SHARK ATTACK

Note: This is a blog. It is not an accurate record of events. No-one was interviewed in the process. It is the work of the writer, his selective memory and is biased and filtered.

Searching for the white pointers at Ellen Cove, Middleton Beach.

Searching for the white pointers at Ellen Cove, Middleton Beach.

Saturday
Albany
Western Australia

It’s about 8am. I arrive at Albany’s popular Middleton Beach for my morning run and surf.

I get out of my car, run across the short piece of lawn, round the corner of the Surf Club building and face a small gathering of people around an ambulance.

Oh, I think, an early morning beach-side exercise.

I know some of them: the local member of State Parliament, a couple of friends and I recognise surf club members.

The politician turns to me and asks: You swimming?

I think: Yeah, of course I’m swimming. I swim every morning. I’m dressed for it. You know I swim. You being a smart-bum?

I nod, sideways.

“You swimming?”

“Yeah. So?”

“Shark attack.”

“Serious?”

He nods to the ambulance.

I look at the friends. They are agitated, focussed. They look through me. Something is clearly wrong.

The tale unfolds.

The early morning swimmers were about 20 metres from shore when one of them spotted a fin and said to his companion “dolphins.” His companion agreed, but then they both had second thoughts and a mate, one closer to shore, yelled “shark.” And in the same instant, the shark attacked. He yelled. The two out near the buoys decided to swim together for shore, keeping close and talking their way in. The shark circled and charged. Three times. They kicked hard and kept talking. On their way in they grabbed their mate. Another early morning swimmer, not yet in the water, saw their plight, ripped off her clothes and charged into the water, grabbed the severely injured man and dragged him ashore. Meanwhile, two others arrived, one raced in fully clothed, the other went for his mobile phone to call an ambulance. With the bitten man on the beach, they cared for him, wrapped him in towels, applied a tourniquet to stem the flow of blood to his badly lacerated leg and the man with the phone called the injured man’s wife. Within five minutes the ambulance had arrived and the injured man placed on the stretcher.

I see the fin. It’s big. Around it the surface water changes texture, like it’s tense, nervous, agitated. Then more fins, not fish, mammals, dolphins. The big fin is clearly a shark, a big fish. Others see it.

The ambulance leaves. A police vehicle drives onto the beach and heads north to warn walkers and swimmers along the beach line. A city vehicle arrives with an electronic sign: Beach closed because of shark.

Someone says the sea rescue boat is on its way. We can see it now.

The fin is moving around the pontoon, a popular destination for kids who like to jump and dive. No-one is in the water now.

I go to my friends. Now they see me. We talk. We agree to meet for coffee. They leave for the hospital with clothing belonging to the other friend, the one who was in the water, the one who was charged, and survived. She was in the back of the ambulance with the badly bitten man.

People arrive ready to swim. We send them away.

The sea rescues boat arrives. A surf lifesaver points to the pontoon. The boat circles it then begins searching in a deliberate pattern.

I stand around, listening, waiting for decisions to be made and ready to offer assistance, a car, a shoulder, whatever.

I see the woman who ran into the water sitting alone. I go to her.

“You remember me?”

“You’re the laughing man.”

“Yes.”

She laughs. Then cries. Then talks. She says she’s ok. She will call her son. She knows she’s wobbly.

I leave, meet my friends for coffee. They are wobbly, emotional, bonded.

Sunday
8am

I’m at the beach again. Talk to a bloke from Fisheries. He tells me they spotted two sharks, females, one 4 metres and the other 5 metres. Big fish. Hungry fish. I ask if it’s safe to swim, anywhere. It’s all a risk, he says.

I drive out to Goode Beach, 20ks out of town, facing King George Sound. I run in the soft sand. I run up a sand hill. I’m hot. I want to go into the ocean. I find a clear spot, no weed and watch. Nothing. I go in. I’m cautious, swim with eyes wide open above and below the surface, head swinging both ways and taking breaths from left and right. It feels good, wonderful, invigorating.

I get out, run up the beach, grab my chamois towel, turn, and tense: two fins. Bugger, dolphins.

Later Sunday morning

I’m back at Middleton Beach. A crowd is building. TV crews are lurking. Two boats are sweeping, one with a loud speaker system: “Keep away from the beach.” A helicopter sweeps with a leaning cameraman. Families arrive, park and rush to the shoreline. I meet an artist I met the previous day at the Albany Farmers’ Markets. He’s from Austria. He tells me it is madness, that on this very day many people will die on the roads, that people in other countries are starving, that people in Burma have no homes, that the Junta will take advantage and kill people they don’t like, that in Austria unspeakable things will continue to happen to innocent people and that people in the Western world watch too much television and the media feeds their insanity. Two dolphins frolic in the shallows. Some are interested in them, most seem eager for another sighting.

I get in my car and call the friends who were involved in the attack and the rescue. None of them slept well. They have heard others involved also did not sleep well. I did not sleep well, a night plagued with dreams about losing control and one about swimming over dark weed and panicking because I could no longer see the shark I was sure was there, even though I had not seen it.

A dolphin frolics while humans seeks white pointers.

For the news, as the news does it, go here:

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,23675280-5008620,00.html

If you own a house, hang on to it

If you’re wondering why this blog has been dormant, well, ask yourself this: What would happen if I tried to sell my house in a flat market, found a buyer, got all excited, named a settlement date, packed half the house, sold half the furniture and the deal fell through because the buyer could not arrange finance?

Got an answer?

Well, the first thing you should do is have a bloody good lie down because chances are you’d be exhausted from all the excitement, the going away parties, the selling and the packing.

Did we lie down?

No.

What did we do?

We unpacked, and we thought seriously about calling in a distant cousin from another country to whack the real estate agent.

Why, because we needed someone to blame, a victim, a scapegoat, because he overdid the personal deodorant? No, because he did two things we did not appreciate and didn’t do a number of things we would have appreciated.

For a start, he dropped the price on our house without any consultation. We simply woke up one morning, picked up a paper and found our house had gone from $609,000 plus to $599,000 plus.

The “plus” was his idea, part of his create selling plan.

Then, after he thought the deal had fallen through, he dumped the buyers, put the house back on the market and announced a house-open, all without consulting the vendors, the sellers, us.

We called the buyers, who we had shown over the house the previous weekend and they said: “We are still interested. His phone call upset us. We thought he was acting under your instructions.”

Instructions? Sellers would issue instructions to intimidate buyers? This happens? Anyway, good point. We suddenly remembered who was acting for whom.

Which was all fine and good but we still owned a house we didn’t want to live in any more and had a mortgage on another house we did want to live in, sleep in, eat in and do all the other things happily married baby boomers do in after they have relieved their cluttered lives of vast amounts of superfluous junk they have no wish to leave behind for their children to sift through when they finally move off to the planet they thought they were on in 1966.

In short, our agent was not acting in our interests, but in the interests of someone who wasn’t talking to us.

Such matters take their toll.

Especially on the person who is left living in the house we don’t want to live in any more and that wasn’t me.

Where was I?

Doing what I do, driving all over the South West of Western Australia, working my guts to the bone, or the gristle, talking, back slapping, hand shaking and falling onto the nearest bed in a collapsed heap dreaming dreams that suggested my life needed a settled home life.

Meanwhile, Tibetans and Zimbabweans battled enemies of a much greater consequence.

Perspective is a great leveller. We may be experiencing some confusion, but we still eat well, get some sleep, feel safe in whatever house we are in, enjoy the companionship of fine friends and here, where I am now, in Albany, next stop Antarctica, most days the surf rolls gently onto fine beach sand and I get to feel at one with the universe.

The Dangers of Facebook

Facebook, I love it. Almost.

If you are on it you will remember the cute little dog. You may well have got yours from me. “Fast forward” said the instructions and you will be “surprised”. So was everyone on my list.

Eventually, I got an irate message from a Facebook friend who claimed too many of us were sending “stupid stuff”, meaning cute little doggies, and not respecting the personal relationships, the innateness of friendship.

I apologised for the dog. Then I sat down and had a good think.

Sure, he was right, and I get the crap too, but I delete it. The dog didn’t bother me that much, and once I learnt its innate stupidity, when it arrived, again, and again, and one more time, I binned it.

But there is something, oh yes, something that really pisses me of about Facebook and that is all the people who want to be my friends who I have never heard of and once I check them out I discover they want to be my friend because they are the friend of some other friend of mine.

To quote Steve Martin, Excuse Me, being Jim’s friend gives no right to Joan to be my friend. I like Jim, but who the jack is Joan and what makes her think I will like her just because I like Jim?

And that’s not the end of it.

What about all those people I do like who get bored with Facebook and sign up to Shoulderstrap, or Earlobe, of Headspace, or any number of other Facebook Wannabes?

Well, get jacked Headspace, that’s what I say, because I barely have the time in a day to service Facebook and the 16 blogs I’m running, in addition to making a living, nurturing the marriage and pretending to father.

In addition, I’m an almost dead Baby Boomer and there’s stuff I have to do before I leave and one of the last things I need is a new website for friends I don’t know and don’t need.

There.

I feel better now.

Well, not quite.

I’m still a little nervous.

Because you and I both know that out there, in cyberspace, yes, they are amassing, gearing up, getting ready, you know who I mean, The Amway Salespeople.

Oh yes, I’m your friend, because you know Jim and I know Jim and so we should get together and maybe this weekend for coffee and an idea I want to run by you, I think you’ll like it, you could make some money, then BAM, they whack you with it, friendship is nothing more than a front to flog jack shit!

Flying

It all started with the late taxi. Sorry, the taxi that never was. It should have been, but wasn't, because when I called to ask where it was, I was told: "There's nothing coming up on screen. Your booking has not been registered."
Ok, don't panic, I've got plenty of time.
The call centre books my taxi: "Don't worry, there's plenty of taxis in the area and there should be one there quickly."
There isn't.
I call again: "Yes, your booking is registered, but you will have to wait because there are no taxis in the area."
All right, "there are taxis in the area", "there are no taxis in the area." I'm fine with that. I'm modern. I'm into chaos. I have a plane to catch.
At the top of Kalamunda Road which, by the way, offers a great view of Perth, the city, where most folk who live in West Australia live, there is a road block.
The taxi driver gets testy: "Why? There is room. These people are idiots."
We wait. Then wait. Then move.
No traffic lights work for us, not one, not even the last one, the one that lets us into the airport precinct.
I am out of the taxi, running, to the darleks, the self-boarding passenger terminals. My flight is not registered.
I rush the counter: "Do you mind, I'm sorry, my flight is leaving." The man lets me through, a kind man, a potential passenger.
At the desk, I breathe, but it doesn't help: "Your flight is closed. You won't get on."
Then I say that word, the F one, the one I don't normally utter in a public, bureaucratic setting.
The counter attendant sends me to another counter. As soon as I get there the attendant gets up and moves away to fiddle with stationary, not to fill it out in order to help an anxious passenger, no, to unpack it, to spread it out over the blank space behind him.
Eventually he turns and looks at the blank space in front of him. I fill it.
"My flight is closed. They won't let me on. They said you would put me on the next flight. Can you?"
He says nothing, not even: "Who are they?"
He doesn't look up. He works his screen. Finds something. Writes something. Looks up: "4.15. You are on that flight."
"Thank you."
I have four hours to wait. I settle in.
Airports are interesting places. I like waiting in them. In the 1970s I once lived in Heathrow for three days, waiting for a flight, any flight, home. Perth airport, with heightened levels of chaos, gets more and more interesting.
While waiting I recognise that I consider it remarkable that flights take off, stay up, and arrive at a destination. Given the increasing levels of anxiety, chaos and incompetence, it is astounding that things work, not that they don't work.
A plane arrived. It let me on. I landed in Sydney.
At the Holiday Inn reception desk I was told: "I'm sorry, but you have checked in already."
"No I haven't. Have you seen me before?"
"No, sir."
"Then this is me. This is my passport. This is my birthmark. My mother's maiden name is Brooks."
"Yes, sir."
"So, either you have given my room to someone else, or there has been a mistake, but, I would still like a room, please, any room, but one with a bed, a basin and a bible."
"Yes, sir. I will check, sir."
He leaves.
The man standing next to me asks: "You were on the Perth flight?"
"Yes, QF577, but I should have been on QF580. They wouldn't let me on. I was late."
He laughed: You know what happened to QF580?"
"No."
"It was delayed 30minutes, took off, experienced engine trouble, then returned to Perth and did not leave for another 3hours."
I laughed. What else could I do?
The receptionist returned and gave me a room.
Phew.
Ok, everything else ran smooth. Until departure.
At Sydney airport, two hours early, I booked in, thinking that would be plenty of time for the necessary folk to do what they had to do with my baggage and for me to get on the flight.
It was. I browsed. I drank coffee. I bought books.
As the lights flash "boarding" we are informed by a Qantus attendant that we have to face the counter near Gate 13 and collect a form to fill in to enable us to have our luggage delivered to us after we land in Perth.
Why?
Because there is a problem with the warning light in the baggage hold and if there is a fire on board no-one will know because the warning light doesn't work. And nobody smells anymore.
We line up, some anxious, because the boarding light is still flashing, we collect our forms, and run to Gate 7.
Guess what? Once we are in the air, flying high, and the seat belt light has disappeared, an attendant walks around handing out the very same forms we had only 15minutes ago lined up for.
I love it.
As we are leaving the plane, the only attendant I can pick under 45 laughs at me and says: "Good luck with the baggage."
"I don't know whose I'll get but it won't be mine."
He laughed: "I know."
Then he laughed harder.

LATE NEWS:
My bag arrived, yes, mine.
I looked stunned.
"This the wrong bag?" asked the courier.
"No, no, it's mine all right."
"What?"
"That's why I'm stunned."
"We do a pretty good job, mate."
He looked hurt.
"It's not you, mate, it's the others. No courier has ever delivered the wrong parcel to me. I admire couriers. Some of my best cousins have been couriers. But airlines, huh!"
He smiled: "Yeah."

Get those spots checked

This is a cautionary tale.
But first, 2008 has got off to a bad start - the stock market has crashed, the US has a an election coming up, I pulled a muscle running along the beach alongside the Great Southern Ocean, fruit and vegetable prices are set to rise, the planet is in deep pain, more people than ever have lost it - so do your best to stay sane.
By now you are wondering why the little pic above.
Good question.
It's a Squamous Cell Carcinoma (SCC).
While in Albany, home of whales, deep on the south coast of Western Australia, I decided to visit a local doctor and ask him to check the lump on my arm.
He said: Mmm, looks nasty. It's a Squamous Cell Carcinoma,
I said: Yeah, what are you going to do about it?
He said: I could cut it off for you.
I said: What, the arm?
He laughed.
I said: Go for it.
He did, like a butcher: in went the knife, one straight line, no artistry, slash.
Brilliant, I thought, I could do with another manly scar.
Eight days later, in I go, out come the stitches and I leave town.
Five kilometres up the major highway, splut, the wound opens, flesh reveals itself, blood flows.
Here's what I learnt:
- keep applying sun screen
- insist on retaining stitches until they fade
- don't go to butchers for cancer removals
- remind myself that whatever happens, George W Bush is done for

POSTSCRIPT:
The cut has healed.
It has healed nicely.
The butcher organised a better scar than first look suggested.
In fact, I will no longer refer to him as "the butcher".
Henceforth he is "the nice bloke who cut the cancer out of my arm".
All right, I know, a bit long.
What about: Quarti Tunis?
(I have no idea where that came from.)
As for you, get your spots CHECKED TODAY!

Strange Turns

The Weekend Australian
8/1/22007

Given the above article I decided to finally run a tale I first wrote for the Saturday edition of the West Australian, Western Australia's only daily newspaper. In its original form it was rejected by The West's lawyers.
The lawyers were concerned that Peter Foster might sue. I think in the original I called him a "fraud".
I rewrote the piece about five times, trying to get it right for the legal brains, but never succeeding.
Here is the version we are left with.

Every so often this column takes a strange turn.

I think it is important to note that the writer is still me, but not quite me, not the full me, the me you have grown to know and love, more a channelled sort of me, from somewhere else within me.

Are you still with me?

Thing is, truth is stranger than fiction and most of us can tell the difference, but every now and then you meet someone who can’t.

Along the way I have met more than my allotted share of these folk and, I must say, for the most part, I enjoyed their company.

Indeed, I lived in Israel for three years and while there I met five men who claimed to be the reincarnated Jesus Christ.

One was a train driver from Arkansas, another a bookkeeper from Wyoming, one was a butcher from Scotland and two were very crazy men who confronted me in Jerusalem and yelled at my face and behaved in a way that led me to believe they were not Jesus after all but people desperate to be somebody. So I gave them both time and a little money.

Along the way, many of us, due to accident, biological distortions, life circumstance, or excessive imbibing of one thing or another, manifest some of the characteristics of people without a good grip on reality.

As someone once said: There is a fine line between sanity and it’s opposite.

And someone else, George Santayana, a Spanish-born American philosopher, added: Sanity is a madness put to good use.

After all those freeform, earlier years, my life has reached another, tamer stage and is heavily influenced by a long-term and stable marriage, fatherhood, regular intakes of fresh fruit, vegetables, especially locally grown garlic, and nothing more intoxicating than air skimmed off the Great Southern Ocean.

I’ve tried stand-up comedy, street theatre, television, movies, live theater, video games and badminton, but none of them match the early days of abandonment.

What moves the blood a little is body surfing, certain kinds of performing, meeting the occasional psychopath and reading.

My tastes are eclectic. I read anything from Phantom comics to Nobel Prize winning novelists, gritty crime, rampaging adventures, philosophic meanderings and academic works on psychopaths.

Psychopaths fascinate me, always have.

I’m not big on the violent criminal psychopath, the people everybody thinks of when they think of the genre, people like Hannibal Lecter, American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman and WA’s own David Bernie.

They still fascinate me, but I don’t fancy meeting them.

The folk you and I are more likely to meet are the ordinary every day psychopaths, the workplace psychopaths, the corporate psychopaths and range of people seemingly not conversant with a the standard moral code.

In an earlier column I referred to Peter Foster, not a psychopath, but well known as a con-artist and corporate conman, a man I have never met, although I claimed in one of these columns that he was a family friend.

The corporate conman also fascinates me and recently I almost threw out a sack of newspaper clippings collected since the early 1980s, but curiosity got the better of me and the resultant lingering produced an article from the Sydney Morning Herald of June 1988, all about a much younger, recently bankrupted and much photographed, Foster.

When I say photographed, it’s not really him they want, rather his busty British ex, Samantha, his Gold Coast stripper, Tina, or his whatever from wherever who is inevitably blond, striking and adoring of himself.

But let me get back to psychopaths, who abound, according to Australian Dr John Clarke, psychologist and author of Working with Monsters, How to identify and protect yourself from the workplace psychopath.

Dr Clark describes the corporate criminal psychopaths as having behaviours that “may be criminal and/or sub criminal (ethically and/or morally wrong but technically not illegal) to gain a financial or other advantage for themselves at the expense of other people. This category includes bank employees who defraud their employer, stockbrokers involvd in scams, builders who con clients, real esrtate agents wo dupe homeowners, lawters who spwend their clients trust funds ….”

Given the tameness of my current life I rather like the ability of the mind to take the strange turn and, when writing about people who I think are somehow disconnected from social mores, or psychopathic, rather than mocking them in the traditional, arrogant manner, I prefer to find the disconnection within, the bit that lives inside me, let him out, and see where he takes me.

So next time you read this column and think: Either this bloke’s nuts, or this is complete claptrap.

Then you’d be right: I am, or it is.

HOWARD'S WAY .... OUT

It has been confirmed.
Today, Saturday December 1, 2007, John Winston Howard is no longer the member for Bennelong, NSW.
He lost his seat, he can't find it, it was taken from him, he was told never to come back that, henceforth, it would be occupied by another.
The new owner of the seat is Maxine McKew, a former ABC journalist, who delighted in squeezing French phrases into interviews with people who seemed to enjoy them, for no apparent reason.
Most people think she will be good in the chair.
There is no doubt she will be better than the man who left it, often, for long periods of time and who now has no claim on it.
John Winston Howard will be remembered as a mean spirited man who walked with a jerk and smiled like one too.
For all that, he did send troops into East Timor when others before him had fainted and he did stand up and hug people when they cried because other people he had sent to Iraq died, or were killed.
And, to be fair, during the period of his Prime Prime Ministership, he did learn to hug, seemed to embrace the hug, almost require the hug and may well have hugged the incoming PM, The Man Who Looks Like a Fish.
Kevin "The Fish" Rudd may say sorry, he may not, he might offer an apology, he might use the word "regret", we don't know, nobody does, but he will decide.
Whatever happens, we must not loose our sense of the ridiculous, this is, after all Australia.
Good luck.
(For those of you not in Australia, it is useful to remember this number: 7.)

Howard out - Howard in .....

Sorry, was there a change?
Some sad jerky old man lost his way and seems to have been replaced by a fish.
Ha, I know, you're saying: There is a big difference between a "sad jerk" and a "fish".
Yes, there should be, but is there.
Only time will tell.
It'll all come out with the bathwater.
The conveyor belt only stops when the man at the end pulls the lever.
(I have no idea what I'm saying.)
I'm confused. I need more sleep. I need some sleep.

You want to visit Australia?

My partner received the following in an email from an aunty in the Netherlands.

As yet, don't know where it has come from. Hopefully it is safe for me to take and paste and I cannot be sued for breach of copyright. If I am sued, I will take you all with me.

It is claimed the material was posted on an official Australian Tourism website and, thus, the responses were written by officials, bureaucrats. I hope so. We know we have a sense of humour, sometimes those who represent us seem to have forgotten it.

For now, let's just read and relax.

__________________________________________________
Q: Does it ever get windy in Australia? I have never seen it rain on TV, how do the plants grow? (UK).
A: We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around watching them die.
__________________________________________________
Q: Will I be able to see kangaroos in the street? (USA)
A: Depends how much you've been drinking.
__________________________________________________
Q: I want to walk from Perth to Sydney - can I follow the railroad tracks Sweden)?
A: Sure, it's only three thousand miles, take lots of water.
__________________________________________________
Q: Are there any ATMs (cash machines) in Australia? Can you send me a list of them in Brisbane, Cairns, Townsville and Hervey Bay? (UK)
A: What did your last slave die of?
__________________________________________________
Q: Can you give me some information about hippo racing in
Australia? (USA)
A: A-fri-ca is the big triangle shaped continent south of Europe.
Aus-tra-lia is that big island in the middle of the Pacific which does not
... oh forget it. Sure, the hippo racing is every Tuesday night in Kings Cross. Come naked.
__________________________________________________
Q: Which direction is North in Australia? (USA)
A: Face south and then turn 180 degrees. Contact us when you get
here and we'll send the rest of the directions.
_________________________________________________
Q: Can I bring cutlery into Australia? (UK)
A: Why? Just use your fingers like we do.
__________________________________________________
Q: Can you send me the Vienna Boys' Choir schedule? (USA)
A: Aus-tri-a is that quaint little country bordering Ger-man-y, which is . oh forget it. Sure, the Vienna Boys Choir plays every Tuesday night in Kings Cross, straight after the hippo races. Come naked.
__________________________________________________
Q: Can I wear high heels in Australia? ( UK)
A: You are a British politician, right?
__________________________________________________
Q: Are there supermarkets in Sydney and is milk available all year round? (Germany)
A: No, we are a peaceful civilization of vegan hunter/gatherers.
Milk is illegal.
__________________________________________________
Q: Please send a list of all doctors in Australia who can
Dispense rattlesnake serum. (USA)
A: Rattlesnakes live in A-meri-ca which is where YOU come from.
All Australian snakes are perfectly harmless, can be safely handled and
make good pets.
__________________________________________________
Q: I have a question about a famous animal in Australia, but I forget its name. It's a kind of bear and lives in trees. (USA)
A: It's called a Drop Bear. They are so called because they drop out of Gum trees and eat the brains of anyone walking underneath them. You can scare them off by spraying yourself with human urine before you go out walking.
__________________________________________________
Q: I have developed a new product that is the fountain of youth.
Can you tell me where I can sell it in Australia? (USA)
A: Anywhere significant numbers of Americans gather.
__________________________________________________
Q: Can you tell me the regions in Tasmania where the female
population is smaller than the male population? (Italy)
A: Yes, gay night clubs.
__________________________________________________
Q: Do you celebrate Christmas in Australia? (France)
A: Only at Christmas.
__________________________________________________
Q: I was in Australia in 1969 on R+R, and I want to contact the
Girl I dated while I was staying in Kings Cross. Can you help?
(USA)
A: Yes, and you will still have to pay her by the hour.
__________________________________________________
Q: Will I be able to speak English most places I go? (USA)
A: Yes, but you'll have to learn it first.

Garlic is in!

Yes, that's me in garlic.
The crop is ready.
It looks good, it looks great, years will be added to people's lives.
This crop was planted after Easter this year and grew with enthusiasm.
All I did was water it and weed around it.
Amazing.
So simple, why don't more folk do it?

Here's a waitress I want when I go to a restaurant

The press in the US went crazy yesterday over a story that Hillary Clinton's team had eaten in a restaurant and failed to leave a tip.
The waitress, when questioned, said she did not understand all the commotion.

“You people are really nuts,” she told a reporter during a phone interview. “There’s kids dying in the war, the price of oil right now — there’s better things in this world to be thinking about than who served Hillary Clinton at Maid-Rite and who got a tip and who didn’t get a tip.”

Read the full tale here:

Biograpgy of Bill Clinton? Not!

My last entry, "Who the heck is Jon Doust" worked so well getting this blog back on Google's first page of Jon Dousts, I wondered if it would work for Bill Clintons.
Only one way to find out.
Here it is.
Which brings me to the US election.
It's none of my business and I do not wish to be accused of interfering in the internal politics of a foreign country.
And that what it is, a foreign country, the US.
Its democratic processes are foreign to me. I don't get them. The electoral process in deciding who the next President will be seems as democratic as that of mainland China.
Indeed, mainland China's processes are completely unknown to me and they may well be even more democratic.
What is clear is that in China it is not the richest bloke who wins, so he must engage in some kind of lobbying process that gets him there, which more than likely means making mates and gathering votes.
There.
Let's see if this works.
If you want to read a real biography of William J Clinton, go here: Bill.
Then there's Bill Clinton jokes: Joke.

Who the heck is Jon Doust?

While surfing the net, checking if this blog would still rate on Google, I happened on the above heading.
Guess what? There's another Jon Doust plying the vapour world.
And he reckons he's better looking than me.
Check him out:
Not bad.
He lives in France. Got a business there. Was there during the rugby world cup and wasn't sure who he should yell for.
I was yelling for the All Blacks, poor buggers play beautiful rugby every day except the one that matters.
Now check me out:

Sorry, that's another bloke.
Obviously a bloke who has played too much rugby and always lead with his face.
No idea who he is.
This is me:

Notice the fine cheek bones and the square jaw, all characteristics of the Southern Hemispheric Dousts.
(I think the other Jon has a similar jaw. Must be cousins.)
Ok, why am I searching Jon Dousts on Google?
Well, I'm not really, just been a while since I made an entry and I wondered what that meant.
It means, this blog has slipped down the first Google page.
What does that mean?
It means I either get back to it, or it slips further.

Here's some other news
My garlic is almost ready to harvest.
Pics coming.
I have very high levels of lead in my urine.
This house we live in is for sale.
We have another house in Albany, deep south of Western Australia, where we will live from December this year.
Why?
It's colder, wetter, greener, nicer, wilder.
Yes, all good reasons.
It is on the tip of this side of this continent and the only place to follow is Antarctica.
Humpback whales love it and regularly pass by.

Whales!
Let us hope that the insane decision of the Japanese government to kill 500 magnificent humpbacks fails in its implementation, because the humpback mob will remember and may not pass by again, or may even take their anger out on folk who love them.
While you're here, why not sign this:
www.whalesrevenge.com
Or even give money to these courageous people:
www.seashepherd.org/
Or take a look at the other Jon Doust's blog:
Jon Doust
Or go here for the latest news on a new book:
The Last Whale

Interesting
This blog shows up on Google's page 22 of Jons.
Have to work on that.

Travelling around NZ, The Weekender (Albany) Sept 20, 2007

Full text:

When I told a city friend I was moving to Albany and he asked why, I replied: “Because it’s too late to live in New Zealand.”

Last year when I got off the plane in Christchurch the sniffer dog almost bit my leg off to get at the WA grown garlic and ginger in my bag, but this year I was well prepared: I packed nothing edible.

On decent towards Wellington, the small jet looked like it was headed for a large hill, or wide stretch of water, but instead it settled on a thin stretch of land between Cook Straight and the inner harbour. And therein lay the answer for the small jet, the big fellas can’t land there, not enough room.

An old friend from Curtin University met me and drove up a hill for a view of greater Wellington. Three things were immediately obvious: the wind was cold as ice; flax grew wild; the broad view of water with single-hill islands reminded me of Albany.

We didn’t stay long in Wellington, too many old times to go over, newer times to discuss and mountains to climb, so we headed north towards Mt Taranaki, or Gliding Peak.

My friend assured me we were travelling a unique route: “No-one drives up this West coast,” he said. “It’s dismal.”

We bypassed Palmerston North, made famous by John Cleese, who once said “If you ever want to kill yourself but lack the courage, I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick”. We missed it not because my friend agreed with Cleese, because he didn’t, but because it wasn’t “anywhere near dismal enough, in fact, it’s quite a nice town”.

We spent our first sleepless night in New Plymouth, not because we sat up all night talking, but because at 1.30am five blokes on a building site next door decided to get out the jackhammer and give the town a damned good shake up.

Next day we drove into the Egmont National Park and this was my first good view of Aotearoa, the Maori name for New Zealand, in its natural state. On my 2006 trip along the South Island’s east coast I had seen a land taken over by European and Australian flora and fauna.

And when you learn that native vegetation once covered around 80percent of both the North and South Islands, you can imagine the original beauty of Aotearoa, which means, you probably guessed, The Land of the Long White Cloud.

At the base of Mt Taranaki tourists were decked out in essential gear, eager to climb a slope, fall down a slope and, eventually, conquer a slope, but being the proud owner of more broken bones than is advisable for an aging man, I had one major aim while in the middle of the north: a hot spring bath at Lake Taupo followed by a massage.

On our way we had to stop for the house with the bike fence. If there’s one thing you notice about New Zealanders outside the cities, they know how to liven up a long drive.

In Taupo my lack of bathers was no obstacle. The staff simply offered me a hot-spring room of my own, where I could bath with my privates in private.

Our drive around the North Island was over in quick-time because my friend had a business to run in Wellington, but on my own I caught the ferry across Cook Straight, where I hired a car for another whirlwind tour of the top-half of the South Island. I nearly didn’t make it back to the ferry.

South of Blenheim I spotted some fascinating rock formations on the beach, stopped the car and ran down a heavily pebbled bank, lost my footing and launched myself into the midst of 200 angry seals.

They barked and flopped in all directions, while I picked myself up, shook the fear out of my system and cursed the lack of camera, which sat useless in the car.

Of I went for another hot-spring bath at Hanmer Springs, a delightful drive through the heavily wooded Victoria Forest Park and down to Greymouth, which seemed aptly named.

Then it was a long drive up the west coast, a long stop at Punakaiki to marvel at the blow-holes and the pancake rocks and the beaches tormented by the Tasman Sea, rocks and great southern squalls.

Three days later, back in Wellington, or Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Great Harbour of Tara, I spent two days in Toi Te Papa, Art of the Nation, a museum that reveals the art of Aotearoa in its full extent, covering a wide range of cultures, but particularly that of the Tangata Maori and the early Pakeha, Europeans.

Then it was back on board the little jet and up up and away, eventually, to Albany, Wellington of the West, Noongar Boodja, Noongar Country and home to Sprung, the best little writing festival in Gondwanaland.

Garlic, as at 6th of August.
Isn't it beautiful?

Uncut: the last

28/7/2007

Right, this is it, the last. It didn’t last long, but I had fun. Some of you did too and at least one didn’t.

How do I know? Well, my email address was always at the bottom and a number of you made the best of it.

One bloke from Augusta took advantage of my good nature and asked me to send garlic. I did. He then googled me and later apologised: “Sorry, mate, I thought you were a landscape gardener.”

A number of old friends emailed to try and get back money they said they lent me in 1973, or 1987, or some other year I wasn’t in the country, the country next door, or one they had difficulty spelling.

And the one bad? Well, hard to tell, but certainly a bloke stuck in a literal world with no underlying meanings and no pleasure to be gained from running a brain over a crafted gathering of words seemingly chosen at random. Or he banged his head getting out of bed. Who knows.

Maybe you’ve heard already, but in case you haven’t, let me help. Next week this entire page is leaving this page and when you pick up the lump on Saturday morning, this will not be this, but something entirely different.

Same with me.

Instead of waking up in a blind panic, knowing the next column deadline will more than likely creep up and bite me on the back of the neck, I’ll just lie here while you run onto the front lawn desperate to read what wise crap I have imparted.

Don’t email me. Don’t call. I’m asleep.

Now, so you know what you will miss with me missing, here is a taste of what was coming up.

First and foremost was how the on-line, user-created, user-managed, user-used encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, changed my life. Seriously, until recently I always referred to tomes created by dead academics and living hacks riddled with personal agendas.

And, yes, there was another column on palms and I intended telling you about Cliff Reeve, Radio West legend, who told me about waking up inside his Bunbury house at 3am in a blind panic as the walls around him burnt to the ground. Well, not the walls but his beloved palm trees, which, fortuitously, he had planted outside and I said: “Who did it, Cliff? How can I find them? I need to know?”

“Are you a palm lover too, Jon?”

“No, Cliff, I want to fund their operation.”

And with all the tales in the papers about Mafia style behaviour and the Sopranos being my favourite TV show of all time, or just about, I fully intended running by you the tale of my brush with the Japanese Yakuza.

It happened in Osaka, comedy capital of Japan and where Morley Senior High School legend Chad Mullane learnt the comic art of manzai, the double act. But that’s another story. The one I’m sticking to is how a Yakuza boss walked into my coffee shop, the only one I could find after five hours of wandering the vast underground city that is Osaka.

As soon he walked in I knew I was in trouble and I could see even more brewing as his moll peeled off and sat down next to me.

“You very handsome man,” she said.

“You need glasses?” I replied.

“You very handsome man,” she said.

It didn’t end there, or even close, but I can’t get to it because of the other end that’s fast approaching.

If you want the rest, email me, but not today, I’m still in bed.

Ah, the future. This time next year Hildegard and I will be building a house in Albany, on the other side of the harbour, near Frenchman Bay.

It will be a house that embraces its setting, that respects the environment, that is solar active and wind resistant.

And, as I say goodbye, I issue a challenge to every one of you with lawn and palm to get right back out there, remove the blights and plant native vegetation and garlic.

If you can’t get locally grown garlic knobs, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with that bloke in Augusta, the one who got all my remaining stock.

Uncut: Manjimup

21/7/2007

It’s not cold enough. Nowhere near.

And when the temperature does drop it doesn’t stay low enough long enough.

All right, I should explain.

It’s all about cherries.

Thing is, every year, in December, there’s a festival in Manjimup, my other home town: The Manjimup Cherry Harmony Festival.

Yes, I know, I’m a Bridgetown boy, but I’m also from Manjimup, another town full of people named Doust, Giblett, Blechynden and Muir. All right, there are also some Fontaninis, Ipsens, Omodeis, Radomiljacs, Reeves and Easts and some of them even married some of us.

Manjimup is one of those towns that was blessed from the beginning. It had everything: magnificent timber, excellent rainfall, healthy rivers and rich soils.

Along the way, some folk arrived blind, or became blind, or looked the other way, got something stuck in their eyes, or couldn’t help but look back to where they came from.

In short, they couldn’t see the blessings.

Thankfully, things and people change.

When I arrived in 1969, battered and bruised from a twelve month stint as a bank-johnny in Papua and New Guinea, I was blind too.

Manjimup was cold, wet, full of cousins I didn’t know existed, big men with big hands, three football teams and my father wanted me to run the family’s supermarket.

I stayed four years, regained my sight, played football for the mighty Deanmill Hawkes, fell in love a couple of times, added retailing to the list of things I didn’t want to do and met the finest group of people it had been my luck to encounter in my entire 24 years.

Rick Sneeuwjagt, then a fiery young man with a trunk like a karri tree, befriended me and invited me out to Deanmill, a mill town and home to one of country football’s legendary teams.

The mill has taken a battering over the years but the club hasn’t missed a beat.

The great John Todd started out there as did legendary weatherman Gary Boterhoven, one of the finest exponents of the drop kick ever. During a game against Boyup Brook Gary kicked a ball out of the ground and they found it one week later in Donnybrook.

Then there were these blokes: Harvey Giblett, or Three-trunks as we called him; Arthur Reeves, a noisy, tough bugger who once broke 15 jaws in an opposing team, all before half time; Peter Fontanini, a man who was a legend even before he was a legend; and Juggy Rice, named, not because he could scull a jug of beer in record time, or because of the shape of his person, but rather because the top of his head only came up to the average jugular.

My supermarket days included exciting events like a truck load of produce, an occasional break-in and disputes with the landlords over ablution block cleanliness.

If that wasn’t enough, there was always the annual illegal potato buy-up. It was a cat, shop-owners, and mouse, Potato Board Inspectors, game.

It was scary, thrilling and just what a young shop manager needed to keep him on his toes. Once, while on the shop-floor dripping sweat and evil smells, the team and I were confronted by a local politician who ranted about the evils of the black-market spud, the spud bought from dirty unofficial spud sellers. Friends of ours. I always wondered if he knew that as he droned on and on his wife was busy buying 10kilos of the devil’s tasty tubers.

Those days are long gone, of course, the Dousts no longer run a supermarket and all potatoes currently sold in the Shire of Manjimup are true blue Western Potatoes.

Cherries, however, are not blue, or a tuber, they are a fruit, red and Manjimup cherries are the finest, juiciest and reddest.

The Cherry Harmony Festival was born on a cold day in September in 2002, when 300 people gathered to talk about the town, its past, future and beyond.

2002 was shaping up as an ugly one for the Manjimup community, but four handsome women stood out from the crowd after I yelled “What this town needs is a cherry festival” and screamed “Yes it does and we’re going to do it”.

It did, they did and they are still doing it.

And if the weather gods give us 300 hours under 7degrees Celsius between now and December, we might even get a crop.

Uncut: pyschological models

14/7/2007

It’s an inconvenient truth, but we’re all different.

When I’m not writing this column, I work with a number of psychological models, all of them based on the work of a Swiss bloke called Carl Gustav Jung.

Jung, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, was for many years a great mate of Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist and father of psychotherapy.

They had a helluva time in the beginning, lots of hi-teas and late night conversations, but then Jung went and wrote a couple of books Freud didn’t appreciate, or understand, or the pages were stuck together. I can’t remember.

Jung also made up his own mind about a couple of things Freud was very keen on and one day blurted out: “Oedipus, smedipus, give it a break, Siggy.”

Or something like that. Or nothing like that but whatever it was it was the end of their relationship.

All these models I work with are based on Jung’s book, Personality Types, first published in German in 1921.

When I’m not hard at it thumping words into keyboards, that’s what I do, not that I need to work, of course, because this column, as you can imagine, pays a lot of money, more than enough to pay the mortgage, the small loan on the other property, the big loan on the private jet, send all the kids to private schools and make sizeable contributions towards the International Monetary Fund debts of several South American nations.

One of the characteristics of a person with my particular profile is that we are easily distracted and tend to go on a bit in a way that seems to have very little to do with the point we are trying to make. Have you noticed?

Now, the beauty of a simple psychological mode is that it helps you come to grips with the fact that there is a kind of mind that will answer the simple question “How much are you paid to write that crap?” with a simple answer: “$50”.

What the model helps you realise is that most minds you interact with operate differently and people are not being the way they are in order to intimidate you, or incite you, it’s just the way they are.

Then again, some folk just can’t help being pricks, whatever their personality types.

Then there is another kind of mind, like the one I mentioned earlier, that will seem to disappear into a surreal world of crazy references, contradictions and weird juxtapositions, when all you wanted was a simple: “$50.”

You might have guessed by now, mine is a bit like that.

So is Terry Gilliam’s, the film director of Brazil, Baron Munchausen and the creator of the graphics for Monty Python. So was John Lennon’s. And Bill Cosby’s.

The strait forward mind, very much like the one my dad had, sees everything for what it is, nothing more, or less.

Hildegard has a mind like that too and often I would take a phone call from dad to be told: “Put your wife on will you. I need to talk some sense.”

The problem is, of course, those people with the seemingly crazy mind think the people with the strait-forward mind are boring and those with the strait-forward mind think those with the crazy mind have overdosed on some mind altering substance.

So, you can see why dad and I didn’t see mind to mind.

Mind you, he had a great sense of humour, and once said to a Manjimup Shire Officer who told him he couldn’t write on the pavement: “Didn’t I pay half the cost of this pavement? Right. Well the top half’s mine and the bottom half’s yours.”

Dad and Hildegard were pretty much aligned in most aspects of their personalities, but, at the same time, they were very different. Why? Good question.

Well, for a start, Hildy is a woman and dad was a man and dad was a born and raised Aussie, whereas Hildy was born and raised in Holland.

So, from time to time, if you have been reading this column and heard yourself saying “I wish he’d get to the bloody point”, it might be that you are not like me and need a point, while my point might be that I don’t.

Uncut: tennis

7/7/2007

1961 was a great year in Australian sport and great year for me too.

This was the year I stood up, I hit my straps, got on with it, made my mark, signed my name and started eating spinach.

It was the year of my first Wimbledon appearance and the 74^th time tennis legends from around the world gathered on hallowed lawn to do battle for King and country, but mainly themselves.

It was also a year that saw the arrival of one of the all time greats. No, I don’t mean me, my time was coming, or not coming, depending on how you looked at it.

All right, I can hear you plead, who were the winners that year, because time and bad eating habits have rendered you incapable of remembering, or you weren’t there, you’re not sure which.

Guess what, a British player, Angela Mortimer, won the women’s title beating another Brit, Christine Truman and Rod “The Rockhampton Rocket” won his first of four titles, beating Chuck “The Yank” McKinley.

It was Rod’s time. He had been runner up in the previous two years and it was cause for celebration that he beat an American rather than one of his own.

But the Rocket only got there because he thrashed me inside three sets. I played as hard as I could, wore my racquet down to a cat’s gut, gave it everything I had and finished up flatter than a snow pea.

In short, it was a bloodless massacre. Not surprising, given I was 12 at the time.

Oh, I knew all about Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall and Ashley Cooper, but I’d never played them. They were just stories passed on by dad and his dad, or seen at the local picture theatre during the Kookaburra News, sometimes a year or so after their wins.

Rod Laver had already beaten me earlier in the year in the Australian Championships on his way to defeat by Roy Emerson. Roy beat Rod again to win the US Championships.

No-one beat Rod the next year, 1962, he thrashed everyone and took out the Grand Slam.

Back then my attitude was fight hard, never give a champion an even break, chase everything, bang my head against a brick wall for a laugh, swim in a shark infested ocean, eat a barrel of rotten plums and take on anyone.

And don’t forget the cricket. What a year that was.

I had to face the great Fred Truman in the third test at Headingly when he tore us apart, taking 11 wickets and then I had to watch as Colin Cowdrey slapped my best balls as though they were peanuts.

We eventually won the series 2:1 and I will never forget Bill “It’s All Happening” Lawry’s 130 in the 2^nd Test.

By 1965 I was retired, finished, washed up on a sandy beach clutching an open 26oz bottle of Emu Bitter.

All right, fair enough, I’ll admit I didn’t really play all those games against all those legends, but I imagined I did, because in 1961 I had a transistor radio attached to my ear and my father often threatened to have it surgically removed.

I wasn’t alone. My grandfather had one on his auricle too and sports broadcasts took us both into venues and up against greats and it also led me, about ten years later, to my first ever media job, down in the bowels of ABC Sport alongside three other greats: Wally Foreman, Dennis Cometti and George Grljusich.

George frightened the hell out of me but Dennis and Wally took me under their collective wings and taught me how to collect stats and make coffee.

What really happened in 1961 when I was 12 was my parents packed me off to boarding school with a brand new transistor radio and it was through its tiny speaker that I listened eagerly to the dulcet tones of Alan McGilvray, the croaks of Vic Richardson, the poetic musings of John Arlott and the unbridled enthusiasm of Norman “Gold Gold Gold” May.

And why does all this come back to me now? Well, Wimbledon is on again with a plethora of new players I’ll never play and, of course, I have to fill this page every Saturday morning.

Uncut: laptops

30/6/2007

Simplicity has lost its edge. I know this because recently I bought a new laptop.

In fact, I am writing this offering on my brand new, super-fast, memory-laden, handsomely designed, sleek laptop.

Looks great. Made by one of the world’s foremost laptop manufacturers. Promised everything. Had all the right specs. It’s driving me mad.

Right now, I am fighting back an almost uncontrollable urge to fling it out the window and let it rest by the racing bike up against a tree.

Good question, why is a racing bike up against a tree?

About 18-months ago I found the bike up against a tree in the public open-space in front of our house. It sat there nice and neat for three weeks.

At the end of the three I realised I had grown fond of it, so I took it and set it up against a tree on my side of the open-space.

Hildegard questioned its appearance and I innocently replied: “No idea how it got there but I quite like it.”

Life went on until the next curb-side collection when I noticed a proliferation of bikes, as though the householders had grown tired of them, forgotten to water them, feed them or care for them and had decided to dump them.

Driven by an urge to ensure my lone racing bike had a family of its own, I collected five of the lost souls and placed them all against trees and would have collected more until Hildy put a stop to it: “Enough, Jon. This is not a junkyard. It’s a domestic dwelling.”

Maybe so, but a dwelling housing folk of compassion, understanding and a willingness to take in lost machinery of all species and care for them, whatever their state. Junk maybe, but not discarded as though never having made a contribution to the forward lurch of humanity.

Bikes when bought are generally bought to last the lifetime of a rider’s riding legs.

Which brings me back to this laptop.

When purchasing I assumed it would at least last the lifetimes of this writer’s writing hands and I imagined it would be faster than anything I had ever driven before, faster than a blink, easy to get around, all commands logical and easy to implement.

Nuh. No way.

Its time is almost up.

It’s painfully slow.

I can’t find programs I know are there but it won’t help me find them and programs I thought I had closed-down keep popping back up to haunt me as though operated by a family member I once insulted who is no longer of this earth but has found a way to crawl inside a laptop.

Then there is the intensely irritating habit this particular piece of software I’m using now has of suddenly leaving the bit of page I am currently working on and darting over to another section and inserting words that make no sense whatsoever having seen the blue pineapple when it blurts yes nearly won a bazooka, oh, no, there it goes again.

It’s junk and I paid a handsome sum of money, so much that Hildy will never allow me to lean it up against a tree alongside a bike, even if it is an artistic statement highlighting the absurd claims of laptop manufacturers.

It’s unbelievable, have you seen the variety of cheeses available in your local supermarket? There’s light cheese, extra-tasty cheese, mature cheese, semi-retired cheese, sliced cheese, diced cheese, cheese crumbs, cheese bombs, cheese warts and cheese knees.

Sorry about that, that last paragraph made its way in from next week’s column.

The first laptop I owned was a large machine made by a prominent car manufacturer. I needed a fork lift to get it out of the car and on my lap.

It was a simple machine and I had to learn MS Dos, the Microsoft Operating System, to get around it.

I bought it 20 years ago and it was slow, cumbersome, unwieldy and, now I think of it, a lot like this complex piece of junk that Hells Angels would you marry pineapple fritters over my dead Paraguay baked ricotta.

Which is why I, when I decided to get back on a bike, that I didn’t go out and buy a brand new racing bike, I simply waited for the right one to appear during a roadside collection. Oh, no, that’s not the one up against a tree, this handsome machine is firmly tethered to the house.