Walking the dog in the rain

This is my usual route: out our back gate, around the hill and up the steps to the soccer ground, around the ground on the gravel road, then through the wire fence near the cricket nets and back down again. It's a wobbly figure 6. 

Winston stops frequently, so I thought today I would try to actually to use my waiting to time to take photos and post this ON THE GO. It didn't work, it was just too wet for my touch screen to grasp what I wanted it to do. So I'm posting this from home as per usual.

Our old boy, on the gravel road around the soccer ground.

Below the soccer ground is this playground that was redeveloped really well about 3 years ago.

The local cockatoo mob grazing by the playground. 

All of this is a reclaimed municipal tip. The top level is a pretty good soccer ground now although there are still drainage problems on the lower side. The playground level is undulating and uneven, designed for you to turn an ankle while trying to fly a kite.

Our youngest son breaks his wrist

 Michael was on his way to his friend’s place on his electric scooter a few weeks ago on a Sunday night. It was after dark, he was going down a slight slope on a rough bit of footpath near St John’s Hospital, and some people stepped out onto the footpath. He braked too hard, came off and put his arms out, and suffered the classic ‘break your fall’ broken left wrist. 

We went to Emergency, but I didn’t appreciate how bad it was until the radiologist muttered “it’s a bad break” after the X-ray. I feel bad that I had actually made Michael wait until I’d finished my dinner before I took him to Emergency. His bones didn't come through the skin but they were some way from where they should have been. [I asked yesterday at his 2 week review which bones were broken, radius or ulna or both - and they didn't really answer because to them it essentially doesn't matter. They are parallel, and one splints the other, or something].

They tried to get the bones back in place. They put a tight cuff around Michael’s upper arm and inflated it; this is called a Bier block. Then they put anaesthesia into his lower arm through a cannula. Once he was numb, one doctor held his upper arm while the other hauled on his hand to try to reposition things. This was unsuccessful so they booked him in for day surgery three days later.

A funny thing; we arrived at Emergency around midnight Sunday. They gave each of us blue stickers as we came in which I was pretty sure said NOW (they actually said to us "stick it on your phone"). I was pleased that we’d been assessed as some sort of priority. Days later I looked at the sticker and realised it said MON. Far from promising expediency, this was advertising that things were slow they had to tag people by the day they arrived, not the hour.

His surgery went well, but it took such a long time. The procedure is called an ORIF - open reduction internal fixation. He now has a metal plate in his arm. We were asked to be at the hospital at 12; there was an admissions process but he was gowned up and ready to go by 1. It was after 4 when I said goodbye on the threshold of the theatre and they wheeled him in. We collected him around 7, and he said he felt fine. Even though we arrived at 12 he was the last day patient there and they were pretty much sweeping up around us.

We had to pick up some pain relief meds on the way home. On the way, the hospital rang sounding slightly panicky asking if he still had a cannula in his arm. He did not; they had not recorded taking it out. At the pharmacy, the pharmacist was not happy with our prescription. It had two different drugs on it; it has to be one drug per prescription. Amazing that a hospital registrar wouldn’t know that. Fortunately she gave us what we needed after chewing out the hospital over the phone; and them agreeing to fax her two new prescriptions. Even more fortunately Michael didn’t need much at all in the way of pain relief.

So he started mending, and living with his plaster cast. Four days later we were back in Emergency to have it replaced, after he dunked it in the bath. Emergency made an appointment for us at Plaster Clinic which is excitingly on the 12th floor, with very interesting views. But we were whisked in and out so fast that we hardly had time to take them in. 

Yesterday was his 2-week post-surgery revisit to Plaster Clinic. They took everything off, re-dressed it and now he has a light velcro/nylon splint arrangement that he can remove to shower. I finally got the answers to some vital information I had been chasing since surgery, which I will record here for posterity.

• The consultant was Mr Petterwood, the registrar was Jaye Yick.
• The metal plate is made by TriMed, and is either stainless steel or titanium. It will be fine in an MRI.
• When I asked what was broken they said the radius and maybe the ulna, maybe not.

GeoGuessr

 My workmate Dave Macarthur introduced me to this quite addictive online geography game. I am generally not one for online games; but I am hooked on this and have spent 15 minutes every day now for 15 days running trying to guess the locations I am dropped in. 

You have three minutes to make a guess as to where you are (and there are 5 rounds). Some like this screenshot are very hard: you are haring down the road looking for a road sign or at least a scrap of writing. Is it a roman alphabet like ours or Cyrillic? Or Thai? If it's roman letters, are there any ø or ç or ü to give a hint? If you're really lucky you'll see a flag.

If you want to try this, here are my hints garnered from 2 weeks’ experience

• I have never yet been dropped in China, USA, Canada or France. 
• The creator is Swedish. Scandinavia and the Baltic states occur quite often; so it pays to bone up on the telltale look of those languages. They don't all have Ås.
• The graveyard for high scores is South America. If I wanted to turn Pro at this, the first thing I would do is dedicate some time to researching the telltale differences between say Uruguayan and Mexican countryside. A newbie like me see signs in Spanish, some rundown abobe buildings with rebar sticking out the top, jungly trees and ocean. You guess Tampico in Mexico but it's Maldonado in Uruguay. Sorry you are 7,700km out and you score 3 out of a possible 500 points.
• No-one says you can't Google things in another tab during your 3 minutes; BUT my personal rule is you go in with your pre-existing knowledge and do your best. I have been known to yell to others in the room “which island in Indonesia has all the volcanoes!?”

I built a handrail

Our steps up the front are steep and uneven. Our older visitors sometimes find them hard to get up and they are perilous for anyone going down, especially when wet or icy.

So I have built two sections of handrail. I am not a builder, and I took a very long time dithering over design, materials and tools. I was keen to do it without concrete ended up going for concrete footings, and 10x10cm cypress pine poles, with slices of cypress for the handrails.

My first baby step after the 3 metre poles were delivered was cutting one in half. It was easy with the handsaw, and the sawdust smelled amazing. 

I cut six poles in half, and with Nick and his table saw, we sliced the rest into planks. His saw blade is just off vertical so the planks have bit of a line running one side where the cuts refused to meet. 

I wanted the handrail to follow the curve of the step, so I tried wedging some planks between the posts of the retaining wall and a regrowing gum sapling located in the perfect spot. I wet the planks twice a day for a week. 

They retained very little if any curve after all that. But I found that they were thin enough to bend nicely anyway, and as the posts followed the curve, so did the rail, once screwed firmly to the posts. My inspired* idea was to make a good handrail width by screwing a second layer of planks to the first. 

*This construction method has not yet passed the test of time.

The junction at the post 2nd from the top had to be more angular, as the posts were too far apart for one 3m length to span two gaps. Up near the house I had a lot more trouble digging good deep holes.

It lacks refinement and has a few ugly details, but I am actually really pleased with it. I had to solve a series of problems as I went and that was satisfying.

Now I just need to convince Dad (in his eighties) to use it.

Outdoor confusion

Sometimes, maybe once a year, my brushcutter feeds out the nylon line like it's supposed to. And it confuses the hell out of me.

Marcus bound for Hong Kong

Our boys have incredible abilities. Michael does not like to be literally outstanding; he often keeps his brilliance to himself. But Marcus has always been happy to be identified as gifted and to take advantage of the opportunities available. I am more like Michael, so I admire Marcus the way you can only admire someone who does things you cannot.

I tend not to let my mind roam too far forward. I do not plan on my own behalf, and I have not really imagined the boys’ lives very far in advance either. Let’s call this living in the moment rather than a lack of vision. In any case; I had not really pictured a time when Marcus would be 19 and living and working in Hong Kong.

This week he is into his last semester of his BSc. He has started some elements of next year’s Honours already (you can do that now) but he has been applying for summer internships and many scholarships including the Tasmanian Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford.

He had some quite long Zoom “interviews”, which in some cases were more like exams. He had a few call backs, including one with a securities trading firm called Jane Street in Hong Kong. They also have offices in all the other financial capitals.

They offered Marcus a 3 month internship which he is planning to take. He is not a complete babe-in-the-woods, but still was stunned to be offered a salary about triple what he was expecting. If he worked a full year at that rate he could pay off our hefty mortgage (should he so choose). 

This has given me all sorts of feelings. I will miss him like hell, as I would if he was in Launceston or Melbourne; but I will also worry because Things Are Happening in Hong Kong. Of course I am very proud of him as well. He has no intention of becoming a Quantitative Securities Trader, but what if they offer him a job at a E-Class-Mercedes-driving salary? I don't think I could knock it back – could you?

One thought that occurred to me was just what a quantum shift it would be for our family, between a generation with someone earning the average Australian income and the next generation earning more than 3 times that. And going back through the paternal line in our family, something like this happened between my great great grandfather David and great grandfather William.

David Rees was a puddler in a steel mill, who was convicted in 1843 of “manslaughter of John Bolan in a row at Swansea” and transported to Tasmania. His son William Rees became an insurance agent, and when he died his wife Martha carried on the business. His son (my grandfather Didds) started as a clerk at the local coal mine and retired as chief accountant of a large woollen mill. I wrote a bit more about it here in 2011.

In this analogy I am the convict and Marcus is the one making the leap into respectable white collar work. But I want to stress that I haven’t killed anyone and I can both read and write.

Marlion Pickett 2019

In December 2019 I posted a clip of this work in progress, but I have just realised I never posted the finished piece here. I’d like to add more Grand Final Moments, starting with Jesaulenko's mark in 1970. Stay tuned for that.

 

The Rain Heron by Robbie Arnott

Zoe kept going out with her aunt, although her aunt did all the bleeding. She itched to wear scars of her own, to draw the squid with her own blood, but her aunt would not allow it.

When you’re older, she’d say. Your mother would kill me if I let you open a vein at your age.

Then she would laugh, because Zoe’s mother was dead. Her aunt didn’t find that funny – she laughed because she laughed at everything. It was the only response she was capable of, regardless of the situation. She laughed at jokes and television, but she also laughed at food and trees and weather reports. Breakfast made her laugh, as did rain, splinters and trousers. She laughed at good fortune and horror. The more tense or difficult the circumstances, the wilder she laughed. When she learned that her sister – Zoe’s mother – had died, she screamed, bit her cheek and cackled, spraying blood from her mouth across a tiled floor.

This the 2nd novel by my workmate Robbie Arnott. By day he is Senior Copywriter at Red Jelly ad agency, and contributes about 45% of the human energy manifested in the large mezzanine space in which we work. He did not give me this copy of his book, I bought it with my own money, and my resentment about this will surface later in the review.

Robbie Arnott by Matt Osborne

You read one book by someone and believe it gives you an insight into their stock-in-trade. Robbie's first book Flames was very grounded in Tasmania. "The environment is a character in the book" people sometimes say, but usually not to this extent. It had wry humour, relatable family dynamics, and a strong current of the fabulous running through it from go to whoa. It did really well too. To some degree I looked forward to this as a sequel.

What Flames didn't have was evil. (Thurston Hough was nasty but not evil). However one of the main characters in TRH is dispassionately brutal. There is wild remorseless nature, there are the usual human failings of greed, envy and obsession; but this one character named Harker damages others in a coldly calculating way, a way that is hard to take in large doses. I put the book down a few times for a break from Harker.

The setting of the book is a time not unlike now, in a place not unlike here. Imagine an unbroken landmass that encompasses climates from Tasmania's bitter, cold and mountainous southwest, up through the mainland wheat belt and desert, over into the high Australian Alps, and then further north into the sub tropics. The flora and fauna are familiar species, both endemic (cider gums, quolls) and European (fir trees, deer).

The story is broken into Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4; different settings which melt into each other as you progress through the book, with some surprising connections. This is done very cleverly and with a light touch. 

There's a skill in songwriting, in setting up then avoiding an obvious rhyme. Eg Clementine by Megan Washington [It sounds a lot less banal than this looks]. "Oh my darling / Clementine / Turn the water / into holy water". Robbie pulls a similar trick towards the end of The Rain Heron where you start to feel you know his methods, you have the pattern of the book, you are galloping towards the climax and he just declines to provide the obvious narrative end point that you are anticipating. You are left with an itch unscratched. I assume he has deliberately crafted this, just like I assume Washington knows full well that the only thing anyone turns WATER into is WINE.

There is a lot of flesh in this book; beautifully described. Corpses, wounds, infections, real and imagined anatomies. One of Robbie's friends said to him "oh god do you realise how much PUS is in this book?" 

I give it 4 stars out of 5. I would have gone for 4.5 stars except for one word: "navy" as a synonym for the ocean. I'm just not having it. He did it in the first book too. I have addressed this with him and I trust we will not have to have that conversation again.

Beach Week part one

We just spent a week at Swansea, 2 hours up the east coast from Hobart. We four went with Imp, Ed, Karri & Miah, and stayed at this big stretched-out beach house at Coswell Beach, not far from town. It was fantastic! Halfway through the second day I realised I was getting some deep relaxation that just isn't possible at home, where there is so much to do. And Elf was relaxed, the boys were enjoying being with their cousins and having their own space; it all worked really well.

The block is very big, with the house at the top and a gradual slope down towards the beach. After a 4-minute walk you pop out of the bush and the beach is right there. The beach was very quiet; we only ever saw the odd dog walker. No-one else was in the water.

We had dawn swims, morning swims, afternoon swims and evening swims, and we each had a paddle on the wave ski. We mostly look for still water to paddle (despite the name), but Michael took it out through the churning surf, and Elf and I both successfully got it out through much calmer waves. The stakes are higher, and getting tipped out is at least 50% probability, so you are swapping some of the relaxation for a touch of excitement.

We also took the wave skis to Bagot Point, which sticks out from the mainland opposite the more famous Coles Bay on the Freycinet Peninsula. This is a great spot where you can park on the beach, which always gives me a buzz. You could easily paddle or even swim over to the other side here.

We got there more conventionally when Ed suggested a walk up The Hazards, which are five peaks that overlook the famous Wineglass Bay in the Freycinet National Park. Specifically he wanted to climb Mt Amos, the 2nd tallest. Michael and Marcus were keen, and Miah would have come except for a sore toe that she is supposed to be resting. I said I would come along, but after watching this video I thought there was a good chance I wouldn't get to the top.

But I did! We four all did.

It was pretty hard climbing for me. Ed and Michael had good boots but Marcus and I had Blundstones and mine are pretty old and low on grip. This is a VERY slippery walk and is absolutely not to be attempted in wet conditions. The Hazards are granite, and there is both very scratchy grippy red granite and very slick and smooth grey granite. Here and there are little runnels of fresh water coming from I don't know where; little springs I guess. When you step on a smooth section with a wet boot, you really know it! It was just rock climbing at times; just looking for foot- and hand-holds. Sometimes there was nothing for your hands at all; just a crack to jam your feet in. I am not a rock-climber (fat with puny arms and stiff joints) so I didn't enjoy this much, in the doing.

At the top I wasn't exhausted like I might be from walking a steep track with lots of steps. It was more brain work than leg work, maybe. But I was exhilirated to have made it and LOOK at the view! Wineglass Bay is often depicted on Tasmanian tourism posters and so on; its so stunning. There are easier ways to than this to get a look at it; despite this I have never seen it with my own eyes despite living here nearly all my life.

The climb down was scarier than going up. Upwards you are able to lean into the slope; downwards I just found I had to slide on my butt a lot. Which of course took me back to this misadventure in India. Walking the Lost World with Michael was also a climb/scramble but not remotely slippery. 

When we reached the bottom we chatted to a ranger; who told us how Wineglass Bay got its name. I am surprised I had never heard this before; in whaling days they would trap southern right whales in the bay, slaughter them, and then the bay had the appearance of a glass of red wine. Ugh.

We met up with Elf and Imp and the girls at Honeymoon Bay and rewarded ourselves with a swim.

Book cover designer

 I have always wanted to design book covers. I did one for Patsy Crawford years ago that I was really happy with; but more did not follow. 

Fighting Redbubble

This is an open letter. That's a fancy way of saying I am cutting and pasting an email I just sent to Redbubble in a white-hot fury. Weeks ago they pulled about a dozen of my designs from sale. For each one they said

We’re sorry, but we had to remove some of your artwork from the Redbubble marketplace because it may contain material that violates someone’s rights. We identified this material in your artwork based on guidance provided to us by the owner of those rights.

I contested each of these removals, pointing out that this is original artwork, I do not use the names of AFL clubs or their logos, and I only use names and images of players with their permission. Today I finally got a response for each one. I've quoted the important bit in my response to their response.

Here's the open letter.

Dog poo story

Winston is a big dog. His poo is about the diameter of a 50c piece. Yesterday we were in the Cascade Gardens and he decided to crap on a slope.

A grass slope would usually be OK, but this was a paved slope, at a steep bend. As I waited for him to finish I realised the poo was heading past me down the path.

As I chased it, it broke in two, and started going in different directions. I picked one and caught it, and was just heading back for the second when something caught my eye.

What I’ll call Poo 2 was now heading down the path on a third trajectory. I caught Poo 1B, recalled Winston who was heading for a nice bog or slough, then at last collected Poo 2.

Once I had the lead back in my hand and the bagful we headed up the path towards the bin and exchanged hellos with a pleasant lady who had definitely seen the whole thing.

A big move

Three weeks ago I experienced the biggest change in Dadness since Michael was born. Marcus moved out with his long-term girlfriend Miranda [who readers may remember from 2006].

They are, as the crow flies, 310 metres away. Our friend Steve has given them his studio on a short lease, at a reasonable mate's rate.

Marcus is living over on the dark side of the valley. He misses Winston a lot.

They are getting by on Marcus' tutoring income and Miranda's government Jobkeeper payment, which covers her part-time job while her employer is closed for Covid 19.

They are managing pretty well. Marcus says he was very under-prepared to begin with, but has learnt a lot. He thinks they are ready now to move out long term.

We have all been missing each other but after three weeks we are now into a new routine over here. Cooking for 3, often cooking for 2. We see them from time to time, which is nice. Little by little I am getting used to a new state of Dadness.

Rabbit spray

After my run this morning I was coming back through the part of the park we call ‘Rabbit Alley’. As usual there were rabbits running across the path into their hidey-holes, and as often happens, one of them decided to just sit and wait for me to get closer. I don't know why they do this; rabbit psychology is a mystery to me.

I took my eye off him and when I looked up he was gone, but I was just in time to see the spray of droplets in the morning sun, which must have been from his heels kicking the frosty dew.

Quadrupeds

The kittens are nearly 6 months old now. Winston has fully accepted them and enjoys their company. He and Coco are particularly close. I suspect he trod on Ruby by mistake when she was small and she hasnt forgotten.