The Return of the Native

I'm back!

My wife says that because I'm an Aries, I start things but never get round to finishing them.  I think I'm a lazy bast. . . (I'm already feeling tired)

Anyway . . . I can't remember now why I was trawling in this part of the Inter (done that joke) net, but I happened upon my blog, which was still lying in wait there for me, not having been written since 2014.  Where has the time gone?

Well, I don't know.

But I'm still going round with the wrong crowd, I still have a camera, and I am getting more and more interested in what I call Art Photography.

Actually it's partly my age.  There was a time when I'd produce pin sharp landscapes, but these days, as I spill more and more of my beer, my creative juices more and more consist of taking photos from years ago and tremble away to try and make something new from dross of the past.

For example, here is a Flannel Flower which I've blurred slightly to hide the unintentional shake, and hopefully make an interesting picture.

As you can see, it is very similar to the Edelweiss from the Alps.  Edelweiss is German for "white star", so I experimented with the stars of the Southern Cross (Crux australis)

It's a crap experiment, but at least it's astronomically correct.

We had a guy come to our Camera Club last year who gave me some marvellous ideas for using up really awful record shots like this.  It was a daylight photo of some eucalypts growing by the side of the road.  I'm too ashamed to show you the "before".  I'm almost too embarrassed to show you the "after"

But by now I had the bit between my teeth, and I decided to imitate some of the great artists.  This one was quite difficult to do.  I call it "Salvador Dalia"

And then, this evening, I played around with a picture of an office block.  I call it "Working Late Again" and here it is, as Art Deco as you could wish for.

Well, that's it folks, for the first day back.  Hopefully there will be more similar stuff in this blog later on.  Let me know, either here or on FB what you think of them.

Cheers for now, John.

Christmas Day at the Sidebothams

I can't believe that it's been almost a month since I last wrote anything on my blog, but monthly changes may be in the offing, so I'll keep the surprises until next month.  

Today I felt that I just had to share our Aussie Christmas with you, especially if you live in the cold, cold, North.  North of anywhere really.  North of Watford seems to be the usual boundary, but North of the Hawkesbury is another.  If you don't recognise that town near London or that river near Sydney, then congratulations, you don't live north of anywhere, but you are an Eastie or a Westie.  Sydney Westies have an undeserved reputation - for anything dodgy really and so we'll say that they come from the flatlands close to the Blue Mountains.  Easties, who come from the seaside suburbs of Sydney, mostly ARE dodgy, but as they only deal in large sums in their dodginess, they can afford the sea views and they can afford successful lawyers.

In fact, most of them are successful lawyers!

But to get back to the Sidebothams, who live north of Sydney and are thus jolly nice bucolic folk.

The run up to Christmas has been more of a stagger this year, with Mrs S spending the last three days before Christmas in hospital.  Thanks must go to so many people who helped me out during her absence, Reinhard and Sylvia taking me visiting and feeding me, and Jenny taking and bringing home the patient.  This involved 5 am starts.

So, mea culpa, or maybe I should say nostrae culpae, we FORGOT to get each other a gift or a card.  Oh well, the sales start tomorrow!

For the last two nights M and I have averaged four hours sleep, whereas last night, we both averaged three hours sleep, so to say we are tired is something of an understatement.  We are VERY tired.

This year I baked a cake and used my grandmother's wooden spoon dating back to her marriage in 1913, for the final stir and wish.  I wished the marzipan had not been dried out quite so much (it was flaking off) and I wish that I thought of icing it before yesterday.  I didn't realise it was so complicated.  I used Delia Smith's recipe.  Her recipes are very reliable.  It called for four egg whites.

Unfortunately, Australian eggs are slightly larger than English eggs, and so my four Australian egg whites had slightly more volume than four anglowhites.  I beat the aussiewhites to within a centimetre of their albumen before adding the icing sugar slowly.  It peaked  (we are the country of the pavlova, after all) just as it should, and the first coat went on beautifully.  It was then that I noticed I was supposed to allow three days for it to dry before putting on a second coat, and then three days later a third coat.

So this morning, I iced the cake for the second time with the hope that it will dry out sufficiently to have a slice tonight.  But before I did that I had to go into the kitchen.

My bare feet started paddling across the floor through icy water.  It took ten minutes to mop it up and dry the floor with towels.  Words were said.  Fortunately there was no water underneath any of the kitchen appliances.  The source of the icy torrent was a five kilo glacier that we had bought from the servo/gas station/service station/garage and which we had just enough room for in our esky/insulated ice box (keep up!) because there wash't room in the freezer.  The ice was for medicinal purposes.  To reduce the swelling on Marg's neck, and to provide a couple of coldies before Christmas Dinner.

Unfortunately, guess who forgot to close the drainage tap on the esky.  Clue: it wasn't Marg. and 5 kg of ice forms quite a lot of water when it's spread over the floor.  Fortunately none went under the furniture either.

We have a lovely couple next door with four well behaved and bright children.  I do wish Father Christmas hadn't woken them up quite so early.  Just as I was about to go into the shower at 9.30 am, there was a knock on the door and two of them stood there with a present for us.  We were in our night clothes.

We still have our Christmas dinner to cook.  Duck with Morello Cherry Sauce.  We shall toast each other and make our Christmas wishes, which are always the same.  To spend Christmas next year somewhere where someone else does the catering!

The Government are trying to stop me from publishing this . . .

It must be a couple of years ago now easily, and a condition I have called peripheral neuropathy, where the nerves in my legs are dying back partly because of the medication for a complaint that I have, and partly because I made the complaint. "Oy! I've got this complaint!" which gave me medication . . .  (already made that sick joke ANYWAY. . .)

The upshot is that over a period of time I have reached the sunlit uplands of the high Sixties (69 in March), but medically I am a mess.  I am independent but cannot drive as I am a reasonably stable epileptic.  I have chronically restless legs, but I can still get around very independently on public transport.  My hobby is photography, mainly around large cities on public transport with 2 or 3 km walking.  I recently gave my Doctor a suggestion that I was not yet ready for a walking stick, but I feel that perhaps I have not been looking at this problem in the proper way.

Who's a Chartered Engineer?  Who's always looking for room for a bottle of water/ some food/ a camera bag/ wet weather clothes/ a built in tripod/ a seat?!!! /Documents    ?

Could this be worked up into a bag with wheels which could be taken onto a plane?  Which brings us to the legals?

Who can advise on the legals?

Are there legal maxima which apply only to Seniors?

If I started off with an old zimmer frame or similar, what could I attach to it?  What minefield of regulations and inspectors would I attract to it?  What plans would I need?

If anyone can comment please feel free to contact me on sidebothamjohn@gmail.com 

This could be thrillingly interesting but there aren't any pictures unfortunately, but please read it because it really really is!!!!

It must be a couple of years ago now easily, and a condition I have called peripheral neuropathy, where the nerves in my legs are dying back partly because of the medication for a complaint that I have, and partly because I made the complaint. "Oy! I've got this complaint!" which gave me medication . . .  (already made that sick joke ANYWAY. . .)

The upshot is that over a period of time I have reached the sunlit uplands of the high Sixties (69 in March), but medically I am a mess.  I am independent but cannot drive as I am a reasonably stable epileptic.  I have chronically restless legs, but I can still get around very independently on public transport.  My hobby is photography, mainly around large cities on public transport with 2 or 3 km walking.  I recently gave my Doctor a suggestion that I was not yet ready for a walking stick, but I feel that perhaps I have not been looking at this problem in the proper way.

Who's a Chartered Engineer?  Who's always looking for room for a bottle of water/ some food/ a camera bag/ wet weather clothes/ a built in tripod/ a seat?!!! /Documents    ?

Could this be worked up into a bag with wheels which could be taken onto a plane?  Which brings us to the legals?

Who can advise on the legals?

Are there legal maxima which apply only to Seniors?

If I started off with an old zimmer frame or similar, what could I attach to it?  What minefield of regulations and inspectors would I attract to it?  What plans would I need?

If anyone can comment please feel free to contact me on sidebothamjohn@gmail.com 

Some thoughts on Perception and other stuff

Never go to Sculpture by the Sea because if you go very early in the morning no-one will have arrived but none of the residents will have left for work.  In the evening it's the opposite way round.  During the day, the school parties arrive, regardless of the weather.  You can tell if it's raining because the teachers are scowling and it's wet underfoot.

But . . .

At 3 pm on the first Tuesday of November, the Melbourne Cup is held, the race which stops Australia, and to our shame it does.  So if you are not a fanatic of matters equine or a betting person, get your fresh air on the cliffs above the Tasman Sea between Bondi and Tamarama with just the gulls and whales for company.  The photo is a general shot looking towards Tamarama at 3.02 last Tuesday.  A perfect time to visit.

But first my perception that our housing officers are not as caring as they might be.  As you may know, I took a pair of A4 photos down to Millers Point to where Ben and Bridget had been evicted.  The Housing Manager offered to take the photographs into the office.  I did not expect to see or hear of those photos again.  So I was very pleasantly surprised to find the very next day that Bridget and Ben and another neighbour had been housed adjacently in Newtown (and not way out in the outer Western suburbs) and had received my photos.  Thank you very much Sydney Housing for your prompt attention in getting these photos to them.  Bridget phoned me up to thank me.  She felt that my photo had made her look old (she is over eighty)

And then it was time for Sculpture by the Sea.

I was lucky this year, in the 18th season.  I had a long chat with the Founder of SxS, and I had lunch on the same day with the sculptor of the winning humpback whale piece.  Which I did.  But it's all a matter of perception.

(I went to the information tent to buy a programme, and I was introduced to the Founding Director, who happened to be standing next to me, and we had a five minute chat consisting mainly of pleasantries;  next I went to get some lunch, there seemed to be a bit of space at one of the tables, and the guy who moved over just happened to have carved a breaching humpback whale out of a piece of red gum driftwood.  Driftwood>Swiss Army Knife; Swiss Army Knife>Driftwood;  Driftwood>>Humpback Whale)  It's just perception.

Tamarama Beach was strewn with objects including a giant frying pan.  I thought I'd got the shot end on from the handle, allowing the shadow to delineate the handle, but no, it doesn't quite work.  For the image to be successful, a little more handle is needed.  I heard one little girl say "Mummy, can I make sandcastles?"  "I wish you could make an omelette, darling" was the reply!

One of my friends who loved the peacock, hopefully will like this brace of photos for her new Bondi home

Then my favourite SxS shot taken early in the morning in Marks Park with a wonderful colour palate of blues, purples, greens mauves and pinks.  It was a general shot, but it so happens that it has captured everyone when they were looking in the same direction out to sea.  This explains the strange walk, the almost zombie-like inexorable move in one direction, and the "Wicker Man" in the centre of the exhibits.  

This is probably my favourite "S x S" shot for 2014  Very much what is seen is a false perception of what was in front of the camera that morning!

 You can, of course, get an incorrect perception of a scene like that below, so beloved of Frank Meadow Sutcliffe.  It is a photograph of Whitby from St Mary's Churchyard (the Parish Church), high up on the cliff top.  The colours are accurate.  That mauvey coloured sea fog rolls in on warm days, polluted by the chemical works of Hartlepool, and the temperature drops.  The headstones are covered by an earlier pollution - coal black.  The grass looks as though it would hurt if it ventured into spring green.  It hasn't been spring for grass in Whitby for decades.  The best it can manage is not being winter.  And yet within the photograph is the great gouge in the cliffs between the camera and the hotels opposite, where Captain Cook and the Endeavour; The Fishburn, the Friendship and the Scarborough and other members of the Australian First Fleet; numerous  Polar whaling fleets under the command of Captain Scoresby, all left or arrived at the busy little port of Whitby to and from the whole wide world.

The building on the cliff opposite is where the American novelist Bram Stoker conceived and wrote Dracula, and in the story, it was on the beach on the right where Dracula in the form of a large black dog, escaped onto British soil from the wrecked Russian sailing ship "Demeter"  A perception which is strongly held in these parts today.
Which brings us finally to yet another form of perception.  There actually is a point to all this.!

Over fifty years ago I had a very good art teacher  who one day asked what "St Paul's Cathedral, London", looked like, and proceeded to ask me to draw it on the blackboard.  What eventuated was something akin to a domed settlement in a desert oasis.  The fact is that our brain takes well known visual cues and tags them in short hand to a "norm".  This explains why it was several weeks before the Geography teacher at a school I taught at suddenly said, "You haven't got a beard!".  To be precise it had been something like six or seven weeks that I hadn't had one, but his brain knew what I looked like, and was more interested in  the messages being sent from my face.  A sound survival strategy against year eights!

I was reminded of this in reverse this week, because I have to take consciousness-amending substances, for want of some better words, and the transition to the new drugs has been far from smooth.  I was having a cup of tea with an old friend from down the road, when I realised that with the evening light behind her, she looked slightly different.  It was Jenny . . . and yet it wasn't quite Jenny.  The drug was forcing me to look at the real Jenny at that moment and not just the built up picture over time, the "avatar" if you like that was in my head.  I'm afraid I did peer rather a lot, but it was rather fascinating.  Shapes were not entirely what they seemed.  Her eyes were wider, her brow broader; her hair was reddish.  So this was certainly a new perception, but whether the new perception was more or less true was impossible to say.

A Sad Post Script

On August 16th I posted a piece about the State Government decision to sell off  the dock workers cottages which, as public housing, have been lived in for over a hundred years by rent paying tenants.  The Government takes the view that now is the time to sell off these heritage listed cottages which have considerable harbourside views.  That there is a huge thirty-odd storey casino under construction a few hundred metres down the road is, no doubt, completely coincidental.  The argument, which is a cogent one, is that the price the Government would get for these flats would be sufficient to build five public houses in Western Sydney.

You will recall this photo that I took.

The young man was going to email me with his address, but he never did.  I was going to attend the street picnic, but I never did.  Eventually, today I took two A4 prints for them down to their street and went into their corner cafe. The owner said that if I couldn't find them, he would keep the photos and give them to them later.  The street was quiet, and they weren't there, but there was a removals van.  One of the movers said that the old lady was Bridget, and that he had known her for years.  She had moved out last week, but he said that he could give the photos to her.

At that moment a well-ish dressed lady from the Housing Department asked if everything was OK, and she also offered to get the photos to them both.  She said that she had managed to house three of the neighbours near to each other, though of course, NOT in Millers Point.

She further said that some of them wanted to go, but I couldn't help thinking that those who wanted to go, could go anyway.  That's called free will.  The sadness, the crime, is the forced eviction of people who want to stay in the houses where in a few cases they were born.

I could quite see the logic of the Housing Manager who would be getting five new units of housing stock for every old unit of housing stock sold, thus increasing rental income considerably, and I thought of a member of his staff sending out carefully drafted letters to all the tenants.  It would probably be less than a day's work.

I, thankfully, live in a house owned by Marg and I, so I can't imagine what it must be like, when out of the blue you receive a letter which says,  "Sorry, but we don't want to let out our house to you or to anyone, when your agreement expires in six months."  

Your shops, your schools, your ways to work, perhaps even your jobs, will change; so will your dentists and hospitals; your GPs and pubs; your trains, your buses; everything in your life will, for better (hopefully), or worse, change completely.  Just one letter, yet it will change your life.

So goodbye, young man; good luck, Bridget.  Take care.  Have a good life.  Wherever they've put you.