Friday was a dogs' day for us!

This blog is an off-spring of www.parkeriters.com

Julia here!   Hi gang!   Yesterday (Friday) was a full on dogs day.   This happens about once in two months when we take Fille and Crim our fox-terrier man and wife couple,  up to a place called Luddenham in the Blue Mountains for their terrific beauty make-over.   Our friend Wendy Wouters is a breeder of this type of terrier and is an international groomer who wins stunning prizes all over the world for her work.   (If you're interested look her up on Facebook.)    Fille has her name because she is the daughter of our Fox terrier, Toorak, we brought out from the UK.   He was 14 years old and a virgin.   We had to find someone to make him look as he should - which was not as easy as it seemed  when we first came to Sydney.   Then, when Wendy saw him she noticed he was 'intact' and asked if he'd like to meet one of her bitches.   We knew he would, but quite a few folk said that while he'd perform there would be no sperm because of his age.   Well, the bitch produced four beautiful puppies and hence we have Fille.   Then she was mated with Crim, a show dog who, in his 'modelling' days won first in show over 1,500 dogs, but now they are about eight and extremely youthful and great fun, while Toorak lived until he was pretty much seventeen.     Yes they are really lively, and boy does she put him in his place!   But today, after all the goings on yesterday, they are still very sleepy.   This pair are really good dancers - you should see their pirouettes, but nothing comes up to the late Toorak who played the piano divinely!   Bye for now cheers from Julia!

Down with the Norman invaders!

A couple of days before Australia Day miles of graffiti have been scrawled over walls and buildings in and around Botany Bay and elsewhere against the whole idea of the celebration – as if the British went around scrawling messages condemning the Normans for invading and sealing their land and reviling their gods, and arguing that the Last Night of the Proms should be cancelled. The problem is, of course - or part of it – that insufficient time has passed for things to settle down, as they inevitably will (to nobody’s satisfaction, I fear, but just because in the end everyone will get bored with the argument). As for this year’s protests, I don’t think much good has been done by painting graffiti all over Captain Cook’s parents’ Cottage, brought to Australia and re-erected in Melbourne in 1934 – as though Cook, by stumbling over the continent, was personally responsible for the deaths of the aborigines killed by European diseases, and for their land being stolen by the First Fleeters and subsequent invaders. Once protesters get going there is no end to their imbecility and their capacity for harming their own cause. As for the whole problem of Australian Aborigines – I’m not getting started on that, except to say that the attitude of present-day ‘white’ or in-coming Australians is inevitably for the most part just to ignore it; while the Aborigines themselves mostly just want everyone to go away and leave them alone. Talk about an insoluble problem . . .

Boring man speaks out.

I suppose many Australians are gearing up for two fulls days of solid drinking, over the weekend; doubtless more violence in and around the Cross. Personally, I;ve never seen the pleasure of drinking simply to get drunk, which seems to be a habit with a lot of young people . . . as usual, Shakespeare has a word for it: 'I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking: I could well wish courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment.' (Othello, II/3 since you ask). I've only been drunk about twice in my life - the last time certainly fifty years ago - and didn't care for it at all (remember W. C. Fields, suffering from his daily hangover and asked if he would like a Bromo-Selzer: 'God, no!' he said, 'I couldn't stand the noise.') One drink a day, round about six, is the thing in our house, and we'd certainly be sorry to be deprived of it; but more for the signal that work is over than anything else. Not even very keen on wine, or at least not the kind of wine I can afford. I'm just very boring indeed.

Julia is observant - as usual!

this blog is an off-spring of www.parkeriters.com
 Hi guys, Julia here!  And special hellos to you in the dear old UK and the splendid USof A - especially if you're way up in Alaska!    Well yes here's the result of one of my recent observations!   It concerns that really brilliant and remarkable laundry product Vanish NapiSan, Oxi Action.   If you use it BEWARE the next time you buy a container!   You see it's that neat little lid which serves also as a cover and a container for the powder.   The underneath side of the lid has a rim which holds the powder ready for pouring into our machines, which says add a lid to every wash - yes a why not?   but compare it to the to the pot of powder  you've just finished.   The depth of the rim of my previous one is a neat two and a half centimeters deep.   On the new one I thought  it looked different.   Yes I was right! that rim  has been increased to three and a half centimeters.   (In inches:  almost an inch to almost one and a half inches!!! )  I consider this a sneaky way to make us all use more of the product,  and consequently make us buy our next supply sooner.  So it's a decided covered up price rise.   Hold on to your old lid!      The company would come up with some silly excuse like  'we find the new ones far easier for you to use - you'll spill less! Rubbish!!!!  However, I'm just thinking that maybe you're getting the impression that I'm, nothing but a grumbler - no way  - but things like this do make me cross, and in most cases emails, or even real snail mail letters to companies,  all get binned,   Pity.   Yes we all get too may emails ... but....   See you again soon!

Christmas with Rosemary Clooney

The modern world has always had it in for me. Ever since they started printing news on the front page of The Times life has gone irretrievably down-hill. Now newspapers don’t look like newspapers any more (or indeed read like them); the electric typewriter took all the fun out of typing – let alone these modern contraptions connected to some kind of small cinema screen, with a keyboard unattached to it so that it can be swept by mistake into the wastepaper basket when clearing one's desk. The telephone is no longer attached to the wall, but goes off in my pocket and squeaks and gibbers inaudibly. And now a complete radio studio has turned against me. I never enter a particular studio at Fine Music (listen now: finemusicfm.com) without it conspiring to ruin whatever I’m doing, usually by making a whole programme vanish just as I’m halfway through recording it; the seat of the chair provided is at an angle which deposits me on the floor just as I am reaching the high point of commenting on the folly of recording Bach’s partitas on the harpsichord when a perfectly good piano is available; frequently by recording my voice at a level too low to be heard or so high traffic is brought to a standstill  on the harbour bridge. Yesterday the computer swallowed a CD and declined to give it back until someone with advanced electronic techniques and a paperclip operated on it; it then regurgitated the CD but  went into a sulk and declined to operate at all. I imagine it is as we speak quietly exchanging a perfectly good programme of music from Franz Lehar’s operettas for one entitled Singalong at Christmas with Rosemary Clooney.

A slight headache at the North Pole

What a fuss those of us fortunate enough to be in good health make when anything goes wrong with us. I woke with a very slight headache today, and have been wingeing all morning about it: how dare the cosmos give me a slight headache? What have I done to deserve a slight headache? What a bore it is to have a slight headache. Meanwhile of course resisting the perfectly simple remedy of taking an aspirin. How stupid can humans get? All the same, Bernard Shaw was right: when he met Nansen, the famous explorer, he asked him whether he knew of a cure for a headache. 'No,' said Nansen. Had he ever tried to find a cure for a headache? 'No.' 'Well that is a very astonishing thing,' said G.B.S. 'You have spent your life trying to discover the North Pole, which nobody on earth cares twopence about, and you have never attempted to discover a cure for a headache, which everyone is crying out for.'

The Year Ahead for CAPRICORN

For, as they say, 'reasons beyond our control', the year ahead for Capricorn was missed out of our forecasts in January on parkeriters.com.  Here it is! - with apologies.

CAPRICORN

(December 22 –January19)

The Year ahead.     Until the end of July an influence from Jupiter is focusing on Capricorns who are into a well-established relationship.   Make the most of this period to further your ties of love and affection and joint interests.    Your ruling planet Saturn is in constructive mood and adding to your practical and common sense attributes.  Uranus will bring interesting new opportunities for all, but in addition, unattached December Capricorns must be aware that due to Neptune’s influence you are likely to become carried away by romance.  Many of you have experienced meaningful changes in recent years, and because of a strong influence from Pluto travelling through your sign, a great deal has happened.   Expect to embrace new developments, situations and opportunities if your birthday falls during the first five days of the New Year.****