and now 11.

One of my contacts in information technology tells me that Windows 11 is the best operating system yet because Microsoft has looked at security first and everything else second.

I haven’t upgraded from 10 yet. I limped along with Windows 7 until it got the point where Microsoft wouldn’t support it at all. As of this month, people with Windows 7 won’t even get security updates.

I set off with this idea of teaching older people how to take control of their computer because the conventional wisdom is that older people struggle with new technology. Our reflexes have slowed and we have leathery fingers – ask anyone.

But maybe not so much in Australia. A recent study by The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) set the record straight.

While older people have trouble navigating touch screen gadgets like smart phones and tablets, in the four years from 2017 to 2020, many were on an IT learning curve and probably still are. ACMA’s report, produced in May 2021, noted changes in the way older people engage with the online world.

While most use the internet at home, they also used a mobile phone to go online when out and about. Their adoption of other digital devices like smart phones, tablets and fitbits is also on the rise.

In mid-2020, ACMA found that 93% of older people had internet access in their home, up from 68% in 2017.

In 2017, only 6% of older people used apps and digital devices to go online. In June 2020, 26% of older people used five or more types of devices to go online.

ACMA says that parallel with their uptake of digital devices, more older people are using the internet for a wider variety of activities and tasks.

“Almost all older people now use email, while banking, viewing video content, and buying goods and services online have increased substantially over the previous 4 years, to become relatively common behaviours for this age-group.”

There was also a quantum leap in the numbers of older people who use apps like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp to make voice calls, video calls and send texts. In 2019 the figure was 33% – a year later it was 55%.

The Pew Research Centre, which keeps tabs on this topic in the US, also noticed growth during the pandemic but observed that 7% of Americans aged over 65 are not online at all.

The Pew Centre said there were notable differences between age groups when measuring the frequency of internet use. Some 48% of those ages 18 to 29 said they were online “almost constantly”.,compared with 22% of those 50 to 64 and 8% of those 65 and older.

Joelle Renstrom, writing in ‘Slate’, an online magazine, said computer and digital technology companies are not designing devices that older people want. Renstrom cited research by Bran Knowles who studies how older people use technology.

Knowles says tech companies don’t see older people as valid stakeholders.

“That’s evident in how they fail to consider seniors’ needs, even when manufacturing products like the Jitterbug, a phone with extra-big buttons.

“Button size doesn’t dictate seniors’ decisions about tech use, and such presumptions highlight Silicon Valley’s bias toward youth.”

The people who drive tech development “can’t imagine what it’s like to be 80”, said Knowles.

Meanwhile, big organisations and governments continue to drive their customers/clients (young and old) to online accounts and digital apps.

RACQ’s Road Ahead magazine reports in its latest edition that drivers will have access to a ‘digital licence app’ in 2023. Queensland’s Department of Transport has been conducting trials since legislation was passed in 2020 to allow development of a digital licence (which will have equal weight to a physical licence). Drivers can store their digital licence on their mobile phone and use it for ID purposes as they travel. The Road Ahead article notes that the new digital licence will be ‘opt-in’ and not compulsory. Phew, we all said.

So, WordPress readers – did you get it?

A message for WordPress followers of Bobwords

January 15, 2023

Sunday on My Mind – a message for WordPress subscribers

I have been updating the back end of my website bobwords.com.au after encountering some issues. It seems none of you received an email with a link to my Friday blog. Nor was it posted to social media. I have been doing some serious upgrading today on this site and thegoodwills.com. Please bear with us as we may have ongoing issues for a while on both websites. For those of you conversant with website management, the problem was software which is ‘deprecated’ – that is, no longer supported.

You can read Friday’s blog here https://bobwords.com.au/record-stores-future/ but I apologise for the no-show to subscribers. It would be handy if a couple of my email subscribers or WP followers let me know they received this by email.

Let me know by email waikareiti<at>gmail.com if you have any issues in the future.

Bob Wilson

The future for record stores

future-record-stores
Image: A selection from the B’s. How many of these do you have?

While my friends in New Zealand were still at school, I was making apprentice wages, spending almost all of it on records. Our small town didn’t have a record store as such, but the local department store stocked the latest pop records. At the time, LPs were pressed at a factory in Wellington owned by His Master’s Voice (HMV). My copy of ‘Please Please Me’ (The Beatles), for example, was issued by Parlophone in Mono. It still plays OK but it sounds thin compared to the sophisticated sounds of Pink Floyd or the Moody Blues.

New Zealand’s music fans had the jump on most other countries when the latest Beatles album became a ‘must have now’ item. The masters were shipped to Wellington and the presses were set to work. Other countries usually had to wait for a shipment of imported records.

‘Please Please Me’ was rushed out by Parlophone in March 1963 (I was 14), so maybe I bought it with money from my paper run. Parlophone was eager to cash in on the title track, the group’s first No 1 hit in the UK.

Roll forward to 2023 and my LP collection is stacked neatly in two cupboards, very rarely played. I have a good quality record player hooked up to my stereo with a pre-amp, so I’m not sure why they don’t get more of a playing. Ah yes, it’s the getting up and flipping the record over to the six or seven tracks on side two.

The big change between my teenage consumption of music and now is that, for the most part, we listened to music in one room. We would typically lie on the floor (parents were out, obviously), and crank up the volume. There may have been alcohol.

By comparison, today’s music listener can stream an endless Spotify playlist from their phone to a Bluetooth speaker at home or in the car (or through earbuds). It might be inferior quality, but it’s easy.

What set me off on this tangent was reading about the imminent closure of the Sanity record chain. Our town has one of their outlets. I didn’t shop there often but bought a few CDs – Kasey Chambers, Troy Casser-Daley. Now, as stocks starts to dwindle, I’m having a look for bargains. They sell DVDs too.

Sanity is closing all 50 stores as leases expire and moving to an online business model. Sanity is not the first retail chain to retire from shopping centres, where so many retailers have found that the foot traffic doesn’t always translate to turnover to offset higher rents.

This is not an isolated development, with a couple of Brisbane record stores closing their doors and Melbourne’s iconic Basement Discs set to do the same. Co-owner Suzanne Bennett told The Age that the impact of Covid and a drop in foot traffic reduced revenue. The CBD store was established for 28 years and famous for its in-store performances by musicians including The Teskey Brothers, Paul Kelly, Billy Bragg and Justin Townes Earle. This is not to say Basement Discs is going out of business. Suzanne and partner Rod Jacobs will continue to operate online and have a dream of opening another shop in the suburbs.

As I discovered, after chatting online with former colleague Noel Mengel, there are still some funky record stores around in Brisbane. But the independents have mostly moved to the suburbs to find cheaper rents.

Noel, who was chief music writer at The Courier-Mail for 15 years, said that most shopping centres had an independent record store. In recent years most have closed or moved to the suburbs.

“Every shopping centre had one, usually as well as Sanity or HMV, for example Sounds at Chermside, Brookside Music Centre and Toombul Music. Rockaway Records is a groovy store still going at Carindale Shopping Centre. It used to be near the Paddington shops before that.

“There are lots of Indie record stores now in Brisbane, but rents are too high in shopping centres. The independents include Sonic Sherpa at Stones Corner, Stash Records at Camp Hill, Dutch Vinyl in Paddington and Jet Black Cat in West End. So that niche market, import vinyl thing is going OK.

“But those shops really used to add something to the shopping centres.”

Rockaway, established in 1992, is one of the last indie stores in Brisbane shopping centres. Long-established Rocking Horse Records and Record Exchange continue to trade in the CBD.

As music production formats and distribution began to change, famous record stores like Harlequin and Skinny’s disappeared. Even with Sanity moving out, there are still big retail chains in shopping centres like JB Hi Fi that sell CDs and vinyl albums.

We old school music listeners grew up browsing record stores, from the days of vinyl in the 1960s, through the transition to cassettes (1970s) and CDs (the 1990s) and into the brave new world of downloading and streaming music. This arguably began with Apple Itunes in 2001, although the original Napster found a way in 1999 for users to share music through peer-to-peer file sharing.

Although it was shut down in 2002 after a plethora of legal actions, you may be aware that Napster re-emerged later under new owners and is now a legitimate alternative to Spotify.

The best and most popular physical record stores are those that specialise in rare and second-hand vinyl. They are not always easy to find, as they need to find a shop in the suburbs where rents are viable.

Long-time reader Franky’s Dad (aka Lyn Nuttall) is someone who has a history of browsing in such shops. These days though he confesses to preferring streaming services like Spotify.

“Platforms like this are made for me. They seem to have every track in the universe. They don’t of course, but lately my bowerbird approach is served by YouTube, where numerous collectors seem to have posted their entire collections.
“These days I can find even the most obscure or lost tracks from the 50s and 60s”.

Lyn, who hosts the website poparchives began collecting vinyl 45s via mail order in the 1980s & 1990s, mostly through record auctioneers – “I think I paid the rent of one bloke in Sydney.”
“I do miss combing through the racks for the physical object. Even at the time I used to say that half the pleasure was the hunt and the item in your hand after you’d paid for it.”

Noel Mengel, now a freelance journalist who also plays in his own band, The Trams, says Brisbane is well served by independent, suburban record stores.

As the figures below show, there has been rapid growth in demand for vinyl records. Noel welcomed the recent addition of a vinyl pressing factory in Brisbane as there were previously huge delays for those pressing vinyl.

“The community radio station 4ZZZ does a great job playing Queensland music and the independent stores sell their records.”

Figures from ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) show that vinyl album sales ($28.51 million) outsold CD albums ($23.90 million) for calendar year 2021. Vinyl sales have increased steadily since 2012 (then just $1.85 million) compared to CD sales in that year ($193.49 million).

All of which reminds me I promised my niece I would bring some of my old jazz records when we visit NZ next month. She and her husband only listen to vinyl. I reckon they are on to something.

Last week: It was Wirth’s Circus.

New Year rolling relentlessly along

My friend Joy sent one of Jacquie Lawson’s life-affirming animated cards for New Year, a positive message delivered as a calendar, pages flipping to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. It was a northern hemisphere theme, but the message was universal – the wonders of nature.

As for last week’s flippant item about fluffy news, the opening days of 2023 delivered anything but. At New Year drinks, assembled guests inevitably began talking about the bad news of preceding days and weeks. The Tara shooting is still (and probably always will be), bewilderingly pointless. There are Court cases to come involving a traffic accident in which three people died. There’s the home invasion which left a young mother dead and her husband injured. There were drownings, fatal car accidents and a helicopter crash that killed four people.

Where’s a cat up a tree story when you need one?

For my part, I’ve been quite busy as one of my pro bono jobs is editing the U3A Warwick newsletter, an 18-page publication (due today). I was chasing up sponsors who booked advertising space. I made up an ad in Publisher and sent it for approval, quietly invigorated by finding that I can be multi-skilled at my age.

Mind you, race walker Heather Lee (96), could teach me a thing or two. ABC Breakfast interviewed Heather (a lone, good news contribution). She was lamenting that she can no longer compete in her age group – because she’s the only one.

Watching Heather briskly walking, arms swinging, made me prise myself out of the recliner, stretch my hammies and vow to return to the gym. If you make New Year resolutions, that should be Number 1, really. If we’re not fit and active, chances are we’ll soon be on a wheelie walker or in a wheelchair.

Neither of these options appeal to me, but at 70+ with diagnosed brittle bones, I have made getting fitter than I am a priority.

It’s all about exercise, stretching, lunging, eating good food and drinking lots of water; it’s also about brisk walking, not quite the Heather Lee standard but not dog-walking pace either.

The realisation that I was not as fit as I have been came while trudging around the Woodford Folk Festival site, up hill and down, on roads which had been knocked about by rain. I had not been to Woodford for some years. It was always tiring, no matter how fit you were. One year at Woodford, realising that the tiredness comes from the endless walking from one venue to another, I took up residence at one venue and stayed there for the duration. It sure was better than catching the last song of John Butler’s set or not being able to get into the tent when you wanted to be in the front row.

Woodford, with its teeming thousands milling about, is a place where you might meet someone you know and then again, not. In previous years, it seemed as if our age group (the over-60s) was well represented. This year, it was like being at Splendour in the Grass. Most attendees seemed to be in the 18-29 age group and of course there were kids and babies everywhere.

I was one of the few men I spotted wearing jeans. Most were clad in shorts, long hippy pants or on occasions, sarongs. Hardly anyone wore a hat (Albo did), and I guess they will pay for it later.

We were there for the 9am tribute to the extraordinary folk singer, comedian and writer John Thompson, who died in February 2021, aged 56. His widow Nicole Murray put the show together with the help of friends Fred Smith and Ian Dearden. They covered a lot of territory in just 50 minutes; there were performances from singers who’d been in bands with John, a special Morris Dance to the tune of his song ‘Brisbane River’ and a spooky rendition of The Parting Glass by the Spooky Men’s Chorale. As director Stephen Taberner told the full-house crowd, John had at one point joined the Spookies for a tour of the UK. If you did not know of John, you might have seen him as the Songman in the stage production Warhorse, which toured Australia and New Zealand.

A cheerful highlight of the tribute was a rendition of John’s song ‘Bill and the Bear’, about a Maleny man who wrestled a bear at Wirth’s Circus, back in the day. A scratch orchestra led by brass player Mal Webb marched in from the back of the venue to play the extended instrumental.

It was an appropriately sombre, hilarious, cheerful and tearful event. John would have been incredulous that he could draw a full house at a 9am festival gig.

From there, I wandered off to catch Jem Casser-Daley at one of her first Woodford gigs. Jem played piano and was backed by a drummer and bass player. She’s young and her songs are mostly about feeling young and vulnerable, broken relationships or being stood up for a date. She’s confident, natural, has a beautiful voice and showed her musical pedigree by including two covers. First came Neil Young’s ‘Harvest Moon’, maybe inspired by A.J. Lee and maybe not, and then delving into her Dad’s record collection to come up with Carole King’s ‘It’s Too Late’, Baby. Jem Casser-Daley, star of the future.

I found my way back to the 9am venue in time for Eric Bogle’s sound check in which the pithy Scotsman sang ‘For nearly 60 years I’ve been a jockey’. Later, he sang the real song with great heart, as he always does. As a songwriter who is always asked to sing the same one or two songs at gigs, I felt for Eric once again working through ‘No Man’s Land’ (also known as ‘The Green Fields of France’), which was a huge hit for the Fureys and set Eric off on the life of a touring musician. At 77, he’s still in good voice, quipping away between songs and bantering with fellow musicians, Emma Luker (fiddle) and Pete Titchener (guitar and vocals). I feel tired just writing this, but Eric went from a tour of New Zealand in October to a 13-concert tour here in November and a few gigs in December before the tour bus rolled into Woodford. As the quote goes on his tour posters: ‘A mixture of loquacious Scottish humour and exceptionally heartfelt folk songs’. (The Irish Times).

Songwriters tend to become identified with a certain type of song – in Bogle’s case songs about World War I. He told his Woodford audience that he had published 230 songs, of which only 12 are about WWI. He also revealed he had registered ‘No Man’s Land’ under both titles!

Eric is one of three songwriters who wrote a tribute for John Thompson, ‘Catching the Wave’, which is on his latest album, Source of Light.

Fred Smith, better known for songs about the conflict in Afghanistan, penned the as-yet unreleased ‘Sweet Ever After’, watching John’s funeral on Zoom from his room in Kabul. Brisbane folk singer Ian Dearden, a long-time friend and associate, wrote ‘Song for John’ which can be found on Bandcamp.

I like to remember John Thompson as he was – a warm fellow with a brilliant mind, feverish sense of humour, a grand voice, clever writer, sometimes impatient but always with good intentions.

It’s so hard to refer to him in the past tense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cat up a tree time of year

cat-up-a-tree-journalism
Photo from www.pixabay.com No, it’s not a Jarrah, but there’s a cat in there!

Here’s a heart-warming story, filed this morning by our intrepid reporter, Abigail Featherweight, on location at Jumpinup Downs, WA.

(Video shows a fire truck pulled up next to a very tall tree where a shirtless fireman in the basket of a cherry picker is rescuing a cat, which, having not only got stuck at the top of the tree, gave birth there to seven kittens).

Morning show host Gavin Brighteeth: Hi Abbey – tell us what’s going on.

Abigail, breathlessly brushing back tendrils of thin blonde hair from an angular face, nodding, as they teach television reporters to do.

“Hi Gavin, good of you to give this story a spin. As you may have heard in the voice-over, a missing neighbourhood cat, Charlize, was found this morning perched in the branches of this 25m Jarrah tree. (Telephoto closeup of Charlize nestled in a pocket of branches where she’s nurturing the seven kittens she gave birth to this morning).

Abigail: It was fireman Vince Colloseum to the rescue, after first taking off his shirt, as it is a steamy 42 degrees this morning at Jumpinup Downs, where this magnificent old tree stands alone at an intersection. Environmental activists who campaigned to save the tree amid urban development dubbed it “Last Jarrah Standing”.

“I see Vince is coming down with yet another two kittens, his muscular torso glistening with sweat.

“Vince is not only a fireman, he is a dedicated body builder and was Mr September in last year’s Firies Calendar. (close up of Vince’s glistening torso).

Abigail, thrusting her mike in Vince’s face: Vince, this is awesome – how many kittens have you rescued now?

Vince: Six, Abbey, so there is one more and Mum, which will be the last load.

Abigail: I see you have been scratched numerous times, Vince?

Vince: “Just a flesh wound or two, hahaha. You have to expect that with cat up a tree rescues. I’ve saved dozens over the years but this is the first one that gave birth way up there.”

Producer in Abigail’s earbud: “Can you find the cat’s owner and interview her now before we go to the next story?”

Vince climbs back into the cherry picker basket and is lofted high into the canopy. The small crowd of locals cheer.

Gavin: Leaving Abigail Featherweight at Jumpinup Downs and crossing to a breaking story where six rusting drums thought to contain pesticide have washed up on Buggerup Beach.

If you haven’t encountered a fluffy news story like that over Christmas, trust me, you will. There are 23 more days of this sort of bumf before school goes back and industry and commerce resumes.

Most news organisations assign reporters to assemble what is known in news parlance as the Yearender. Typically, it will remind us of all the awful things that happened since January 1, 2022, things most of us would rather forget.

If you want to quick snapshot of what the media concentrated on, online media and marketing specialist Mumbrella ran a feature from media-monitoring group Streem.

As Streem’s communications director Jack McClintock said, despite hopes that we had put the pandemic behind us, “Wall-to-wall COVID coverage in the opening months of 2022 ensured it would be the top story of the year.”

“As the year unfolded, numerous other major news events took place, including the War in Ukraine, the 2022 Federal Election and the death of The Queen. Add to these significant events strong undercurrents of cost of living pressures, including inflation and energy prices, and 2022 was as big a news year as they come.”

Covid dominated media discussions for seven months this year, interrupted only by big stories including Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, the March Federal election, the death of Queen Elizabeth and massive flooding in parts of eastern Australia.

Queen Elizabeth II’s death on September 9 was the most prominent story on one single day, Streem observed. Other big single-story days included the COVID wave in early January, Ukraine’s initial invasion and Shane Warne’s death on March 4.

As for the media ‘Person’ of the year, honours were shared (in Australia) between Vladimir Putin, Scott Morrison, and Anthony Albanese. All had very high peaks in prominence, and a strong level of sustained media attention. The exception was in January, when tennis player and prominent anti-vaxxer Novak Djokovic claimed headlines by his arrival (and subsequent expulsion) for the 2022 Australian Open.

https://mumbrella.com.au/streem-insights-reveal-the-biggest-news-stories-of-2022-769537

All is forgiven, apparently, as Novak is scheduled to play in Adelaide and Melbourne next month. Also in the forgiven category was Premier Daniel Andrews, an emphatic winner of the Victorian election in November.

As we know the mainstream media (MSM) allots the biggest headlines and pictures and the longest radio or TV coverage to the ‘if it bleeds it leads’ category of news story. These days television is aided and abetted by amateur reporters who file breaking news videos for broadcast to live television. The most recent example was the fuel tanker explosion near the South African town of Boksburg which killed at least 15 people. The actual explosion was caught on a smart phone and broadcast by international media. Reports like this have led to many news broadcast warnings that ‘some people may find this footage distressing’. You reckon?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-64086051

Most television channels now have a section devoted to ‘good news stories’, although I don’t always agree with their definition.

For example, in November there was a frantic search going on to find a man who bought a winning Powerball (lottery) ticket in Forster (NSW). This angle was spun until the man was contacted and notified days later he had won $50 million. And much was made of the Australian soccer team making its way to the World Cup quarter finals. No! We lost!

My definition of a good news story was when Shayla Phillips (4) and her dog went missing in dense Tasmanian bushland. We were in Tassie at the time (March) and could appreciate the concern as night temperatures plummeted. Shayla was found safe, dehydrated but well after two nights alone in the bush.

Earlier this month, grave fears we held for four teenagers on paddleboards who drifted into rough seas off the Mornington Peninsula. They were found safe the following day, but stranded on a remote island .

Good news from FOMM’s perspective included the Federal Government’s commitment to a 43% reduction in CO2 emissions and the first group of refugees leaving Nauru, bound for New Zealand.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese kept an election promise to quickly resolve the long-running saga of the Tamil refugees. The Nadesalingam family were released from years of detention, granted permanent visas and allowed to return to Biloela, where they had formed a community bond.

I’ll get off my soap box now and let you start the countdown to January 1, 2023. I imagine almost all of you (at a party) will form a circle and sing Robert Burns’ ‘Auld Lang Syne’, whether you know the words or not.

Maybe this can be a year when we who are most fortunate reflect on those who are not. As Burns said:

“Some hae meat and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it, But we hae meat and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit.”

 

Carols and Christmas lights

Bob’s annual playlist of Christmas songs and a few things you never knew about the 12 Days of Christmas Take care on the roads, dear readers.

christmas-lights-carols
Photo by Laurel Wilson

We did a drive-by of Warwick’s Christmas lights last Saturday night. It would melt the Grinchiest heart. By that I mean even if you are deeply cynical about the nativity story, Santa, Elf on a Shelf and rampant consumerism, Christmas lights are a joy. Not at all energy-conserving but joyous without a doubt

She Who Took Pictures in the Dark (SWTPITD) came up with a couple of good ones. I drove and the passengers navigated, which was ‘interesting’

We had just finished two weeks of carol performances with East Street Singers. We are having a break from choir until January, so cruising the Christmas lights hotspots was the next best thing.

Lavish displays of Christmas lights cost multiple thousands, not to mention the additional burden on the household energy bill. The comparison website finder.com.au did a survey on Christmas spending which did not mention Christmas lights at all. Nevertheless, those surveyed said they were planning to spend around $1,361 on food, alcohol, presents, eating out and travel.

Two-thirds of Australians (72%), however, are slashing their spending, mindful of the impact of inflation and what the New Year may bring.

About 38% of respondents said they would start buying food and presents early to help control their spending. One quarter went shopping for bargains on Black Friday,(the US version of Boxing Day sales) with 25% implementing a gift-giving limit.

Almost a quarter of the 1,054 survey respondents said they would have to go into debt to cover their Christmas costs (up from 23% in 2021).

Inflation rose 6.9% in the year to October 2022 and there appears to be no signs of it easing. Inflationary pressures, particularly the steep rise in fuel and energy prices, prompted the Reserve Bank of Australia to raise the cash rate by 3.00% in 2022 (it’s now 3.10%). What this might mean for people with huge mortgages in 2023 is anyone’s guess.

Long-term FOMM followers will know I usually trot out a Christmas song playlist and this year is no exception. But I am swayed this year to include songs with a sentimental or even reverent message. This offsets the somewhat cynical tone of my contribution, ‘Christmas in Australia’ which can be found here.

Our five Christmas carol performances this month included a mix of traditional songs, a few which are rarely heard and that jolly old tune about figgy pudding and not going until we get some.

Number one on the 12-song FOMM Christmas playlist is the Sussex Carol with its clever counterpoint section where the men vocalise in a different time signature while the women sing the verse (then vice versa). ‘The Sussex Carol’ is performed by the choir of St Martin’s in the Fields conducted by Sir Neville Marriner.

The Sussex Carol brings to mind the wry observation in Tim Minchin’s timeless ‘White Wine in the Sun’ (number 2).

I get freaked out by churches
Some of the hymns that they sing have nice chords
But the lyrics are dodgy.

Minchin released this song in 2012 as a tribute to his baby daughter. He released this 2022 live version, all the more poignant because his child has been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. Minchin donates proceeds from this song over the Christmas period to Aspect (Autism Spectrum Australia). This is a touching, live rendition, just Tim and piano.

‘Once in Royal David’s City’ (3), is performed in folk style by The Seekers. This is a happy, lapsed-Methodist memory. I was given a harmonica in a Christmas stocking (I was 8) and was playing that carol by lunchtime. Later I found Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.

Next is the much-loved ‘How to Make Gravy’ (4) by Paul Kelly. Note for guitarists: Paul plays a guitar tuned to an open D. In ordinary tuning you need to span three or four frets to make those chords. Just saying.

‘O Holy Night’(5) is a classic Christian carol, favoured by sopranos who can hit the high note (A flat). My trusty editor Laurel Wilson is well capable of executing (ie singing, as opposed to ‘murdering’ Ed.) this song. Mariah Carey, Celine Dion and Kate Miller-Heidke are among those who have recorded Adolphe Adam’s composition, based on a French poem. This version is by the honourable Luciano Pavarotti.

‘The Christians and the Pagans’ (6) takes me back a bit – Dar Williams singing about cousin Amber (and her friend), turning up unexpectedly for a traditional family lunch.

The food was great, the tree plugged in, the meal had gone without a hitch,
Til Timmy turned to Amber and said, “Is it true that you’re a witch?”
His Mom jumped up and said, “The pies are burning, ” and she hit the kitchen,
And it was Jane who spoke, she said, “It’s true, your cousin’s not a Christian, ”
“But we love trees, we love the snow, the friends we have, the world we share,
And you find magic from your God, and we find magic everywhere.“

Song 7 was recommended by the convenors of U3A Warwick’s Music Show; indigenous man Mitch Tambo singing ‘Silent Night’ in language. I shared this with my niece in New Zealand who is a big Marlon Williams fan. Mitch’s voice is equally impressive.

‘Carol of the Bells’(8)  is an old Ukrainian folk tune. This version is from the soundtrack of the 1990 hit movie Home Alone.

As we think about Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and other countries which need peaceful thoughts, here is John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s ‘Happy Christmas/War is Over’ (9).

Macca is broadcasting his last Australia all Over for 2022 on Sunday so it’s a fair bet he’ll include ‘Carol of the Birds’. (10).

This delightful Australian song with authentic Down Under imagery is from the album Bucko and Champs (Colin Buchanan and Greg Champion).

I mentioned to my niece’s witty 15-year-old last month that I’d not heard the Mariah Carey Christmas song reportedly played to death at this time of year. He replied, “Oh yes, that’s the song you hear in shopping centres, giving their poor workers PTSD.”

I’m sparing you Mariah’s vocal gymnastics on ‘All I want for Christmas is You’ in favour of a traditional Irish folk song. This recording of the ‘Wexford Carol’ (11) features Alison Krauss, better known for collaborations with bluegrass band Union Station and duets with husband Robert Plant (Raising Sand). Here she is joined by master cellist YoYo Ma and an ensemble of class musicians.

Finally, the ‘Twelve Days Of Christmas’, an annoyingly repetitive song which in 1984 gave birth to a quirky set of economic indicators. The Christmas Price Index and the True Cost of Christmas measure the nominal and cumulative values of the gifts given by the True Love. In 2021, the commodity price index assessed the nominal value at $41,205 and the cumulative value at $179,454. An example is the four calling birds (they use canaries), which are mentioned nine times. Canaries go for around $300 in the US so the cumulative value of the gift from Ms True Love is $10,700. You follow?

Not that this would have occurred to Bing Crosby when he recorded the song with the Andrews Sisters in 1949. Bing’s been dead for 45 years but regardless has 25 million Spotify followers. Now that’s what I’d call a commodity.

Have a great Christmas and drive carefully.

Christmas cards or emails?

christmas-cards-emails
The world over, the mail must get through – image by Brazilian photographer Alexandre Fukugava www.pixabay.com

Last week I posted a handful of Christmas cards to New Zealand. The woman in the post office frowned and said I’d missed the deadline for international post.

“But it’s only New Zealand, so they will probably get there,” she added, with a slow, small country town smile.

I’m not so confident. The record time taken for mail exchanged between my sister and I was 17 days in 2020. Blimey, I could have flown over and hand-delivered it, enjoying a two-week holiday at the same time.

Those of you with family members living abroad know of the annual dilemma. Is it Christmas cards in the post and/or calendars, an animated ecard or an email with a word document of the family’s highlights through the year?

The problem with the annual epistle is that some years are just crap. Nothing good happened and you didn’t go anywhere, right?

I have more or less faithfully kept up the tradition of sending cards in the mail, not expecting one in return, since moving to Australia in the mid-1970s (stamps then cost 10c).

When we were both working, we’d shop for Australian calendars and post them to relatives in New Zealand, Canada and the UK. We stopped doing this once the cost of postage became more than the cost of the calendars.

Last month, I had a reminder email from animated ecard producer Jacquie Lawson, who offers cards for all occasions. The reminder was that my $20 subscription was about to lapse. It was a shock to find I had sent only five ecards in 12 months. I must be old school after all.

I’m not renewing, but if you decide (on December 23, after counting the unsolicited cards on the tree and mantel piece), that you should reciprocate, it’s easy to sign up and deliver an impressive ecard.

The first Christmas card was issued in 1843 by UK civil servant, inventor and entrepreneur Henry Cole, the first director of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Cole was instrumental in reforming the British postal system, helping to set up the Uniform Penny Post. This system encouraged the sending of seasonal greetings on decorated letterheads and visiting cards. Struck by the idea of creating a greeting card of his own, Henry asked his friend, artist John Callcott Horsley, to illustrate it.

Horsley’s design depicts the Cole family raising a toast in a central, hand-coloured panel surrounded by a decorative trellis and black and white scenes depicting acts of giving.

Cole commissioned a printer to transfer the design onto cards, printing a thousand copies that could be personalised with a hand-written greeting. The issue (at a shilling each), was described as a commercial failure.

Cole would have been fascinated to see how his idea blossomed into a multi-billion-dollar business. The greetings card industry is in a spot of trouble now, as digital options make sending greetings cheaper and faster.

Marketing group researchandmarkets.com released projections that showed global greetings card sales would drop 17% from $23 billion in 2020 to $20.9 billion in 2026. Reasons for the decline include the popularity of social media platforms and messaging apps such as WhatsApp.

“Despite the challenges posed by the growing social media and e-cards, there still exists a niche consumer base for physical greeting cards,” a spokesman said.

“Giving and receiving these cards continues to matter to a set of consumers, albeit a shrinking one. For this niche group of consumers, a physical greeting card on special occasions means much more than a Facebook message or an e-card.”

Last year, the Australia Post network delivered around one million fewer letters every working day than prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.

A spokesman told FOMM the network did not differentiate between Christmas mail and regular letters so could not produce meaningful statistics. But as a guide, the annual Santa Mail program last year received more than 118,000 letters bound for the North Pole!

Australia Post is one of Australia’s most successful companies, posting revenue of $8.3 billion for 2021 and pre-tax profit of $100.7 million.

“This is a strong result, with our domestic parcels business continuing to go from strength to strength, while we retained our position as a market leader with parcel and services revenue growth of 17.7%,” acting CEO Rodney Boys said in the 2021 annual report.

Revenue was driven by a record peak period, with more than 52 million parcels delivered in December alone. The organisation is continually finding new ways to take advantage of the growth in ecommerce (more than one million households now shop on-line each month). Australia Post has developed well beyond a simple service for mail delivery. The network supports banking and bill-paying services for major institutions.

My recent application to renew my Australian passport (at the post office), for example, cost $307.00 plus $27.95 for passport photos, taken by Australia Post.

(Ed: He has some spares if you’d like an autographed one).

The Australian Passport Office delivered my new passport by registered mail ($4.45) in just under four weeks so obviously the Passport Office/Australia Post collaboration is working well.

The strong growth in ecommerce and parcel home delivery has coincided with an ongoing decline in the volume of letters, however. Revenue dropped from $2.33 billion in 2017 to $1.77 billion in 2021.

As a trustee of a self managed super fund, I can vouch that all companies which issue shares promote electronic delivery of annual reports and other correspondence. All of the institutions and government agencies with which we have dealings also push hard to convert their clients to on-line interaction.

Despite my earlier observation about the time taken for mail to arrive in New Zealand, Australia Post boasts a 94% delivered on time record for letters and parcels. If the letter/parcel you are expecting is late, it is probably someone else’s fault.

There are 7,950 postal routes in Australia, some requiring a marathon effort to traverse. We should be grateful for the 10,000 ‘Posties’ who battle rain, hail, bushfire smoke, steaming hot days and aggressive dogs.

No laughing matter that, with Australia Post confirming that more than 1,000 posties have been attacked by household dogs in the past six months. Nibbler used to bark at the postie, or more accurately at the scooter as it whizzed past. I went out one day to introduce the dog, thinking it would make him less likely to bark and run along the fence. Our local postman said it was ‘traditional’ for dogs to bark at posties.

I hope this has inspired you to get out your address book and start writing in cards (buy a box of cards from a charity and do two good deeds in one).

A study by the University of Limerick concluded that the act of sending (and receiving) Christmas cards can help alleviate depression. Moreover, if someone who always sends you a card suddenly doesn’t, this can be a red flag.

“If you do not hear from someone who regularly sends you a Christmas card, it might be worth checking in with them to spread some Christmas cheer,” said Dr Jennifer McMahon, a lecturer in psychology at UL and study co-author.

You have seven days.

Postscript: I wrote an irony-laden Christmas song which has been described as ‘a bit dark’ by someone who saw a preview. Not suitable for children.