Teaching arithmatic

Having managed a generation of wet behind the ears graduates with ham-fisted handwriting, a tenuous grasp of the elements of english as a tool for communication - spelling, grammar, syntax tying together a rich and varied vocabulary, I was reasonably well prepared for the manifold inadequacies of the English education system to which I was exposed from the moment my now eight year old daughter entered it.

Our children are being introduced to computers and encouraged to use a keyboard from their first days in the classroom and will never develop handwriting skills. Our children are being taught 'how to think' without being provided with facts with which to grapple. History is taught in random isolated chunks - ancient Egypt is followed by pre-Norman anglo-saxon England which is followed by classical Rome.

One year the children do weekly spelling tests, the next year spelling doesn't matter.

No one can or will tell me how they're teaching arithmatic or provide me with material with which to support what is being done in the classroom so I am left to do my own thing. (I aced matric Pure and Applied and did a heavy component of econometrics and related mathemetics in my BSc - so I'd like to think that my credentials in the matter of primary school arithmetic could go unquestioned).

I inevitably fall back on what I know. I teach her addition by stacking the numbers to be added one under the other. I take the same approach to subtraction, multiplication and division. Initially I meet resistance from B who complains that this isn't how it is being done at school. Then the penny drops; adding units, creating tens, carrying forward, adding tens, creating hundreds, carrying forward and so on and so on. Adding long numbers together is no longer a challenge. We make progress.

Buried at the bottom of page 5 is news of a review of the way arithmetic (known these days as numeracy) is taught. The headline, which really says it all, is "Maths teaching to go back to old methods".

Primary schools are to abandon modern methods of teaching maths in favour of a return to more old-fashioned approaches. The decision comes only six years after the new methods were imposed on schools by the Government. Critics say that it signals a return to the "dark ages" of children performing calculations in neat vertical rows without understanding what they are doing.

...

Consultation on the proposed update of the framework ends on June 2.

Am I cheered by this news? No. I'm fucking furious! I was a victim during my first year and a half of school of the Cuisenaire initiative, but then we went to Queensland where belatedly I was introduced to arithmatic. By the time we returned to Victoria Cuisenaire had been discredited and abandoned.

My daughter's entire school career has been under the shadow of this now-discredited and shortly to be abandoned method, so as I said I'm fucking furious. But I'm looking forward to the next parent-teacher night.

Peerages for Pounds

A Peerage ought to be a curious anachronism in the twentieth (ed: someone pass her a cup of black coffee, now!) twenty-first century; but sadly for as long as the 'upper' chamber of the British parliament continues to be an non-elected body with responsibility for legislative oversight and the power to amend and obstruct what happens to and within it continues to be important.

Earlier this year, before the trouser antics of the Deputy Prime Minister and the implosion of the Home Office combined to drive the story from any sort of prominence in mainstream and mass-circulation media, the chattering classes were exhibiting mild symptoms of anxiety at news that the Labour administration has been in the habit of exchanging peerages for party funding. Hmm.

As a result of the kerfuffle kicked up some of these 'donors' took their money and retreated to the safety of Monte Carlo and certain nominations for peerages were quietly withdrawn.

Today, as we're drowning in coverage of the love in between George Bush and Tony Blair, and as we're told yet again how high the regard for Blair is in Washington and how charismatic Americans find him (!) this has slipped into the public domain:

Millionaire donors whose peerages have been blocked have been told by Labour party chiefs that they are still in line for honours.

The Times has learnt that Tony Blair may put the nominees on his resignation honours list, which would by pass the vetting that prevented them from getting honours in the first place.

Properly developed this story should ensure that TB's resignation honours list is submitted to the House of Lords Appointments Commission - established by TB in 2000 to bring some semblance of the appearance of probity to the process of House of Lords appointments.

On the other hand, should TB stand firm on his prerogative as retiring PM and submit his list un-vetted this behaviour should have little impact on his chances of securing the job of Secretary-General of the UN for which he's so obviously angling; which is excellent given what a poisoned chalice that should prove to be.

Monty update

You may have seen a recent post on the subject of Monty the Mouth (or read here) ... he's a two to three year old semi-feral feline who patrols the neighbourhood, permanently on the look out for a free feed and a warm bed.

This spring has turned into a feathered nightmare. Since the birdies started hatching he's brought a succession of playmates home.

Last night for reasons I'm in no state to go into the Fat Bastard and I had a very brief and terse conversation when he got home late and drunk from the pub. A couple of moments after he'd headed up the stairs and to his room Monty fell through the cat flap with a bird clamped between his jaws.

I shrieked (yes, I admit it) and he spat the thing out onto the carpet just the other side of the doorway into the living room.

As mentioned in my previous post the 'friends' I've found and cleaned up have previously been dead, but last night's was all to obviously breathing and twitching. So I wrapped some paper towel around it, cradled it between my hands and gave it a bit of a look over. Clearly young, barely breathing, eyes clamped shut, minimal tail feathers, wings at odd angles. Gently I set the wings in a 'normal' position and waited for stress to take its toll ... and waited and waited and waited.

The poor thing wouldn't turn up its claws. If anything it seemed to be gaining some strength. (All the while Monty's sitting a few feet away wonder what the fuck the mad woman is doing with his toy). After a while I begin to get cramp in my legs from kneeling, cradling this feathered scrap so I start wondering where I can safely put it until morning. I settle on the box room which has a small radiator that stays on all the time. I put the bird, still wrapped in kitchen towel in a wicker basket by the radiator, close the door and cross my fingers before going to bed.

This morning after Fat Bastard went to work I went into the box room expecting to have to gather up and dispose of a corpse. But no, there the fledgling was, perched on the edge of the wicker basket, alert, dry and nervous. Of course me blundering in sent it scuttling for a dark corner so I had to spend ten minutes or so cornering the poor thing and trapping it with a shoe box. By this time it is clear that it is older than I'd first thought but younger than it needs to be to survive on its own.

So I box it up in the shoe box, perch that above the radiator (to be sure that it doesn't die of cold) and go off to work at the charity shop.

Tonight when we all got home the first thing I did was go up to check on the fledgling. I brought the box downstairs so that the rest of the family could see it and the damn thing wasn't in the box although the tissue paper I'd enclosed it with had seemed to be intact. I went back up to check that it hadn't fallen out and hidden itself in a dark corner but it wasn't there.

I have had to conclude that it managed to clamber out onto the window sill and launch itself outdoors. I have had to conclude that its might well be the corpse the Fat Bastard had to clean up this afternoon before coming down to the shop to meet me.

Yes Monty today brought another friend home to play and its remains very much fit the description of last night's refugee. If only the ungrateful little bastard had stayed put. Some birds just don't know when they're well off.

I like my spell checker

I'm still catching up with all my typos. I need to get better acquainted with my spell-checker and not only for the obvious reason: I've just discovered it objects to Queensland. How fabulous is that? Wot a cleva spelll-chekka!

I've been PC'd

I've done 'Disability Basics'. I've completed the 'Master Answer Sheets' booklet and now I'm going to poke fun at an earnest and well intentioned program to eradicate from the able bodied/minded (?) every last discriminatory thought/feeling and possibility of utterance.

The tutorial book tells me that there are (an estimated) 10.8 million disabled people in the UK so when I am asked at Question 3 "How many disabled people do you think there are in the UK"I tick the box for 10.8 million. Never mind what I actually think (the emphasis is mine), I want to put this wretched business behind me - if I get less than 70% I have to do a resit immediately, if I get less than 80% I have to retrain and do a resit in 6 months.

In fact the preceding question [Which part of the Act do you think this extract is describing...] is even worse since the Act exists, it has a clearly defined structure, only one part of the Act is described in the extract. There's only one possible correct answer so the question should be: Which part of the Act does this extract describe?

At the bottom of the first page of the answer booklet I found the following question:

Do you think a person who may have difficulty trying to hold a pen to write with would affect their ability to carry out a normal day-to-day activity?

That is verbatim the question. I promise. Blimey!

Do you think ... I'm being asked a question or am I being asked my opinion?

a person who may have difficulty trying to hold a pen ... about a person who may (or then again may not) have difficulty trying to hold a pen. Problem 1 - does or does not this person have difficulty? Problem 2: is the problem with the trying or the problem with the holding?

to write with ... huh?

would affect their ability to carry out a normal day-to-day activity? ... such as walking the dog?

After some deliberating I'm still not sure what this question is driving at. The question might be "Do you recognise that difficulty writing using a normal pen affects an individual's ability to carry out at least some ordinary day-to-day activities?" or it might be "Is a person who has difficulty writing using a normal pen such that performing at least some ordinary day-to-day activities disabled as defined under the Act?" or even "Does difficulty holding and writing with a normal pen constitute a disability as defined under the Act?"

Given the required pass mark I'm truly worried that I was supposed to mark Not Sure as my answer.

The problem I had with a lot of what followed was that I can't fix in my own mind where the line between plain and simple old-fashioned rudeness and discrimination lies or even if there is supposed to be one any more. For example an early question asked which of the following four scenarios illustrates 'discrimination':

An elderly person being rushed if he or she is too slow
A mum with small children and a buggy in a shop struggling and not being offered assistance
A blind person being refused entry into a building because they have a guide dog
A disabled person being told that they cannot shop because there are no facilities for them

To me three and four are obvious examples of discrimination while one and two are equally clearly examples of bad manners. In the first example someone is being rushed because they are too slow but there's no indication that this is directly to do with the person's age and a young dawdler might receive precisely the same treatment. Never mind disability discrimination, it isn't even obviously an example of 'age discrimination'. Similarly we've got someone not being offered assistance. Sorry, that happens all the time to anyone who needs help. The rude are a pretty undiscriminating bunch.

Later the test examines the candidate's ability to use 'appropriate' language. This is all about testing how well the candidate has taken on board the insights with which he or she has been provided into which words are now acceptable and which words are not.

Invalid is out the window. Only horses may be Handicapped; which is a mercy or the Melbourne Cup might become the world's richest race for Horses with Disability. Yes, you are supposed to deduce from the sarky tone that this was the point at which I really lost patience with the exercise. I have a handicap; I'd tell you his name but that might lead to 'issues' with kitchen knives and holes in the back garden being dug in the middle of the night.

The phrase dual sensory impairment is fine but the person is still blind and deaf. Under this regime 'dumb' and 'mute' are to become archaic and historical curiosities familiar only to those perusing the medical and census records of 19th century forebears. Someone who helps and assists a disabled person may not be described as a carer or a helper or, for that matter, a 'nice person'.

This is absurd. It might, just might, be right to consign words that have acquired such negative connotations as 'dumb' and 'mute' to the dustbin of lexicographic history - though an argument can be made for their reclamation from the clutches of misuse on the grounds than one word is to be preferred over 6 or 7 (the number of words in the alternative phrases we're to use). On the other hand are we seriously to stigmatise now the words helper and carer and eschew the phrase 'nice person'.

Thankfully and after ticking the correct box (the one next to Personal Assistant) in response to the question "how would you describe a person who helped and assisted a disabled person?" I was able to close the answer booklet and submit it for marking.

Can we do a swap, please

There is a curious symmetry in the current cabinets of the UK and Australia which sees the post of UK Secretary of State for Health occupied by the rather tedious, excessively earnest and possibly inept Patricia Hewitt (born Canberra, Australia) while the equivalent cabinet brief in the Australian government is held by Tony Abbott (born London, UK) who is, of course a complete fruit loop.

Strategies for health care funding, structural reform in the sector, training and development of practitioners, infrastructure and research are just some of the higher level preoccupations of Health Ministers all over the world. Its a big job and when it's done badly the consequences are painful. Literally.

So what's our Tony on about today:

The banning of bibles in Queensland and Victorian hospitals was political correctness gone crazy, Health Minister Tony Abbott says.

Almost all of Melbourne's main hospitals have withdrawn bibles because of the risk of them spreading germs.

and

Mr Abbott told parliament there were enough problems with state hospital administration without adding concern over bibles.

"I can inform the House that administrators in Victoria and in Queensland have just discovered a new priority - it's banning bibles," Mr Abbott said.

and

"This is not an infection control measure - it is a thought control measure."

and

"I say to public hospital administrations in these states 'Stop worrying about offending people. Start running public hospitals properly ..."

With all due respect Mr Abbott I suggest that you stop worrying yourself about the micromanagement of individual hospitals and go back to your day job of finding a way to provide safe, effective and affordable health care for all Australians.

Or give up your day job if it interferes with your self-appointment as the nation's Bible-Basher-in-Chief and take up a full time residency in a pulpit.

A bit of fun

I came across this quiz at Retarded Rugrat's blog; its nothing more or less than a bit of fun ... really.

These are my results:

1. Mahayana Buddhism (100%)
2. Liberal Quakers (96%)
3. Neo-Pagan (92%)
4. Theravada Buddhism (92%)
5. Unitarian Universalism (90%)
6. New Age (83%)
7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (82%)
8. Reform Judaism (81%)
9. Bahá'í Faith (79%)
10. Taoism (77%)
11. Secular Humanism (73%)
12. New Thought (71%)
13. Jainism (71%)
14. Scientology (69%)
15. Sikhism (69%)
16. Hinduism (62%)
17. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (60%)
18. Orthodox Quaker (56%)
19. Orthodox Judaism (46%)
20. Nontheist (44%)
21. Islam (40%)
22. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (31%)
23. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (26%)
24. Seventh Day Adventist (21%)
25. Jehovah's Witness (17%)
26. Eastern Orthodox (11%)
27. Roman Catholic (11%)

I might go back and have another crack at it, if only because I'm mystified by how high Neo-paganism came in the list.

You can have a go here.

Monty Rides Again

Sparky (alias Monty the Mouth), the local semi-feral cat who occasionally visits our house for a feed or a warm bed has been at it again.

As previously reported on two occasions this spring Monty has brought a feathered friend home to play, with predicable results.

On Friday while I was working at the local charity shop he did it again. Previous 'friends' have been fledgling sparrows, but Friday's unwilling Playmate of the Day was a Blue Tit. Feathers from one end of the living room to the other and in the middle of it one sad scrap of a corpse.

Asking for trouble

I just knew that writing a piece late at night on how the Fathers 4 Justice campaign scares me was asking for trouble.

Predictably and notwithstanding the early caveat I included to the effect that I know, I fully accept, that there are good men out there who are on the receiving end of awful behaviour from vindictive former spouses seemingly aided and abetted by the very institutions that notionally exist to provide justice (rather than just the law) in the area of family law I've been told I don't understand.

Well I understand alright. For eight years I've worked frantically to build a future for me and my daughter, I've done so while my access to my family and my friends has been increasingly restricted; I've compromised and sacrificed to fend off the ruthless, feckless and amoral individual who has plundered my bank accounts and generally contributed as little as possible to life in general while thinking nothing of making another woman's life miserable too for the sake of an occasional pulse rate-raising intercontinental illicit leg-over; driven by fear that being alone and impoverished by his depredations I'd lose her completely. I haven't lost her but I've paid an almighty high price in terms of career, self-respect and dignity.

My life can never be what it might have been but for meeting him. This is something I accept. I'll almost certainly now be alone for the rest of my life, I'll never be financially secure. My accomplishments will be fewer than they might have been. But perhaps in some ways I am also stronger, for I know now that I have great resilience, patience, forbearance and endurance. I am a survivor so I don't totally begrudge the things he's robbed me of. Not totally.

Oh and by the way, yesterday's piece should not have been interpreted as an attack on Fathers 4 Justice. It was just one lonely individual's expression of vulnerability and disappointment that a seemingly well intentioned group should lend itself to ridicule with so stupid a stunt as that perpetrated on Saturday night.

Fathers For Justice

Hmmn

I have certain amount of sympathy for decent fathers who through the bias of courts and the vindictive behaviour of ex-spouses find themselves deprived of contact with children....

In an ideal world families would never break up ... but in an ideal world there'd be no grounds for believing that every party to a marriage would be better off in one way or another for a going of separate ways.

The fact is that we don't live in an ideal world. For one thing every day countless children die through war or drought or famine or some untreatable illness.

Sometimes moving on is for the best.

And no one enters a marriage expecting that marriage to wind up in the family court. I'd expected us to live happily ever after, travelling before settling back in Australia [as we discussed when we were planning to marry]. I didn't think happily as in soppily, but rather happily as in bringing the best out in each other, working things out, accomplishing more together than the sum of our individual potentials. Actually quite idealistic I suppose, but not soppy.

So what happens to our daughter when we divorce? Where will she grow up? On this side of the globe or the other? The hard truth is someone has to lose in this, and it really, really shouldn't be her. Should I be made to stay here and close to him so that he (and his mother) can have 'access' to her or should I be able to go home, to the part of the world I belong in; where I have support?

Both our fathers have died. My mother is on one side of the world, his mother is in the UK. One of them will always miss out; she'll always be missing one grandmother or other. The fact is that for the past 8 years and seven month that's been my mother who has never seen her grand daughter. Never. Yet I'm made to feel guilty about wanting more, about being unsatisfied, restless and insecure.

I have dreams of the places I could show her, share with her back home. Yes. I want, I want, I want. For eight years we've lived here and she's had nothing. Nothing at all. He's shared nothing with her. What's wrong with wanting to show the world to your child. I'd do it if only I could.

So why can't I.

It (the fat bastard) was home today. This is the third day in a row he's planned to be away and ended up being here. As I write this I do wonder if he doesn't suspect me of conducting an affair. No there's a great big bloody joke. Previously I'd thought perhaps the Fool from Philadelphia had been forced to cancel a trip to the UK and so he'd cancelled his plans to be in London.

B and I were in the middle of a big clean out, swapping over winter clothes for summer ones; packing stuff away and bringing other stuff out. In the middle of all this intensive vacuuming and dusting, scrubbing and so forth it came home from work. And it wanted the TV guide from the paper so it could plan its week's viewing.

I'm sure there are miscarriages of justice in the Family Court, as in other UK courts. On the other hand a father's desire for contact with a child or children surely cannot be allowed to outweigh the best interests of the children.

This isn't well thought out and no doubt could be cut to shreds in an instant. I only wrote it because some nitwits from the organisation calling itself Fathers for Justice tonight invaded the studio where the national lottery was being drawn. I've pondered a custodial battle before, and every time these people stage one of their idiots stunts I'f forced again to consider what how that battle might pan out.

Confession time

You've got to love the Eurovision Song Contest!

No, really...

The crap songs, the bombastic performances, the cheesy presenters, the tactical voting and an increasingly sozzled Terry Wogan.

Congratulations Finland.

Guess

how much fresh caught fish went into the fridge/freezer last night.

He was only an hour late for work this morning, and his bathroom habits are as execrable as ever.

The answer is, of course, none.

Where do I buy tickets?

I'm not going to be drowned, at least not today.

His fishing expedition is happening but it will be a boys-only event. Which is fine by me. The spot they'll be heading for is so remote the Land Rover won't be able to take them there: they're going by bicycle. That's two fat men and their tackle and their fishing tackle on bicycles at dusk on a narrow rutted river bank track.

I don't care what kind of seat I get, where do I buy a ticket?

Mother nature is a complete tart

(Actually I was tempted to use an even cruder phrase, one that was recently used publicly by critics of Jeff Kennett who was once more floating a return to the front line of Victorian politics...)

Yesterday, clear blue sky, a very light breeze and temperature in mid-twenties. It was as if we'd been transported to Camelot (as brought to us by the geniuses behind Yes Prime Minister).

Today, clear blue sky, a very light breeze and temperature now working its way towards the mid-twenties.

You could bet your house on us retrieving woollies from the loft by mid-June, just when this thing called summer is supposed to be hitting its stride.

Monty the Mouth

A little while ago I reconstructed parts of a post I'd composed while soaping myself down and fantasising about ....

I only crammed in some parts of what was an epic that roamed fluently over the wide terrain of my sub-conscious. I don't often think about Weipa and the kookaburras that would come in to land on the hills hoist at sundown and make raucus demands for food.

Actually I got to thinking about Weipa recently because of bananas. I don't like bananas at all. I never have. My mother tried to force feed them to me, but I believe she was genuinely bewildered. I am still the only person I know of who harbours such an intense loathing of the smell, taste and texture of the things.

We had a couple of banana plants in the back garden just beyond the kitchen door (and a paw paw). The second year we were there both the plants produced a hand of bananas. My sister and I watched those damned things grow and grow (some things never change) and waited for them to start to change colour. On someone's recommendation we put bags over the hands when they got pretty big (like I said, some things never change). And we waited for those bananas to change colour. The paw paw turned orange and dropped - they were delicious, but the bananas remained deep green.

And then the cyclone came through and dumped our garden about a mile the other side of town.
We never did produce a crop of ripe bananas. I can't say I'm that sorry. I might have had to eat one.


What really got me started on this was my 'other' list. My first list is the list of things I have to do to get home. My 'other' list is the list of things I have to 'do' when I get home. It starts with mundane stuff like finding a place to live, a job and so forth, but pretty quickly it veers off to stuff that doesn't send me straight to sleep.

The list includes visits to a number of places I want to breathe the air of as well as sounds I need to hear once more.

Periodically I turn the list over in my mind; add, subtract as appropriate taking account of the fact that I have a daughter who requires a crash course in being Australian. That got me thinking about Phillip Island which is another place I associate with the time before Dad died (at 36, way way too young - for the sake of your kids put that sun block on!)

We had access to a holiday flat owned by the company dad worked for, near Cowes. One of the things we had to do every time we went down to the island was take a trip out just before dusk to watch the penguin parade. There are 17 species of penguin in the world . The largest are the Emperors, the smallest (at about 1/4 the size of Emperors) are the Fairy Penguins - they fall out of the surf at dusk onto the beach of Phillip Island and make their way up to their nests.

Back then, and I'm talking about no later than the mid-1970s 'it' was a bit of a free-for-all. Some sign posts directed visitors down an unsealed road to a carpark from which one picked ones way towards the end of the scrub where the dunes began. There were signs about the place warning spectators to 'keep quiet' and 'not disturb the penguins' but there were no barriers or barricades.

Sadly, these days, the place has been boarded over so that visitors are herded into a narrow spectator gallery. It's good for the birds though. Mind you we're not supposed to call them Fairy Penguins anymore - though not, apparently for reasons of political correctness, as explained at the Phillip Island Nature Park web site.

Anyway, there is a theme to all of this and it's birds.

About a week ago I had a bath before going to work, a long luxurious soak. I got dressed and came down stairs and I discovered that Monty the Mouth had brought a friend home to play with.

Monty is the stray cat I don't like but can't get rid of. He's a waif/stray. After our cats died I sealed the cat flap. I put up with the little rat faced bastard hurling himself at the door handle for a week before I relented and undid the lock. Because he's not got an owner, having been abandoned, I feel obliged to provide him with some sustenance. I buy tins and biscuits and make sure he always has something to eat.

Mostly he turns his nose up at the stuff I buy. He's also prone to turning his nose up at the off-cuts I reserve for him, until they've been put in the bin. Monty prefers to slum it and eat his food from the rubbish bin (and drink from stagnant pools rather than the water bowl provided).

He'll get up on the kitchen benches in the night and make sure he's not missed out on something; I'm sick and tired of cleaning the little fleabag's paw prints off my white surfaces. He'll drag left overs from the rubbish bin for me to stand in when I come down for a coffee first thing in the morning.

In general Monty the Mouth is a regular feature on my shit list.

As I said I came down from the bath to find that Monty had brought a friend home to play with. The evidence was all over the place: blood, feathers and corpse. Thankfully the corpse was very, very dead. Dead I can deal with no problem. Twitching makes me very angry at being left to deal with it.

Notwithstanding the jug of cold water that sent the little bastard flying through the cat flap he's been back again in the past couple of days with a newly dead fledgling sparrow. By the time I caught up with the little bastard he'd got to almost precisely the same place he'd dumped the previous corpse. Again, thankfully, this one was dead - and right now Monty's the Fairy on the top of the Christmas Tree that is My Shit List.

Now if he'd only focus on mice ...

Fishing

By 'eck, pet as they say oop north (on this side of the equator).

His latest wheeze is to go down the river on Friday and fish. Fish!

Not just fish, fish for Sea Bream. So that's the evening meal sorted then. Somehow I think not.

This is quite a turn up for the books, as it happens. I'm pretty certain that this is the first time he's evinced even the faintest interest in angling. And we've been married since October 1994 which is technically quite a long time and feels like eternity.

I haven't been fishing since perhaps 1982 or '83. About then I went fishing on Port Philip Bay with a friend on one of commercial 'angling for dummies boats' that run out each weekend. That 'fishing' involved dropping a well weighted line off the side of the boat, lowering it to the mud, waiting for the tug and hauling it in. So long as the fish was above the legal minimum length/weight you could keep it, or you could throw it back. Anyone with any sense would through the things back since Flathead don't in my opinion make great eating. Come to think of it they don't make great sport either.

Anyway from this you are meant to deduce that neither of us is an angling enthusiast, or even a rank amateur.

I just thought I'd mention that he's suggesting an expedition next Friday evening to the river mouth, where it empties into the North Sea. Just in case I should abruptly stop blogging and you get to wondering where I might have gone.

Survival

Brant Webb and Todd Russell have clocked off from what must surely be one of the longest mining shifts on record. The two men walked to the ambulances that took them to a nearby hospital for a check up.

Wonderful news.

Phil Williams is nattering away about it in the background. Phil Mercer is still reporting from the relatively safe distance of Sydney - 914km from Launceston (Great Circle distance equivalent) according to Geoscience Australia which is a fab. site for natural science data related to Australia.

Congratulations to everyone involved in the rescue of the two miners. Let's not forget either Larry Knight who will be buried today having died in the original rock fall and Larry's family and friends who are burying him against the backdrop of this euphoria.

Don't compose a post in the shower

Earlier today, while I showered and generally prepared to ogle very young men (and quite incidentally get some work done) I did some composing (but sadly only in my head) ...

This elegant if lengthy post began with The Interloper, travelled via drinking Victoria Bitter at the MCG, Philip Island and Fairy Penguins, our Kelpie Border Collie, the intrinsic stupidity of sheep, how I nearly got myself expelled (but not for walking out on the Visiting Canon when he was halfway through a Sermon), Weipa (cyclones, crocs, kookaburras and dead snakes) and ended up with our two pet Magpies.

All day long I've been planning to get home, hunt down a sound file of the extraordinarily beautiful (ok maybe its just evocative) sound that is the call of the adult Australian Magpie (which incidentally is absolutely no relative whatsoever of its European namesake).

I've finally succeeded! Click here to visit Birds in Backyards which has the Top 40 Australian bird calls. Just don't ask me what the difference is between a Laughing Kookaburra and a Common and Garden Kookaburra.

The scientific name for the Australian Magpie is Gymnorhina tibicen.

The Australian Magpie is much bigger than its European non-relative and the differences only begin there.

After the Kelpie Border Collie had passed on to The Great Sheep Field and Cattle Paddock in The Sky and the last of the cats had tiptoed along the same path to meet (and in the case of the Cats probably sneer at) the Maker the bird (and other) life in our backyard simply exploded.

Most bizarre was probably the blue-tongued lizard that took up residence. He (she?) was a stocky thing that never did anyone any harm (or much else either as far as any of us could tell) but in summer it liked to park itself under the tap in the back yard that leaked. That tap leaked because although I'd mastered fuses, and painting the house (inside and out) and adding another layer of that thick reflective stuff mum insisted I slather on the corrugated iron roofing of the rear (added on section) every spring, and carpet laying, I hadn't acquired the muscles or know how to change a washer. So that tap leaked and the lizard liked to stay close by. Presumably the water attracted the sort of thing it liked to eat.

By the way (and I never told mum this) I loved doing the roof each spring. I'd get up there, strip off - giving the old bloke next door quite a show, and give my tan a kick start. The reflection off this reflective gunk meant that it was all over (but for the bits covered by my itsy bitsy teeny weeny (not polka dot) bikini.

I digress.

Before I return to the subject at hand let me add that a little later in life I ended up working for the Board of Works; it might have been someone's idea of a joke but I ended up doing a basic plumbing course in the 'sandpit' at Swinburne (Tech) and got myself a basic plumbing course qualification. Bizarre little factoid about me, that. Or is it a factlette?

Anyway, back to Magpies, but not The Magpies (because I'm a self-respecting third generation Melbourne Football Club supporter).

A breeding pair of these magnificent birds took up residence not long after the last of the cats made the trek (which is odd really since a magpie is at least the size of a domestic cat and several times better armed in a fight).

Our house was a weatherboard with an extension (complete with corrugated iron roof - see above) slung across the back. My father, the engineer, demolished all the dividing walls in the back section (which we'd inherited from previous owner/occupiers) and put glass sliding doors in two places across the back. Two thirds of this back section was a casual 'family' room, the other third was a kitchen/informal dining area with a dividing low kitchen bench. The family room had sliding doors we never used. Main access was via the sliding doors leading to the 'informal' (ie, the kids were fed there) dining area.

In summer these doors were left open, with a separate fly-wire screen covering the gaping hole to keep the worst of the insect life at bay (or at least give them something to think about). But one summer's evening the dog (see above) driven either by fireworks - in those days they were legal, or a thunder storm, went straight through the fly wire screen leaving a flapping corner that was no use to man or beast but was a god-send to insect life.

So after a while we stopped bothering with the fly wire screen. Then the magpies took up residence.

Mister Magpie (my English 'friends' tell me I should have addressed him so) would bounce over the garden and across the red brick paving to the open door. Magpies are described by ornotholgists as 'medium-sized' birds but in your typical Melbourne back yard they're about twice the size of the next largest feathered presence. Magpies, and this boy specifically, nevertheless have a rather peculiar way of bouncing along, tilting their heads at neck-achingly awkward angles; constantly on the look out for a territorial threat.

He never quite managed to convince himself that he was entirely safe. His other half was another matter entirely. My mother was rather entranced by these big elegant birds and she would throw to them any available cast off bits of meat. After a while, and a rather short while at that, the bolder half of the partnership took to sauntering through the doors, past the dining table and right into the kitchen. She would stand about while mum 'cooked' looking expectant each time mum opened the fridge.

I can hear still the faint tack tack of her talons (?) on the lino.

I've wandered a long way from my bath. I have photos to post but need permission of the photographers before I put them here (and since I've never attempted that ie, posting photos, before We - that's the Royal We, could be in for an interesting time; I'm not working tomorrow so I've got plenty of time).

An ode to very young men

I'm off to ogle very young men (and incidentally get some work done).

I've spent the morning trying to work out how to tart up my template
and give my blog some of the features I'd like it to have.

I have invested hours in this and concluded that I am an irredeemable techno-moron.

That comes on top of being chatted up yesterday by a septuagenarian!

So I'm off to ogle very young men!

Trivia

I've just learned that the first episode of Dr Who was broadcast the day after the assassination of President Kennedy.

Thanks!. I'm doomed to remember forevermore the date of the first broadcast of the first episode of Dr Who.

And yes I can tell you where I was when the first episode of Dr Who was first broadcast - the same place I was the day before.

I still think Christopher Eccleston made a far better Doctor than David Tennant does. I think DT is wonderful, but mis-cast. And I've always got Elizabeth to curl up with.

Launceston

Many thanks to Bryan for expanding my knowledge (see Moppet Update and Bryan's helpful info on how the locals pronounce Launceston (Tasmania).

I think this comment actually serves to underline the serious point such as it ever was within what really was just a whinge (how very, very English I have become). The English just make it up as they go along when it comes to the pronunciation of random letter combinations, then get quite precious about others' creative endeavours with same combinations.

What other derivation of Beaconsfield could there be but Beacon's Field (whether a field with a Beacon set in it or a field owned by a family of name Beacon - and where do you think they got their name)? And the 'received' pronunciation of Launceston wherein all the vowels are swallowed is simply centuries of laziness cast in concrete.

One of the traps for unwary colonials washing up on these shores is the lugabaruga test - I have no other idea how I might spell it, or what else I might call it. The English might be not nearly as good as they like to think they are at most things but at sniggering they are world champions. How they enjoy baiting new arrivals! No bloody wonder we cluster in the rat and flea infested tenement buildings along and off Earls Court Road.

I had two distinct advantages arriving here so many years ago. One of them was the school I attended; no physics or chemistry lab, but fabulous kitchens, a craft block and a top drawer line in speech and deportment classes. Yes, speech and deportment. I spent what were supposed to be the best years of my life walking in a tight circle with a book on my head while reciting suitable poetry with well rounded vowels.

The other advantage was C. I haven't thought of C for years now. I wonder where she is. Last I knew she was off to Perth with her hubby to work for a West Australia based business man of immense success who may or may not still be alive. I met C in September 1987. She sounded frightfully English but she didn't look it. C was the product of a brief marriage between russian mother and indian father; after the marriage ended C and her sister were adopted and raised on the Isle of Wight.

A couple of years down the line C introduced me to the woman she'd first 'roomed' with after arriving in Australia - this woman confided that back in those days C------- was plain C---- and had a distinctly pedestrian accent. Seems the more time she spent in proximity the harder she strove to distance herself from us.

C regarded me with suspicion and decided to put my rounded vowels to the test by asking me if I could pronounce: Loughborough. I'd never seen the word before but my educated guess, though not spot on did impress. You see most Australians (ill-educated, convict bred oiks that we are) confronted by the above place name come out with something that sounds to C's tender ears like loo-gah-bah-roo-gah. Properly one should say luff-brah.

Lazy bloody Brits. Notice how much of the place name they don't actually bother to pronounce?

Gloucester, Leicester; they held no perils for me. And I kept my trap shut while my english colleagues regaled one another with tales of the latest ignorant yank to ask the way to gl-ow-cess-ter road or lie-cess-ter square [that should be gloss-ter and less-ter].

Pronunciation of english is a source of endless amusement but one in which the 'ignorant' american could have the last laugh more often than is commonly recognised. The american english often retains the grammatical rules, spelling and pronunciation exported from England while at home the language has distorted through the centuries. Who is wrong in this? No one. But in a game where the English insist on setting the rules, and those rules are based on age and precedent the Americans have considerable advantages in terms of ammunition. Nevertheless languages are living things and the changes ought to be embraced. So the English can go on being lazy, the Tasmanians can have their way and we'll have ours.

Incidentally the rigidity sought by the Academy in Paris masks a reality - that French has undergone precisely the same process, whereby the French of Canada reveals the language as it was when it was exported there from France while the language in France has mutated. The same, for all I know, is true of every language we've ever devised, and I'd be willing to wager on that.

This isn't entirely random and tangential.

Next time we're speaking I must ask my sister where she was born. I'd like to know whether she says 'lawn-cess-ton' [like me she grew up in Melbourne] or 'lon-cess-ton' [because she's a smart arse] or 'l'n's't'n [to humour me].

Mind you I self consciously say T'ronto rather than Toronto when asked the same question because someone once told me I should.

Pots and kettles, pots and kettles.

Brant Webb and Todd Russell are still locked beneath the earth as I write this. This is the most recent news via The Age

Moppet Update

Went to bed, woke up. The guys are still underground, still alive. The last metre is proving difficult...

But I woke up to the story getting substantial air time, and it has been returned to (though with complete with explanation from apologetic journo - in Sydney, so close to events - that Launceston is pronounced, well Launceston [lawn-cess-ton and not properly as in l-ow'n'ston] and that Beaconsfield is pronounced, well, Beaconsfield [bee-cons-field, rather than properly as in beck-ons-field].

I now have to go and get dressed for work; hopefully for the sake of the two men the story will come to a happy ending while I'm out. Perhaps when I get home I'll have the time to figure out why someone would visit this blog and leave the random comment "Losers...pathetic locers (sic).", unless its his girlfriend and she actually thinks we're as stupid as each other.

Now there's a thought to annoy me all day.

Blond haired moppets only need apply

If they were blond haired and blued eyed and cute (no offence guys) Todd Russell and Brant Webb would have the entire (western) world obsessing over their fate and following progress by the minute. If they were Americans we would have news of the progress of their rescue fed to us at the top of every news bulletin with major developments interrupting normal scheduling. As it is they get tacked onto the fag end of news bulletins and make a few column inches buried deep within the pages of the paper.

But then stock images of Todd Russell and Brant Webb show two big hairy thirty-something year old Tasmanian miners.

They might have been blond haired moppets once upon a time but now even their kids appear largely to have outgrown that phase. Todd Russell and Brant Webb are prime Aussie Beef, or they were when the photos were taken.

As I write Todd and Brant are in their thirteenth day in a three metre long cage that isn’t tall enough for them to stand in, a kilometre below ground.

Todd and Brant aren’t emulating that drip David Blaine. They’re gold miners who’ve been trapped below a rock fall since a small earth tremor on April 25 that killed a third member of their team.

By the time the body of their colleague Larry Knight was retrieved I was assuming the worst but these guys survived on a snack bar and seepage for days until a microphone detected their voices. Since then a painstakingly slow rescue mission has been underway and by all accounts the spirits and condition of the two survivors are remarkably good.

A utility pipe has reached them and the guys have been receiving rations, clothing, bedding and material to break the monotony, though sadly for the two men this last has been described by the company as ‘suitable’ (so that’s not Penthouse or Pot Holer’s Monthly at a guess). Both are insisting that they be allowed to walk to ‘freedom’ while one has reportedly demanded the job classifieds; in retaliation for which his boss has threatened to sack him for ‘lying down on the job’. Notwithstanding the new IR climate a largish claim for overtime is in the offing. I guess you have to be Australian.

At 9:23 on Friday Saturday night (6 May) the two men had been trapped for 264 hours. I’m lousy with time differences but I reckon now that’s 272 hours and counting. I’m off to bed soon and overnight the rescue will move into its most critical phase as the bored tunnel is completed by hand.

Preparations for an honour guard to salute the two men as they’re taken from the mine to a hospital for a check up (accompanied by the wives and children with whom they’ve been reunited) are in place.

If I have posted this and you read this before the outcome is known cross your fingers or say a prayer or do both or do what ever it is you do in these situations, because while they may not be blond haired moppets they're still worth it -IMHO.

If you feel inclined or simply intrigued you can get more information on this story via The Age a link for which is provided, or any other Australian media outlet as the story dominates domestic media.

The Matthew Parris Take

That John Prescott, after appearing in newspaper photographs with a lady’s (sic) legs wrapped around this massive neck should be rewarded with confiscation of everything but the dignified part of his office is a joy. That Margaret Beckett after failing comprehensively as an agriculture minister to deliver EU payments to farmers should be put in charge of the whole of British foreign policy is divine. That Jack Straw, one of the diminishing band of senior ministers who doesn’t seem to have done anything wrong recently should be the biggest loser is
priceless.

That the Secretary of State for Defence should become the Home Secretary because the former Foreign Secretary has been Home Secretary already and can’t really be Home Secretary again, while he (the Defence Secretary) has already been Health Secretary and can’t be Health Secretary again, and the Leader of the House (who can’t be Defence Secretary because he already has been, but needs to vacate his post so the former Foreign Secretary can have it) has a new “European” portfolio invented for him – and everyone immediately begins arguing about whether he is a Secretary of State for Europe or not – suggests a Cabinet maker running out of timber.

This is an extract from a longer Comment Page piece by former Conservative MP Matthew Parris which you can read in full here.

The Peril that is Sir Bufton Tufton

“You couldn’t make it up” is a stock phrase at least if not a cliché, and besides it hardly fits the bill. Never mind ‘you’, the combined genius responsible for Python and for Yes (Prime) Minister could not have got anywhere near what we’ve seen in recent weeks.

22 July 2005. Looking back I think things really went pear-shaped the day the Old Bill slaughtered Jean Charles de Menezes on a tube train in south London. J-C (for short) was a 27 year old Brazilian living an essentially blameless existence, albeit with ‘irregular’ immigration status, who one morning Plod mistook for a mad Muslim bomber. At the time London was on a heightened state of alert following the bombings at the beginning of the month and a half-arsed copy-cat expedition that took place the on 21 July.

Inevitably and quite properly a massive intelligence operation was underway in London, and more widely, to identify and control those who’d been involved in the earlier mass bombing and find those who’d engaged in the botched copy-cat. Intelligence provided a link to the residential block in which de Menezes was sharing a flat with a couple of cousins.

De Menezes ended up on the floor of a tube train having had seven rounds pumped into his head. I don’t normally endorse wikipedia but it has a moderate account of the day’s events and the subsequent investigation.

I suppose everyone’s allowed a bad day at the office once in a while, but as a general rule when things go this severely tits up the best thing to do is at least admit to yourself that you’ve made a monumental cock-up and begin the fix up.

And it is in the nature of such events that they spawn a thousand conspiracy theories so it’s best to be honest with everyone else too, and if your story has to change over time its best have a bloody good explanation both for the new version and the earlier version.

And don’t for God’s Sake think that just because your victim’s parents are farming people from rural Brazil you can palm them off with a pocket full of notes.

And when you’re flailing around looking for the most suitable person to cut from the pack and string up as the ritual sacrifice look past Brian Paddick because he is definitely not your man.

Ian Blair remains in his post as the UK’s most senior flat foot. Brian Paddick continues to be the most senior (openly) gay Police Officer, though presumably he’s given up not indulging in the occasional spliff since extracting an apology from the Daily Mail for its bogus story about his drug taking. Besides, if rumours are accurate he’s too busy casting around for suitable parliamentary seat.

What goes around comes around. The apology only came after Paddick was shunted into a police intelligence role and away from community facing, front line police work where he’d been so spectacularly successful. But if he hadn’t been shunted into the intelligence role he’d not have been involved in the investigation into the bombings and in a position to successfully sue Blair Scotland Yard for promulgating the falsehood that Paddick had provided false testimony to the IPPC investigation into the shooting of J-C de Menezes.

The investigation into what happened on the day and why, as well as what happened afterwards, continues. In the longer term the response to the July 7 bombings has exposed all the weakness in this administration and the mistakes it has been shown to have made have undermined its confidence. With each false step its ability to walk the line has faded that little bit more.


A brief hiatus ensued. It was the calm before the storm


This Year we’ve had:

The saga of Tessa Jowell’s curious mortgage roundabout and her husband’s even more peculiar relationship with the now ex-Prime Minister of Italy along whomside he may or may not be required to stand in a fraud trial at some indeterminate time in the future, the Italian ‘system’ of justice being what it is. Tessa and Hubby have since parted ways. She remains close to the (UK) Prime Minister who is now bereft because his good mate Silvio is out of a job and no longer an ally within the club of EC nations’ leaders.

We’ve had the Flog It® approach to minor peerages. (This is the market economy at work and I for one don’t give a stuff.)

Anonymous funding of political parties via loans that may or may not ever be called in. Some of these loans have since been called in by donors with political convictions that don’t extend so far as to allowing open association with the left leaning Party of Government For The Time Being.


The rate of decent has accelerated rapidly in recent weeks and it has given us:


The long slow political death of Charles Clarke (who’s retired to the back benches shaking his preposterously large head in disbelief at actually being sacked for presiding over the debacle at the Home Office)

The Cheshire Cat-type extinction of John Prescott, Deputy PM who, for the crime of bonking his rather cheap and nasty secretary, has been stripped of everything except the decorative gold braid. Personally I think Blair should have left him with the uniform as well, for our sakes.

Pat Hewitt has survived at Health, possibly because she serves so excellently well as a lightening rod for a variety of tensions within the civil and public service ranks.

Ruth Kelly has been given more free time to spend with her Opus Dei chums and freed from responsibility for tampering with the minds and futures of the young of this country.

Poor old Jack Straw (the only card in this pack of Jokers I’ve actually met and had a lengthy conversation with) has been shuffled into a non-Job, for the crime of not making a big enough blunder for all anyone could possibly tell.

The fun and games aren’t over. Blair’s essentially promoted loyalists in so far as that was possible to the evident exasperation of his next door neighbour. Blair’s also done his level best to advance the interests of those who might at least give Gordon Brown a run for his money when the time comes for a leadership election to decide who replaces Blair.

In quiet moments pundits will return to what for them is the Great Vexed Question arising from this reshuffle which is How The Hell Did Margaret Becket End Up As Foreign Secretary?

One might as well ask How The Hell Did John Howard End Up As Prime Minister Of Australia?

I suspect the answers to these two questions might be similar.

PS the above is all very well but Sir Bufton Tufton’s just been on the radio spluttering that the very idea of Margaret Beckett as Foreign Secretary is “preposterous” and perversely I see merit in her appointment. Lock me up!

Episcopalians make controversial appointment

West Coast Episcopalians have made the controversial appointment of a married man (to a woman, with children) to a vacant bishopric in San Francisco.

Why can't these people park their prejudices and simply promote the best person for the job?

NOW we are feeling better (subtitle The Bush, Part III)

Spring is definitely in the air. Two of my favourite blogs have dealt this week with the vexed subject of The Bush (and they know who they are, or they will do if they make even the slightest effort).

Of course The Bush one was dealing with was not The Bush the other was dealing with. One was the opening stanza of what threatens to be a dissertation, nae a paean to a way of life (The Romance of the Bush, Part I), while the other dealt with Topiary: the delicate issue of keeping things under control, as it were; methods, extent and perils thereof.

While the former made me slightly cross for a nanosecond by making me feel old (and I'm not) I was very, very briefly aggravated by the latter, on the grounds that, um, at the end of the day surely there's something frankly idiotic in this pursuit of hairlessness in the female. Not by the post itself, which was done with the usual brio, but with where my mind ended up. What is the problem? Whyfor the obsession? I've met grown women who believe, with a deep conviction only matched inside the upper echelons of the church on the question of the virgin birth, that underarm hair is unhygienic. Unsightly possibly yes. Unhygienic? Explain, please! I mean, God doesn't often make mistakes, so is underarm hair one of them?

Okay I've wandered slightly from the point (as it were, possibly a couple of feet); we're talking about not ending up with stray short 'n' curlies between the second and third molars or worse still (?) caught at the back of the throat.

The only time and place before today I saw the question of male 'topiary' discussed was on a gay web site debating the merits (or otherwise) of Brokeback Mountain where it cropped up (as it were) in connection with (again, as it were) pointed criticisms of Heath Ledger's equipment as evidenced in the 'river, jumping into' scene. Poor Heath is up in Canada, freezing his whatsits off (or nearly, as captured on celluloid) and all the thanks he gets is a load of champagne queens in the luxury (and warmth) of LA giving him grief for his hair-do, or lack of it.

I thought I'd put this up because I think it proves I'm really getting over the lousy fortnight I've had.

So stupid of me

No sooner have I posted the previous piece than I've come over all bolshie and got very cross with myself. Why, I ask myself, don't I just go right ahead and post his name and the name of our town and go right on humiliating him, the way he apparently has been humiliating me. All that time I wondered if I would be the last person in town to find out who he was shagging, and I probably was.

What progress have we, women, made in the past forty years. I go out to work, put the roof over his head, the clothes on his back and the food on his table, but I'm the one pitied and laughed at because he's doing this behind my back. I'm the one who is in the wrong because I'm not enough to stop him from straying and he's the one who's only doing what comes naturally.

I'll tell you else something that's wound me right up today. After school we had to go down into town to see if we could pick up a suitable gift for a birthday party B is going to on Saturday. On the way back we happened to meet someone. He's about 75 (he and his wife had their 50th wedding anniversary in December) and for reasons I can't go into here (I have another blog dedicated to this couple and their doings) I've known them far better than I'd prefer for perhaps 12 months.

So we meet up in the street and we're having a chat about the single thing we have in common - I work in a charity (opportunity/thrift) shop on Fridays when someone else who knows this guy, another bloke not much younger, comes up and barges right into the conversation and this Old Fart actually turns his back on me - conversation over right there and then. This guy is the killer argument in any debate about the merits or otherwise of the entire Womens Lib movement. It was people precisely like him (think of the judge who demanded of the jury, in respect of Lady Chatterley's Lover, whether it was the sort of book they, the members wanted their wives and servants reading) who justified not only the aims but also the means. Actually, now I think about it, my mother's generation were way to subtle. Some of them should just have been taken out and stone.

Ok I try very hard not to hate me, but sometimes....

Now I'm feeling better ...

PS the answer to the question posed in the first para is, of course, my daughter who is only 8 and attends a local school. For her sake prevarication and obfuscation are not only worth it but essential.

Stuck

The worse I'm feeling the more difficult it is for me to post.

I write stuff, read it back, realise it is drivel and either delete it or leave it in draft.Sometimes this is stuff that's dated before I'm ready to post it, sometimes it it stuff that makes me feel worse rather than better. Other times I write stuff that even I find nauseatingly self-pitying; or I've written it in such a state that when I read it back it actually makes no sense (or would make sense only to the sort of person who makes a living out of people who see angels or horned devils in splodges of ink).

This has been a bad week so far, coming off a bad week last week; and after all the fuss that is something that has really very little to do with a minor computer failure.I have felt incredibly weighed down by the burden of what I still have to do, I have felt frightened, tired, broke, alone, angry, hurt, sickened...

The worst of it is that I had been feeling so good for so long, since the beginning of the New Year really, that this shift has caught me off balance. I must have ditched too much of the ballast I'd been carting around with me, the defences against what he's capable of doing to me. Perhaps I've been wrong in writing so much of the 'what he's capable' in the past tense.

So now this week I've been suffering flashbacks to moments of humiliation. These moments were like bolts of lightening, in that they would pierce the shroud of darkness within which I hid the truly awful state of my life. They were moments when, or immediately after which the pretence wouldn't hold up. They happened a long time ago, and the past is as they say another country. Except it is another country I've visited regularly this week.

During the years we've been married I've come to know some really good, decent people who've reached out and who must be bewildered that I've kept my distance or ultimately cut myself adrift from them.You're young-ish, you've received an invitation to dinner or this or that. You accept. And then your precious husband either fails to turn up at all without any word of an apology or he does turn up drunk or simply sober and unpleasant.

Relationships founder, you build new ones, you learn not to put your husband forward, but that doesn't work properly because you are married, so slowly the circles you naturally build up around you are corroded and family are alienated until you're alone and you're vulnerable, thousands and thousands of miles from home.

I've had a small victory today and I suppose that is why I've been able to put this together in a state fit for publishing.One of the peculiar benefits of being dirt poor as I am these days is that dealing with my tax affairs is a simple process. I've sod all income, practially nothing to declare. Some forms from the Revenue dropped through the door today, I gathered together the one document required to complete them, jotted down the figures in the appropriate boxes, 'phoned them to advise a change in my status, gave the sweet Scottish chap on the other end the figures I'd already jotted down and that was it. Job done. No need to send of the forms. Hmmn. This just doesn't feel right. Dealing with the Revenue isn't supposed to be easy.

Now I have the local tax to pay and the water company and we're ok.

Except that there's that damned list: passports, visas, driving licence, lawyers, sale of house, disposal of crap inside house.'Passport' for me means: (1) requesting form (cost de minimus), travelling to London to have photographs taken (cost not so insignificant), getting supporting documents together (time consuming), locating someone qualified and able to sign completed form (time consuming, probably with fee attached), submitting form (registered post so cost and time consuming), resubmitting form because the Canadians bless them are so damned picky then (2) repeating process in respect of Australian passport.

Canadian one has British residency visa in it, Australian one takes me home. And I can't face finding out from the home office if there's any way around this.

Then there's my daughter's passport or passports. Just getting her the Aussie passport she's entitled to is going to require a colossal document search and until I contact the High Commission I don't even know what documents they'll require. Bloody hell.

And I'm almost positive I've forgotten some crucial step in the whole process, that will take forever and cost me a fortune.

This morning B said something to me as I was preparing her school lunch: I can't recall her precise words but the gist of it was that her father had moaned about having to clean the kitchen before making the dinner last night.

I spent the rest of the day seething about this, preparing a little speech along the lines of "I just want to warn you that next time I catch you ever brief against me to my daughter on the basis of my housekeeping I will sling you, and the 90% of the crap in this house that is your crap that I never wanted in here, that has no earthly use, that you've dragged in here and then largely ignored, out onto the street."

I spent hours this week scrubbing the bathroom, vacuuming, dusting, washing down the wooden floors, the kichen surfaces, shifting his crap about to do this. And I get ticked off via a third party and the child I've vowed never to put in the space between us. So I can't deliver a message back via the same route, and I'm left composing my speech and rehearsing it.

But the state I was in today that little speech wasn't delivered, of course.However I now feel a little better. It has taken me all day to write this, working in fits and starts. I'm still not happy with my mood, but it is better and I feel stronger.

Now I'm going to have a beer and listen to some music and then I'll go to bed. Tomorrow is a new day.

PS. I basically typed the above over an earlier draft I'd begun some time in the previous couple of days, but this para I decided to retain... He's a pathological liar who's never done a decent days work in his entire adult life (or that proportion of it of which I have direct knowledge) and he's an habitual and natural thief (by which I mean he doesn't even understand that it is theft). He's slovenly, manipulative, deceitful. I made a terrible mistake marrying him - a one night stand could have produced the only good and decent thing to come of it.