Secrets, Lies & Chat

Is the price of fuel bringing you to your knees?

2006-04-30T11:06:00.000-07:00

I read again my comments regarding fuel prices and manipulation by Governments and Oil Companies this morning. My thoughts then were spot on, as I certainly don’t recall being able to buy unleaded petrol for less than $1.20 a litre since I wrote that piece. The price range in Sydney Australia is now from close to $1.40 a litre, even up to $1.45 a litre down to around $1.34.9 at the cheaper end. It’s also interesting to note that when the price is up, it’s exactly the same at most of the service stations in any one area. Word is that prices will climb to $2.00 a litre by 2007.

If you go for a drive and pass by a number of service stations, you can see that there is obviously a decline in those purchasing fuel on any given day at the expensive end of the scale. Possibly those actually using those service stations have fuel cards from their companies or can afford fuel at any price. If you pass by a service station where fuel is around $1.34 a litre, the cars will be lining up. How well the manipulation is working! Now we think $1.34 is a bargain! I managed, on a trip south last week, to buy petrol for $1.27.9 a litre, with no discount dockets. I felt the manipulation inside me as I hastily made the stop to grab this ‘bargain’. I remarked to the man working the desk that his fuel was much cheaper than anywhere else that I had seen that day. His answer? The price would stay as it was until he received a phone call to change it. What price did the fuel cost to go into the underground tanks? How much profit would the owners of that one service station make once the decision was made to up the price in line with the rest of the service stations in the area?

More and more people will most likely begin shopping at those stores that provide discounts for fuel. If you spend over $20 or $30 or whatever their bottom line dollar value is, you are guaranteed a discount on fuel by producing your shopper docket at participating service stations. I purchased fuel yesterday at 4 cents a litre off by using a Woolworths’ docket. On a visit to Westfield Shoppingtown Penrith yesterday, to a chemist advertising my favourite brand of perfume for $26 instead of $74, I found that with my spend of $98, I am now entitled to 30 litres of fuel at 6 cents a litre off at participating service stations.

On a quick read of the brochure about this program, I was interested to see just how many businesses are involved in giving their customers the opportunity to save on fuel by shopping at their stores. It seems this is probably the way retail will go now to get people into the stores – the old ‘WIFM’ promotional manipulation – ‘What’s In It For Me’. It worked years ago when if you bought one item, you could get another one for free or a few dollars extra. As always, what goes around comes around. WIFM worked well in the 80’s and I see it coming to the forefront once again in 2006, predominately with discounted fuel. I will continue to do part of my shopping at Woolworths so that I when I need to purchase fuel, I can at least feel like I’m not being ripped off as badly, by receiving 4 cents a litre discount. I know that Coles and Woolworths have been offering these discounts for some time, and I for one, appreciate it and support those stores.

Yesterday’s fuel cost me $38.33 and for that I received 29 litres of fuel. My vehicle, a Hyundai Sonata Classique, holds 65 litres of petrol. So, a tank full at today’s prices will cost me around $100. Makes flying to destinations a distance from Sydney a much better option, that is if you don’t need a vehicle at the other end or have one you can borrow. The price of fuel will cripple people with more than one car in a family. I can see now the hundreds of ‘second’ cars being sold off for practically nothing in an effort to cut costs. The Oil Companies, and the Government, will cut their own throats, and everyone else’s in their greed. Businesses will fold; people will lose their homes because of escalating costs. Where will it end? For those of us who work in out of the way places that would necessitate three or more changes of public transport to get to work, and the same to get back home, will forego other things in life to pay for our fuel to get us to our work so we can pay the rest of our bills and feed ourselves and our families.

But remember, what goes around comes around. In what form this will appear is anyone’s guess, but I’m betting on another war, and probably a bigger one than we have seen since Vietnam. The big boys are getting toey; they want their servicemen out their seeing some action. They can taste the blood. The old men who will hide in their bunkers want some excitement in their lives, and what could excite them more than a game of chess with real men playing the parts of the pawns? And what better to fight over than food, water, and yes, oil. The anger boiling up in our societies will ensure that there won’t be a shortage of people willing to fight for what we once had, and they will all believe the propaganda that it’s everyone else’s fault but those in power in their own countries.

My thoughts totally, as off the wall they may appear. Time will tell as the clock ticks away, seemingly faster every day, heading us all towards what probably will be inevitable. Let’s hope I am wrong and the ‘come around’ will be a return to sanity and peace for all of us. Oh and lower prices for fuel too. J

©Vena McGrath 2006

Ban Ignites Long, Slow Death of the Smoko

2006-04-01T15:55:00.000-08:00

I'm always interested to read the next chapter in the ban the cigarette campaign in Australia. Well it's not ban the cigarette, it's ban the cigarette smoker. The smoker, who was sucked into smoking years ago by the then legal advertising that was always in everyone's face, by the portrayal of smoking as being very 'in' on the wide screen, in magazines, newspapers etc., is now the lowest form of polluter on the face of the earth. Or so some would have us believe.

Slowly but surely the rights of the person who is now addicted thanks to all of the above and more, which I might add our Governments all backed and joined in by the members of each party smoking happily away wherever and whenever, have been eroded. Bit by bit the smoker has been forced out of almost everywhere and branded a killer.

Okay so let's assume smoking is bad for us and it would be better if we all gave it up. We would no longer sit at a table in a restaurant chafing at the bit to have a smoke after dinner, we would no longer need to get out of the office every now and then for a fix. We would be happy just doing whatever, whenever, without our trusty pack of ciggies and lighter close by for emergency exits. Those that now whine about the smoker going out of the office for a smoke forget that once upon a not so long time ago, they worked in offices with smokers and rarely did any of them say 'boo'. But then there are many sheep amongst us who jump on the nearest bandwagon so as to be seen finally.

In my humble opinion, if you were hired as a smoker, and your employer knew before they hired you that you were a smoker, then you have justifiable rights to take time out to smoke during the work day. I for one don't take morning or afternoon tea breaks. I don't go to work and cook my breakfast there and then sit and nibble contentedly on that breakfast while I read the morning papers or surf the internet or do my private business work. I have cigarette breaks where it takes me a minute to walk outside and a few minutes to smoke a cigarette. I am then back at my desk and into it. Today's cigarettes burn away very quickly so that we smoke more.

As I get off my soapbox, I paste under here a few words I just sent off to the SMH as a comment re their article this weekend, title above. I don't know about anyone else, but I am so tired of cigarette smoker bashing, and not just because I am a smoker. There are a lot of things bad in this world we live in and perhaps these people would be better off focusing on some of those issues instead of beating the same tired old drum. If the Governments of today are not willing to ban tobacco then leave the poor bloody addicted alone. After all, we are smoking a legal drug, the Government says so. Butt out - find another cause.

SMH Feedback - Saturday 1.4.06
If smoking is as bad for our health as those in the 'know' are constantly portraying, and if the do-gooders who tag along behind so as to be seen to be doing something were fair dinkum, they would all be lobbying for cigarettes and all forms of tobacco to be banned. So let's get real about the issue. We all know why they will never be banned - the cigarette smokers pay a high price to smoke and the Government receives the largest share of the dollar spent. Their greed feeds our habit.

It's a shame the same campaigns aren't mounted against alcohol. I have never heard of a cigarette smoker killing someone in his/her car after a tobacco fix, nor have I ever heard of a man bashing his wife after he has just smoked a few cigarettes, or his children.

Keeping smoking in the limelight as the polluter of the earth gives breathing space to the real polluters. Look up into the sky above you or, even better, go into the city and look out towards the mountains from a tall building. That's what is polluting our city, not cigarette smokers. Look around at the smoke stacks nicely placed amidst our homes and workplaces.

But to be fair, ban tobacco and its products and we will all have more money in our pockets. Then the do gooders will have to find another passion to pursue. In another lifetime perhaps, not this one where what is said is just for show.

Vena McGrath

No Pain Website Building

2006-03-14T19:58:00.000-08:00

If you have visited my website http://www.secretslieschat.net.au/ I hope you were impressed. It's simple, and yet the messages I wanted to share, and the parts of my life and work I wanted published, are all there.

When I first decided to have a website built, I organised it through an agency. I was disappointed because the website was not 'me'. Each time I wanted a change made to try and make the website how I saw it, the message came through loud and clear, that I was causing delays in my changes, that I had to make up my mind and stick with it. Articles, stories etc that needed to be posted were held up; not by me, but by the person in 'control'. Control is a word I detest; no one should have control over anyone else and no one should control your website unless you choose to agree to those terms.

The website never lived up to what it should have for the price. Sure it was a lot cheaper than other quotes I had, but it was a clone of another website and definitely not artistic or pleasant to visit. Nothing was right about it and when I tried to gain control over it, the fight was on.
Eventually I gave up the fight and bought another domain name and a template for a website that was pleasing to my eyes. When I did all this I was holidaying on the Gold Coast with a friend. He supported me totally and we stumbled through the buying of the domain, settling on a host, choosing a template and wondering what on earth we were going to do with it all once we had it.

But I had great faith in my friend and it soon proved that my faith was well seated. Before long the website was coming into shape and because it was all above my head, I left it to Bryan (that's my friend :)) to sort it all out. Bit by bit it grew and Bryan learned how to get it all together. I watched fascinated. By the time we returned to our respective havens, the website was inspiring.

The template I bought made it a lot simpler as the html was built into pages that came with the template. Bryan soon worked out how it all fell together, and eventually the exciting day came and I was directed to the website, and there it was, sitting out there in cyber space. I smiled and knew I had done the right thing, and Bryan had achieved what the person I had paid had failed to achieve. We worked together remotely on the design and the layout, with Bryan uploading all the documents I sent to him, without a murmur. We laughed at mistakes, worked through the tangles, and sat back one day with pride.

We added things as time went by and Bryan worked out how to put links on there for me to important websites that discuss issues I wanted to link to - those involved in child protection and danger online for kids.
Bryan worked out how to put my book on the website with PayPal and when my beautiful mate Scrubber passed away, he created a special page for him and a photo gallery as a surprise for me. It took me a while to go there but once I was brave enough to, the presence of Scrub on my website gladdened my sad heart.

We started working on the website in February 2005 and now in March 2006, I am able to upload my own pages and edit those already existing. I have been able to do that for quite a while, thanks to Bryan's patient teaching. Again most of this was done remotely by talking in a chat room, via messenger or by emails. The constant contact was amazing, so different to my first experience with having a website built. I was taught how to upload additions by using cuteftppro and how to use Microsoft Frontpage to make the pages for the website. I learned to 'see' things in the html code so that sometimes I was able to fix my own mistakes.

The only thing I haven't been able to achieve is to learn how to set up a photo gallery page. I have a template to work with, and yet my head can't see round the corners. A quick 'help' to Bryan, attachments to a couple of emails that he returned to me quickly, and I uploaded the photo album - of Shaye, my puppy. It's just how I wanted it, of course.
Oh, I forgot to mention that eventually I gained control over the other website and Bryan, through sheer will and determination, worked out how to cut it adrift so that anyone using the old domain name would automatically go to the new website. An achievement I still wonder about. That's a sign of a master using his skills and knowledge; way too complex for me.

Hence the title of this piece - No Pain Website Building. There should be no pain, there should be no begging to have work uploaded or changes made. A webmaster should want his client to be able to run his/her own website easily and should be happy to teach the owner how to achieve this and then be contactable if there are problems.

So, if you are considering having a website built at a very reasonable cost, by someone who will treat you as you should be treated, you could go no further than Bryan to find all those things. He didn't learn out of books or by going to a college, he learned his trade by actually building a website, something he had never done in his life before.
Bryan can be contacted by email :
sirbluey@bigpond.com

He is located in a suburb of Brisbane and has the patience of a saint doing what he likes best, making something out of nothing and sharing his knowledge. Bryan is presently building another website and as I have seen some of it already in the making, I know it will turn out just how the owner wants it. Whatever she asks for, he does his upmost to find and incorporate in the website. Now that's old fashioned service, and with a smile too.

So send Bryan an email and havachat. It won't cost you anything to chat, there is no consultancy fee for a query :)All the best!

Some News

2006-03-04T14:22:00.000-08:00

Here it is, exactly one month since I last posted. Time sure flies when you are having fun.

Some good news this last week, when I was released from my contract and all rights to my manuscript 'Secrets, Lies & Chat' were returned to me. I can't disclose any details but the end was amicable. At least now I can do what I like with the manuscript, maybe do a rewrite, and I can now approach any publisher I choose to with my next work. It cost me legal fees, but them's the breaks. Better to do this properly, with advice, than to go it alone.

My son and his partner, who now live in Western Australia, will be returning to the east coast late May. That is a exciting news for the rest of the family as we miss them so much. It's a long way to Geraldton, and expensive to fly, impossible to drive unless you are well prepared for a long trip through some fairly isolated country where mobile phones don't work. They will do the trip back by road, same as they did going over. But my son is very self reliant and they have each other so the 4 days or so on the road won't be that bad for them.

They plan to move north from Sydney, towards Newcastle, where apparently the coal mining business is thriving. My son has done a lot of work underground but at the moment is driving an 85 ton truck at an open cut gold mine, 150 ks north of Kalgoorlie. It's hot out there, 50c plus. Fortunately all the vehicles are air conditioned and of course the accommodation is as well. It's like a resort and he lives there for 14 days, works 14 x 11 hours, one week day shift then one week night shift, then flies home for a week. Two of those days of course are flying to and from, which necessitates two flights each way. The planes are small and not being a frequent flyer, he found it fairly daunting, scary even. I think he will be happy if he can score work where he can drive himself to and from each day. Being away from home for 14 days straight isn't much good when you are in a relationship.

My beautiful dog, Shaye, is growing in leaps and bounds, and is now beginning to look more like a Golden Retriever as he coat is starting to grow longer. He is very sweet, a pleasure to be around. He gives my moggie a hard time, but I tend to think she likes the challenge and enjoys having something to hiss at and strike out at. He loves water and swims like a champion, duck diving under the water chasing toys. My granddaughter, who is 11, loves to be in the pool with him as he is a lot of fun. He chases people when they are swimming and ends up usually on their backs as he can dog paddle at an amazing rate. My pool is 10 metres long and he can swim up and down without any worries. When he gets tired he sits on the step in the water. He has his own little paddle pool for when the big pool is locked off to him, so he is almost always wet. He prefers to be wet, will tip his water out and lie in the water and go to sleep. Strange how these instincts are inbuilt into animals. When the breeder brought him home to me when he was 7 weeks old, she said that when he finds water he will never be out of it. She was so right! So, if you want a good size dog, with a lovely nature, who is almost always wet, don't overlook a Golden Retriever.

Take care until next time.

Vena

A New Beginning - Change

2006-02-04T13:24:00.000-08:00

How many of them have I had in my lifetime? My childhood ran the course that most do with change coming from outside influences, not from me, although I guess in some ways I was evolving as I found my own thoughts and feelings.

Once I was married there were changes, yet for a number of years I stayed more or less the same, bringing up a family, running a home, and later going back to the workforce. Once I made that transition from housewife and mother, to working woman, with the other duties still there but with less time to do them in, I began to change. Suddenly I had an income, money to spare, money to enjoy. I spent it wisely and our home started to show the benefits of that extra cash. My children had things they had never had, and perhaps didn’t miss that much, like bought cakes for school, a wider variety of food to eat at home, and new furniture and electrical appliances.

The enjoyment we gained from our new life was wonderful and we were like four kids, not three plus a mother. My husband never really got into the swing of the euphoria like we did, but that didn’t dampen our pleasure. My daughter remembers coming home from school to find something new now and then on her bed and tells me often how excited she was each time, no matter what the gift was. I don’t remember that, but it’s lovely that she does. Where once I made most of the children’s clothes, they now had store bought clothes. That probably was the most significant thing to them along with the VHS player/recorder, new stereo, freezer, air conditioner, wood burner fire etc. Our home was transformed with fresh paint, new carpet, new curtains, outside blinds to keep out the heat, and other items we had gone without for many years. We didn’t miss all those things, as I never was a person who had to keep up with the Jones’, nor was my ex. The only thing that didn’t change was the unhappiness within the walls of our home. But that’s another story.

Gong to work not only brought changes to my home, it brought a lot of changes to me personally. As a Scorpio, I know that I am reportedly ever-changing and, thinking about my life, I see that is just about spot on correct. Whilst there are years of little or no significant change, there are other years of mammoth change, swings totally against what would be considered normal for me. But then I always maintain that there is no such thing as normal, nor is there any such thing as typical. We are all unique, no one is a carbon copy of anyone else. Statistics are just that; a whole pile of numbers thrown into one pot with one number coming out – that’s the typical and normal number.

On re-entering full-time permanent work, I found a whole new world, one that frightened the heck out of me and almost sent me scurrying back to the safety of my small world at home. However that world at home was too small for me. No one was home during the long days, and my mind needed to be occupied and challenged. So my fear was overcome by my desire to change my life, and in changing my life, I changed that of my family as well. The first day I stepped through the door of the office I was to work in for the next five plus years, was most likely the first day of many steps that would ultimately lead me to probably the biggest change and challenge of my life some eight years later – divorce.

I was like a fish out of water in the office, and had to be shown how to put staples into a stapler. I had never seen some of the gear they had in the office. An electric typewriter had me fooled, as I couldn’t work out how to get it to go. Once I found the ‘on’ switch, I kept reaching for the carriage return lever, not realising all I had to do was press another key, or just keep typing, and it would automatically return. What a strange, new world of machines it was.

I began my first day by calling the boss ‘Mr’. I wondered why he looked at me strangely. Everyone else called him by his first name, something that I had never seen before in a workplace. The positions I held from 16 to 20, some 14 years previous, had all been so proper. I was Miss McGrath and everyone else above me was either ‘Mr’ or ‘Mrs’ or ‘Miss’. My workmates I called by first name, of course, as they did me. I found it very difficult to call my boss by his first name and indeed all the other executives that I met in those first weeks. I realised that I had to change because I was being laughed at and must have appeared so old-fashioned and proper. The language in the office was outrageous. Swear words I had never uttered nor been exposed to before, ran loud and free. At first they resounded in my ears, but once again, I realised that I either had to join this new world and be part of it, or I might as well go back home and forget about a new life. I decided to join the throng of this new world and the old ‘if you can’t beat them join them’ phrase, became my motto.

In many ways I remained the same. I was straight down the line on some issues and for many years I never wavered from my convictions. My beliefs and values didn’t change, although my personality did. I learned how to laugh at what I considered nonsense or outright crudeness, and I learned how to swear at the appropriate times, and I learned how to be part of a team. I took the changes that were happening to me at work, home with me. My ex was finding it difficult to reconcile with this new me and fought the changes. My life at home with him became more difficult and I found that very hard to understand. By going to work I was improving our lifestyle, relieving him of some of the stress of the bills, and I was giving our children things they hadn’t been able to have before. They were all in High School by the time I joined the full-time workforce, so I wasn’t abandoning small children who needed a mother, or someone at home, before and after school.

The problems with my ex compounded and grew, and with each change in me, came more anger and more bricks were knocked down from the matrimonial wall. Where we had already drifted apart over the years because of many different reasons, we were now both definitely on different roads. The person I fell in love with at 16 and married at 20, was someone I decided I didn’t want to know about – on our wedding night! The laws of the marriage were laid down that night, all laws for his benefit, none for mine. Being a Scorpio and not realising the potential of that sign, I felt anger and humiliation grow inside me that night, and I think I disliked him intensely from then on. We had three wonderful babies who grew into marvellous adults, and yet I take almost all the credit for that, as they would agree I should. I was their safe, loving shield, and they were my salvation. But as I said that’s another story. Sufficient to say things inside the walls of my home were not what was perceived by those outside the walls.

Work became a place I could go to 5 days a week to escape the solitude and sadness of my marriage. The times I was at home I wrapped around my kids. Fortunately for me my parents owned a house with water frontage and we would escape there as often as possible for weekends. An escape hatch, something I am forever grateful for having. My parents didn’t know the extent of my life or the sadness engulfing it, as I never discussed my personal life with them. I grew up in the ‘you made your bed now lie in it’ era. My mother told me years after my divorce that the children used to tell her things about daddy and she would tell them not to tell her, that it wasn’t right to do that. How the world has changed, or perhaps it’s part of my changes. If my granddaughter came to me with stories like the ones my children told their nana, I would be on my charger instantly and off to try and rectify the situation. No way would I leave things and sweep them under the carpet as my mother did.

Change. Something that people now attend training courses in order that they can manage it. There were no courses for me to attend; I changed and evolved and handled it myself. My beliefs and values changed as well, but not until I moved from being a married woman to a single independent one. By the time I walked out on my marriage, I had been working full-time for 8 years, and had transferred from a local office of my employer, to head office in Sydney. My income was such that I believed I could make it with luck and the help of my two children, who moved out with me. They were both working, so the cost of holding a home together for the three of us wasn’t all mine. I paid all the costs to set us up in a rented home, and paid the rent each week. They supported our new life by assisting with the food bills, electricity, phone etc. We split those bills three ways so the cost to all of us was minimised. This was their first big leap into change as well, and probably went a long way towards making them the independent adults they now are.

My son who remained with his father is still finding life a hard battle. He is a good man, but he has never been able to get his life together like the other two have. I believe the fact he remained in that home after we left had a lot to do with his problems and issues with the world at large. I see hope for him now though, as he has made changes, big ones. He met a lady 11 years older than himself, and they live together. They sold everything they owned almost, with the exception of his van, and headed off to Western Australia, to hopefully a new life. The trip took them 6 days, and is one my son says he will never make again by road.

They found the transition from east to west difficult, although finding somewhere to live wasn’t difficult, and much cheaper than in Sydney. My son’s lady managed, after a few months of knock-backs and frustration, to secure a job, and she supported them while my son went into a tailspin at not being able to find work. With her help he paid for driving lessons, and passed the exams to drive an 85-ton truck. Within a week of that exam, he had scored himself a job. He usually worked underground in tunnels on the east coast, but didn’t want to go underground again after a workmate was killed on the last tunnel site he was working on in Sydney. Hence the truck licence. He now works at an open cut gold mine, some 150 kilometres north of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. He is flown out to the mine and works 14 days x 11 hours a day, then he is flown back to Geraldton, where he lives, and he spends a week with his lady, when she isn’t at work. Whilst he is still working in the same type of industry, he is above ground, and in control of a huge vehicle, with all the responsibility that brings with it.

Big changes in his life and from all accounts, positive ones. I am very proud of him for facing the challenges of his life and his mind, and overcoming them. His self esteem and pride in himself can only grow in leaps and bounds now that he is once more back earning a living, and especially one that is different to what he normally has done. His beliefs and values have also changed as he has evolved, and if he can sustain the changes and let them grow, he will become a different person and find peace within himself.

I was fortunate when I was married, though I didn’t think so at the time, to be the one who had to balance the budget, pay the bills, and keep us out of debt. There were many times when my purse was empty and there was no money until my ex received his next fortnight’s pay. As we had a mortgage, that was the first priority to be kept aside for the end of each month. The remainder had to meet the cost of living with never anything left over. Our only time in each year that there was money to spare, was when he received his income tax reimbursement. That money was well spent on things that we went without but felt we needed. Those years of battling the budget made it easy for me to move to a lifestyle where I not only had to balance the budget, but I also had to be the breadwinner, or the biggest shareholder in that commitment. The belt was pulled in tight and yet the happiness we had found in our new rented home, far outweighed the ‘hardships’ of our new life. I battled all the usual negative feelings for a time and the fear of reprisal from my ex. Each time a car came into the cul de sac where we lived, I was afraid he had found me. As time went on, the fear abated, and I found a new life.

During the next two and a half years I proceeded with my divorce, bought a block of land further out where I could afford it, and my eldest son and I secured a mortgage and had our home built. Once again, change. I learned many things from this experience, all adding to the changes in me as a person. Once the three of us moved into our new home, life became even harder as the mortgage was costing both of us big-time, with interest rates at 17%. Two weeks of my salary was the mortgage payment of a month, and it was even harder for my son, who earned less. However, the three of us split the other bills and we all coped and enjoyed our lovely new home.

After three years of travel daily to the city to work from our new home, three hours a day driving, I had come to the end of the rope and couldn’t cope with it anymore. I was a victim of road rage, more than once, had a bad accident that wrote off my vehicle (not my fault) and was totally worn out from the long days and stress of driving in peak hour traffic. I decided to toss in my job and work closer to home. I also decided to have some time at home before I looked for work, and my superannuation payout enabled me to do that.

Finding another full-time job was not as easy as I anticipated. I realised that I should have found a job before I left the one I was in. Never just accepting things as they appeared, I joined a number of temporary staff agencies hoping to improve my chances of making an income, and was soon out on the road working for many different employers. Change again. This change didn’t suit me as I was never a gypsy type of person. But I did find the type of workplace that I liked best of all – government departments. I started taking on more and more temporary work in government departments, and eventually went for an interview and landed one not all that far from home. As the trip to and from work was across country, not with the flow, it was ideal.

I was a temp there for 2.5 years before the position was finally advertised, and I applied and was successful. Finally, all the years of never being able to take time off with the exception of public holidays and weekends, never being able to lie down and be sick, were over. I had sick leave and I had recreational leave, and, if I chose to work longer hours, I could take a day off a month using that extra time accrued. The world was once more a wonderful carefree place, with money going into my bank every fortnight no matter if I was at work or not. The relief that came into my life was marvellous.

By this time interest rates had dropped to a point where the repayments on our loan had reduced somewhat. My son and I agreed that we would never pay only what we had to pay. We always paid much more, keeping it up near that 17% level, although reducing the repayments enough so as to relieve some of the pressure from us and to give us a small amount of extra money to enjoy. Once I left my full-time job in the city, I also lost the salary I was on and the extra benefits. It took me 10 years to get back to that level of salary and to go past it. If I were still in that job today, I no doubt would be earning a much higher salary than I do where I am. However, money isn’t all that matters. I am happy with my job; the stress is minimal and is mainly what I put on myself. My workday consists of autonomy, something I find very important, as I’m a self-achiever, and I don’t need to be watched or motivated.

In the position I held n the city I was under a lot of stress, mostly from other people. Corporate Australia is a much harder taskmaster than the government, and people in corporations, at that time anyhow, treated their staff exactly as they wished to, and spoke to them exactly as they wished to. That’s why I liked government departments because it was very evident to me, coming from a large corporation, that the people who worked in those departments, in the main anyhow, had respect for others no matter how much lower down the pecking order they may be.

The change in work direction came along with many other changes, and was a result of some of those changes in my attitude to life and my priorities. As I keep moving along in life I’m finding change is easy. I’m no longer afraid of it, in fact I instigate change because I can see outside the circle and instinctively know what I need to do to go on to the next stage. I am a far different person to that young girl, who thought she knew it all, and wanted nothing more out of life than to marry the guy she thought she was in love with, and be with him forever. Nothing is forever unless you don’t embrace change and are happy with your life the way it pans out. I see things I would like to change; others accept what they see as being all there is. Some of them are happy and probably lucky and most likely unable to accept change, or live with it. Some accept their lives with bitterness and despair. I accept nothing as being all there is. I know there is more and will continue to search for whatever it is that’s out there for me to find. Perhaps in that way I am a gypsy of life.

Today is all we have for the moment, and the moment should be as good as we can make it.

© vena mcgrath 2006

Say It Loud, Say It Clear

2006-01-28T18:29:00.000-08:00

I keep hearing a song on the radio, almost every day, which is very relevant to my life. Some of the words, and I quote, “I wasn’t there that morning, when my father passed away, I didn’t get to tell him, all the things I had to say” – or similar anyhow, touch me deeply.

I listen to the words of that song and often think that every person in the world should hear it every day, no matter where they live, no matter what language they speak. How many of us have, too late, realised that things we should have said to the important people in our lives, we didn’t say, for one reason or another? It’s too late once that person has died; the window of opportunity that may fleetingly have opened has gone, perhaps never to open again or to constantly be ignored in our rush through life.

In my case I have a double whammy. My father passed away suddenly in 1990. I didn’t say many of the things I should have. It was taken for granted he would be there forever or that the day of parting was a long way off. He knew I loved him and yet I should have told him more often that I did. He deserved that. Something cold is in my heart that makes it hard for me to say those words, except to my children and my granddaughter. It seemed that I didn’t need to say things to Dad, as there was a bond between us that could never be broken. But now I know; the words should have been spoken, and often.

Mum passed away last December. Not suddenly, like Dad. Death was at her door for a long time, and yet there was no window of opportunity open to me by the time I realised I had things to say, and needed to say. Dementia is a cruel disease and can strike anyone. Mum slipped into it slowly, so slowly that no one realised what was happening to her, until it was too late. Forgetfulness? A sign of old age, everyone gets there eventually. My visits to Mum over the last five years left very little scope for me to say much to her at all. Most of the time she didn’t know who I was, or if she did, she chose not to acknowledge that she did. I was angry with her and wondered if she was doing it on purpose, just another way to continue the trend that existed throughout our life from my earliest memories.

I would fly home depressed after every visit. Sometimes it would take me a couple of days after arrival to force myself to visit her; I felt guilt, sadness, depression, and anger. I wondered why I bothered flying to see her three or four times a year when I received very little back from her. Not even a hello, or a goodbye, or a smile, or a kiss. I didn’t understand what was happening to her and thought only of how I felt, not of how she was.

In the last two years or so, I’ve done a lot of soul searching and spent time thinking about my mother’s life. Losing her first-born son at the tender age of three. Spending those three years living a life filled with the woes of a child who knew no happiness. The harshness of that era with a World War raging. The resultant hardships of having little money, food, clothing or assets. Women in those days, well a lot of them, stayed up at night scrubbing lino floors while everyone else went to bed. They spent untold hours every day hand washing clothes, cooking meals with meat that needed to be cooked slowly for hours so it could be eaten, making something out of nothing so their children could have clothes to wear. Lining up for food stamps, crockery, anything at all they needed for half an existence. I knew none of that, although I was born at the end of the War in 1945. I don’t remember any of it so I can’t feel it.

Because of the severeness of my brother’s health, caused by German measles during early pregnancy, he had to be taken frequently to hospital for treatment. Having no car, my mother travelled by train. People stared at her, cursed her, because she had this seemingly badly behaved child who screamed all the time. His eyesight was so poor that he wore little glasses with brown paper over the lenses to protect his eyes from light. His visits to the hospital were to have injections in his eyes, and one can only imagine the dreadfulness of that for my mother. He never walked, he never sat. He was like a baby and had to be carried everywhere.

My problems with my mother, I think, began from the moment I was born. On the one hand she would say how much she wanted me, on the other hand she would delight in telling me, and anyone who may be listening, how she cried when she first saw me after I was born, because I had red hair. That story haunted me from a very young age and I detested my hair, thought it was evil. After all it made my mother cry so I definitely had something wrong with me to do that. Our relationship wasn’t like those of my cousins with their mothers, or my girlfriends with their mothers. I longed to have that, but I never did. Sometimes during the years when my children were small, and later as well, I saw softness in her towards me, but not often. There was a barrier and I have no idea what it was. I became my father’s daughter and I was blessed to have such a wonderful father, so blessed. My birth came a year after my eldest brother passed away. I had another brother, older than me, who survived.

I thought about all these things, many of them I learned from my aunt. I started to see a reason perhaps for the way Mum was. She had a breakdown before my brother died and he was taken from her. How that must have devastated her. He died alone a day after my mother and father had visited him. I can understand why she was so protective and close to my brother who survived. She would have been terrified something might happen to him. Since my mother passed away I have spent many hours going through her photos and letters she kept, and the memories that I’ve found have touched me profoundly. I seem to have found my mother, but all too late.

Over the last two years before she died, when I visited Mum, I tried to summon up the courage to talk to her. It was too late; she didn’t comprehend much at all. Talk about Sydney and our life as a family drew a blank look. One day she became upset and I had to stop talking; perhaps that day she comprehended what I was saying. I would whisper to her that it was okay for her to go to Dad, that it was time they were together. I had heard that this often worked; not so with Mum. I had so much I wanted to say to her; that understanding had come finally and forgiveness as well. Each visit I resolved to say it all, each visit resulted in nothing being said and I kept it all inside me.

Three weeks before she died I sat by her bed and held her hand. Pressure from her hand reached mine and it was a wonderful feeling. Finally I felt that she knew whom I was and she touched me. It had been a long time coming. When she finally drew her last breath, I knew it had happened. I am sure that as her spirit departed that body she came to me and said goodbye. I was over 1,000 kilometres away and yet I knew she had died. Sure enough, about ¾ hour after I had a flash message, I received the news.

I spent time with Mum before the cremation and I spoke softly to her, saying some of what I had wanted to say to her for so long. It was too late for her, and yet it brought me some peace of mind. I wished however that while she was alive, and was without dementia, that we could have talked, and reconciled. I stoked her hair, it was so soft, and her face was like porcelain. The body in the coffin wasn’t much like my Mum; it was just what remained of her. I touched that face and kissed it several times and took a rose from the wreath on the coffin and laid it against her face. At that moment I truly loved my mother and told her so – too late. My hope is that she was around somewhere watching and now knows that I loved her, always had. I wasn’t able to show it because she didn’t seem to ever show it towards me, or hardly ever. I don’t remember hugs, just criticism it seemed of most of what I did or didn’t do. That’s all gone now and as I read the letters she treasured so much, I’m finding my Mum, warts and all.

The moral of this story? The title says it all – Say It Loud, Say It Clear – every day of your life to everyone you love. Tell them you love them always. It becomes a habit after you do it for a while, and if you forget to say it, you may even ring and say it once you realise it was forgotten because it will trouble you that you forgot something so important. Those words can mean so much and can make a huge difference to the emotional well being of all humans.

© vena mcgrath 2006

Australia Day - 26 January 2006

2006-01-26T13:30:00.000-08:00

It's 12.56pm Sydney Daylight Saving Time and humid. There's a heavy cloud cover and no sun shining at the moment. The usual kind of day when there is high humidity. However, it's markedly cooler than some of the days we have experienced during December/January. I just checked the temperature under the carport and it's now 34 celcius .. without the humidity it wouldn't be a bad day.

I'm home alone today and it's a public holiday in Sydney. My son was down from Orange for a couple of days but just left to go back as he has to work tomorrow. I took the day off tomorrow so as to have 4 days straight at home. Shaye, my beautiful pup, is happy someone is here as he is experiencing for the first time now, long days alone while I am at work. Bryan, who was my partner, and I broke up, and he left here on Tuesday. Six months proved to us that although we were great friends away from each other, together there was a lot lacking.

I saw no point in continuing with a relationship that hadn't grown and never would, and so we agreed to part. I am sad about what happened as it was wonderful to think that perhaps two people alone could make it together. After 17 years without a man in my life permanently, I guess it was all too much for me, and I was probably all too much for him. We are very different and couldn't reconcile our differences. He has moved north close to his children and that's a good thing. Blood is thicker than water after all. I learned a lot sharing my home with Bryan, and I hope that in some small measure I helped him go forward and to better things. I suppose that is one good thing about today's freedom; you don't have to marry someone to live with them and you don't have to stay together if it's not working out. There's no messy divorce, no splitting up assets, just an agreement to end before bitterness and unhappiness sets in.

Now it's back to square one and to knuckling down to work, both paid work and unpaid at home. I haven't done much writing in the last six months as I chose to spend more time away from the computer when I was at home, than sitting in my study working. Having Bryan here gave me the incentive to ditch the computer for companionship. It lasted for a while but then slowly began to disintegrate.

Shaye has had a busy morning exploring outside as he now has the whole yard to himself. Bryan sectioned the yard off because his dog didn't like the pup and was savage to him. Now Shaye has both sections to himself and a lot of discovering to do. He has worn himself out and is asleep on the tiles in the house, dreaming happy dreams I hope :)

Bryan built Shaye a wonderful kennel before he left. Well it's more like a young child's cubby house. It has an awning, a verandah, and a lean-to for extra shade where his small pool is that he likes to lie in most of the time he is outside. He loves the big pool too but can't access that area unless someone is outside with him. He is a very lucky doggie to have such a magnificent kennel. Now all I have to do is paint it. I will miss Bryan for a lot of reasons and I could have been selfish and kept him around as an odd job man, but he needs to find his own life, be himself, and with me he wouldn't have done that. The odd jobs I can get done by various means without using another person for my own advantage. I couldn't offer him what I should have been able to, it just wasn't there to offer. I hope he meets a lovely lady who will be just the right person, the person I'm not.

I can hear the kids next door in their pool having fun with friends who are no doubt visiting for a bbq for Australia Day. There are lots of activities going on around the country today to celebrate the beginning of the slaughter of the Aboriginal people who once lived here happily and in harmony with the land and with nature. Our forefathers sure put a stop to that idyllic lifestyle and stamped on them the British way.

There are many Aussies now who pine for the simple life, especially those over 50 who can remember a vastly different Australia to the one they now live in. They are opting out of the 'make all the money you can and buy everything you think you need' syndrome, and are moving out of the cities to quieter lifestyles for what are supposed to be the best years of a lifetime. I hope to break out of this cycle myself in the not too distant future and live a much more laid back life. I have all I need and as things wear out, then I will have to replace them. I never was a 'keep up with the Jones' person so it won't bother me much not buying the latest version of whatever.

I've been thinking along the lines of moving into a retirement village, buying a strata title smaller home and settling in, hopefully very close to the sea. But this is a little ways off yet as I can't get a pension until I'm 63.5 years. I'm lucky to have a good job and probably lucky John Howard considers we should all keep working until we pass away at our desks so we don't go on a pension. However, I have other ideas, and working for ever isn't one of them. There are a number of family issues at the moment that are keeping me from making a move and I accept that things happen for a reason, hence I'm not in the least bit frustrated at staying put for a while.

Anyone who has a happy stable relationship is very lucky. I think from looking around me that those relationships are few and far between. There are many people like me, who live alone because that's the road life threw to us for various reasons. It's a shame as nothing alone is really ever as good as sharing it with someone who enjoys whatever it is as much as you do. Perhaps I will be fortunate and still have time to run into the right person. That's what life is all about, the unknown.

Until next time, stay happy and if you aren't happy, then take steps to change the situation. We only have one go at this life and I don't think we were supposed to be miserable and living in a hateful environment.

Vena

A Little Ray of Sunshine

2006-01-20T18:01:00.000-08:00

A little ray of sunshine has come into my world :) Actually he arrived on 19 November, the day after I returned from a visit to Brisbane to see my mother, the last time I saw her alive :(

He was this 3kg fluffy, soft, sweet little darling. He smelt a bit the worse for wear after having spent the day in a cage in a vehicle that had brought him from Tweed Heads, on the far north coast of New South Wales. I met the breeder at the door and took the little bundle from her and gazed at him. Instant love!

I vowed when my best mate and beautiful friend Scrubber died, that I would never own another dog. The pain and the grief I felt after he died was something I didn't want in my life again. As the months slowly passed and I began to accept his death as being what was meant to happen, I realised that I needed to fill that void in my life. I also knew I had a lot of love to give to another little soul who would always live in a loving environment and would, as Scrubber had done, forget he was a dog and think he was human.

I decided not to have another Cattledog as there was only one Scrubber. I didn't think it would be fair, as I would no doubt be comparing all the time and have expectations that most likely wouldn't be possible. So I chose another breed I had always admired. I read a lot about the breed before I ventured to websites looking for a puppy. My choice? Golden Retriever. After finding a number of websites in Australia it became obvious there weren't many litters around at the time I was looking. Then I found one!

There were pictures of the puppies, all colour coded, tiny little bundles just a couple of weeks old. I spent a few days looking at the pictures and chose ''Gold Boy'. I had decided on a dog, not a bitch, and I wanted a dog with stature, like Scrubber. Gold Boy sat and stared at the camera, or the photographer, and he had a curious, inquisitive look on his face. That got me right from the moment I saw the pic. I saw in him something that I knew would guarantee he would be bright, intelligent, and a joy to have around.

It's now January 21, and Shaye was 3 months old on January 2. I weighed him on January 16 and he was 15kg. He is growing in leaps and bounds and is now like the puppies you see on the ads on TV and on cards etc. His feet are huge, as are his ears lol. He has, thankfully, stopped most of that puppy biting that had me with sores all over my lower arms and hands. He sleeps in the laundry at night and although he can't get out of there, his area is clean and dry after 8 hours or so when he barks for me to get him up at 6.00 am. Probably the biggest problems I've had with him have been trying to toilet train him so he can be inside when I'm home and stopping him from eating stones outside.

I bought him his own little pool and whenever he is outside, he is in there, paddling or lying down. He loves to be wet. He goes in the salt water pool when anyone is swimming and loves to duck dive. Just amazing to watch this wuppie under the water! Because he is a retriever and supposed to be in water, he has an amazing coat that dries very quickly. When the breeder dropped him off she told me that once he found water he would be in it all the time. She wasn't wrong. He has his own towel, that he knows is his, and doesn't mind getting dried off as many times as he needs to be in a day. He will even roll on it himself if it's put on the ground.

He barks now if he hears someone coming up the driveway or a noise he doesn't recognise. He drives my poor old moggie crazy chasing her and harassing her. She hisses at him and smacks him across the face and yet he is after her whenever he finds her. I know he just wants a playmate, but she is too old to play. Or perhaps she has found a new lease of life and enjoys the attention. Best thing to do is just leave them be and save her if I feel she is tired of him and it's become something more than playful/spiteful banter between two different types of animal. Probably it's more a case of saving the pup now as Miss Jasmine has shown him who is boss .... I think!

This is all very new to me as Scrubber lived here with his mum from his birth until he was about 7, when she had to be put down. I didn't have to be his mum and go through all this training with him as he spent most of his life until she died outside with her. Once she was gone he became a house dog when I was home and slept inside every night wherever he chose to sleep. He slept on my son's bed until he left, but he never ventured onto my bed. I think a waterbed was a bit much for him and I preferred him not to be on there anyhow. He used to come and wake me up if he needed to go outside in the night. This is what I hope eventually Shaye will do. Now he goes to the back or front door if he wants out (well most of the time) and if I don't see him, then the mat gets the download. At least he knows that he should be out and it's not his fault he can't get out. At night the laundry is his bedroom and as I mentioned before, he goes in there quite happily around 10 or 10.30 and I don't hear a peep out of him until 6.00 am. Perfect baby!

I chose the name Shaye as it's an Irish name and means "stately, courteous and hawk-like". He is showing all those traits so I chose a very apt name for him. His colour is golden and a really nice colour. His line comes from breeding with the American Golden Retriever which I believe has traits that the Australian breeders, well some of them, are wanting in the Australian dogs. He chews anything so I've had to teach him that certain things are a BIG NO, such as the leads under my desk for my computer. He chewed through the phone connection to the computer but, as I use broadband, that wasn't that big a deal and I have other leads. He seems now to have learned that leads are not to be chewed, which is a great relief.

He brings things to me all the time and lays at my feet, or on them, while he plays with whatever he found. I have to make sure I keep the door to my walkin robe shut or he steals my shoes and any socks he can find. He has his own shoes and socks but of course, other peoples are more fun and banned!

He learned very quickly to chase things and bring them back, which is the retriever instinct in him I imagine. He loves a tummy rub and a chest rub and I run my hands all over his face, under his chin, over his eyes and he accepts that as part of our relationship. He is becoming a beautiful quiet dog, but when he wants to play and has a playmate, like my grand-daughter, he has endless energy and nortiness too.

So that's Shaye, my new little wuppie friend. Scrubber would have loved him as he was very friendly with other dogs and Shaye is very friendly too, always looking for a game of chase or punch-ups. If you are thinking of a mate, and don't want a small dog, then give the Golden Retriever some consideration. They aren't used as seeing eye dogs without a good reason and I can attest to the fact that Shaye is well worth the effort and time needed to help him become what he will be eventually. He is very loyal and loves to be around people. His time outside he isn't that fussed about except to chew a bone or sit in his pool. He much prefers to be where I am and that puts a smile on my face.

I learned something from the vet, and from reading on the internet about the Golden Retriever, that they should not be exercised by walking until they are fully grown. I used to take Scrubbie for long walks and my sons would run with him. No wonder he had arthritis! I know now that the only exercise a puppy needs is playtime as they know when they have had enough and it's time for a rest after play. We humans take them for walks thinking we are doing them a good turn, when actually we can be doing them a lot of harm. Until their bones have fully grown they are susceptible to hip dysplasia and arthritis later in life, and skeletel problems, and all these things, as well as overdosing them with calcium, are caused often by their human mates. They keep walking even if they are hurting because they are doing what we want them to. I guess if a dog sits down during a walk (you see people dragging them along on their leads) he is telling you that he is hurting and he doesn't want to walk anymore. So my plans to walk with Shaye are on the backburner. It's okay to take them for a short, very short, strolls on the lead now and then.

I take him for rides in the car and he knows now to put his feet up on the front seat so I can lift him in. He is quite at home in the car, looks around a lot, or goes to sleep. Wherever I can take him I will, just as I did with Scrubber, so being happy in the car is important.

Until next time, take care and keep smiling.

Vena

Summer in Sydney

2006-01-10T02:13:00.000-08:00

It's Tuesday 10 January 2006, 9.15 pm daylight saving time in Sydney. The day has been long, and hot, with the temperature at 6.00 pm outside in the shade, a humid, horrible 39 degrees celcius. I hate summer; it seems to me as I get older. that summer is the longest season we have. Spring starts out hot usually and ends up like summer would be in other places. Then along comes December. and the weather just gets hotter and more humid by the day.

According to a report I read recently we experienced the hottest year on record in 2005. Winter wasn't really all that cold, with just a couple of frosts. No rain probably made a big difference to the temperature. Winter to me would be a perfect summer. I could still get sunburnt on a winter's day if I spent too long out in the sun. We have been on water restrictions for months as Warragamba Dam drops lower and lower. Most of the rain we get in Sydney seems to fall near the coast, with little or none in the catchment area. The ideal situation would be to knock down some of the houses on the coastline and build a reservoir. After all, can we live without fresh water? No, but we can live without the mass of houses built along the coast. But now I sound like I'm jealous because I live inland, about 60 kilometres from the coast.

I had an aunt who lived near the beach. She never went to the beach; she never sat on the sand and watched the waves roll in, or breathed in that wonderful sea air, or smelled the aromas of the water. I bet if you surveyed those that live in close proximity to our beaches, a large percentage of them would agree they rarely go near the water. And so here we all sit in our homes, with pools if we can afford them, out in the heat at the foot of the Blue Mountains, dreaming of living near the beach, or at least having a holiday there. We live near the catchment where it hardly ever rains. Warragamba Dam is now closed to visitors as work is carried out. So we can't even go there to gaze at the water and have a picnic anymore. The Nepean River is just a ghost of what it used to be, as are most of the waterways around Sydney.

When I was a kid we would go swimming of a weekend in whatever river we happened to be spending a happy family Sunday near. The water was pristine, and the banks were clean and some were even sandy. The creeks warbled along over flat stones that we loved to pick up and toss, watching them skim along the top of the water. The winner was the person whose stone skimmed the furtherest. There was no fear of broken glass in the water, of used needles, condoms, plastic bags and other refuse. You could swim at night with no lights and have no fears about what might be in the water. Those days were fast disappearing when my children were born, and the places I had swum in I wouldn't take my children to. No longer can you fish around Sydney unless you are just in it for the sport, or love to kill things. We are warned not to eat the fish and prawning has been banned in Sydney Harbour because of the toxins found in the prawns. What a wonderful world the last couple of generations have made for those yet to be born and those already living here.

I think about today, in Sydney, and understand why there are such problems with the young. Not only can't they find work, but they have no recreational activities either like I grew up with. We lived in town and yet we lived on acreage. That land now would have probably 10 houses on it, all built so close together that you might as well knock down the fences and the outer walls of neighbouring houses and all live under one roof. We had old pushbikes and spent our weekends having Redex trials in the scrub at the back of the house. We would pack sandwiches and a drink and disappear for the day. There was no fear of rapists or weirdos. The only thing that happened to me was I managed to collect a slug in my face from a gun fired over a fence. The local Constable visited the boy concerned and confiscated his air gun. End of story. Now I guess my parents would sue his parents.

When I left High School I continued my education at TAFE for another year full-time. Most of the boys who finished High School the same year as I did, attended the TAFE college as apprentices. They were already employed. Every young person who wanted to work could get a job in the Government. Depending on how you fared in the entrance exam, there would be a choice of jobs. Young males could go straight into apprenticeships. Those young men are now approaching the age of retirement with no one to take their places as tradesmen. For years there has been only a token apprenticeship scheme with the Government setting down guidelines for the number of apprentices a business is obliged to take on. This depends on the company's workforce of skilled tradesmen and is worked out on a ratio. No longer do we have young men learning tradesmen skills unless they are very lucky.

For every apprenticeship on offer, hundreds of young, and mature age, males and females apply. It's a sad indictment on our society when we bring in skilled workers from overseas because we have very few young tradesmen/women coming up through the apprenticeship scheme. Where did it all go wrong? Who decided that it was best for the economy to stop training and start shipping in workers? Didn't anyone ever consider what it would do to the self esteem of the young, and not so young, when they realised that they may never hold down a permanent job in their lifetimes? One day all of this will come back to bite society and we will all pay the price. Already there are stirrings. People are beginning to fight back, or try to. Laws are being changed to keep these people down where the powers to be have decided they should be kept. People power may well overcome force in the days to come.

People by the hundreds are leaving the city, or working on a plan to do so soon. They are tired of the ratrace, tired of the traffic, the noise, the pollution, the one sided laws, the melting pot of races that isn't turning into the wonderful brew it was supposed to. They are heading for places away from cities; either to the country to start small family farms, or to the seaside. Many are heading west, right across the continent, to Western Australia. There they find a lifestyle they can afford without being mortgaged to the hilt, a lifestyle that allows them much less stress, and a state with less taxes than those on the east coast.

For those who grew up in Sydney in the 50's, this is no longer a place they wish to be. The friendliness has almost gone. People rarely smile. Shoppers are treated like they are being done a favour, not the other way around. Every day, no matter where you go, there is this feeling of tension in the air. Most people show the stress of life on their faces and their big homes and flash cars don't do a thing to erase that stress that is etched in the lines on young and older faces alike.

So, to cut a long story short, I'm so grateful I grew up in the world I did. We didn't have much, but then we had so much more than society has today. We had family and a family life where respect didn't have to be earned, it was the right of parents to expect respect, and the right of teachers, and employers. I grew up in a strict environment in a lot of ways and I probably resented some of it too, but when I look around me now, when I hear the way people speak to their children, and the way children speak to everyone they single out, I'm grateful for that strictness. I bet today's kids would have loved to grow up when I did. But they will never know about the things that I know, and they will never experience the things that I experienced. And their children yet to be born will know even less of the good things and more of the bad.

As I step off my soapbox, have a great night.

Vena McGrath

2006 - The New Year Looms

2005-12-30T00:01:00.000-08:00

It's Friday 30 December 2005. Sydney Australia is feeling the heat. It's pushing to 40c here where I live, near Penrith, and we have been told to expect 39c tomorrow and 43c on New Year's Day, Sunday. The heat is oppressive and the elderly are suffering. I imagine the very young are as well. Plenty of water is the go and if possible, staying indoors with fans or air conditioner cooling.

I spent the day out and about. My son flew out of Sydney at 12.50 pm, returning to his new place of residence, Geraldton Western Australia. He had a flight on Virgin Blue to Perth and then a much smaller plane from Perth to Geraldton. I just had a call from him to say he is at the Airport in Perth waiting for the next leg of his trip to begin, in approximately 1 hour's time. It's now 7.05 pm in Sydney. The flight to Perth takes approximately 4 hours and the flight to Geraldton 55 minutes. My daughter, grand-daughter, and I travelled to the airport with my son and stayed there until his plane was in the air. Sad parting for all of us. He has been gone for only 6 months but as we are a close family, it's a big thing to have to part again. He flew over to see his father who has been gravely ill in hospital. Things have improved enough for him to return to WA although the days ahead for his Dad are dark ones.

It was nice and cool in the airport but once we emerged outside to walk to where the car was parked, the heat was fairly intense, with a hot sun burning down and a hot wind. We were at the Airport for about 1.5 hours and the charge was $18 in the carpark. The M4 cost $2.20 (from Penrith to Auburn) and on the way back, the M5 cost $3.30. We took the different route back as I decided to visit my aging Aunt & Uncle. My Uncle had a melanoma removed 18 months ago and now has been told the cancer has spread around his body. He looks very frail and it appears that the New Year for my family will have some of the same as the old year, with the death of relatives.

In 2005 I lost an Uncle, an Aunt, and my Mother just before Christmas. My ex husband is in hospital with both his legs amputated almost to the groin and my three 'kids' have spent the Christmas period visiting him and anguishing over his condition, and there have been many angry outbursts. I stand on the sideline and help when I'm asked. My daughter now has to look into, and put her father's name down, in care facilities. If, within the period the hospital has designated to find such a facility for him one is not found, then they will place him wherever he can be placed. If the family don't agree to this then he will be discharged to their care. So much for private health cover and our system of care. He is 63 years old and has been assessed high care, which means he won't be able to return to his home. What a way to end a year, what a way to start a new year.

Seeing my Aunt & Uncle brought to mind how fast the years go and how quickly my age group, 60, will be where they are now. It's frightening. Just as well when we are young we don't think about these things, thinking we are indestructable and everyone over 30 is old. Once you reach 30, the years fly, filled with family, children, the home, work, survival itself. The children grow up and fly out of the nest; you look around and realise that you are now on countdown. You see that you won't be able to earn a living for that many more years, nor will you want to, and you start to worry about how you will make ends meet. If you live alone, you worry about how you will cope.

Perhaps it was best in the days when people didn't live to an old age. They didn't have these worries, weren't a burden to their families. You would think, knowing how old the 'baby boomers' are now, that governments and private organisations would be planning plenty of nursing homes, aged care facilities, retirement villages etc., so that people can be looked after. I consider that having paid taxes probably since age 15, all of these people deserve to be looked after by their government. We should all be allowed to retire and to live a slower lifestyle, not be expected to keep on working till we die at our desks and therefore don't go onto a pension.

I for one don't have much superannuation as I left work for 14 years to bring up my family and, due to a marriage breakdown and subsequent divorce, I had to give up one job, temp for a couple of years until I secured another permanent job. My superannuation payout won't keep me for long at all, unlike those who have been in the one job all their working lives. The mind spins, the fear begins. Where will it all end and where will I be and what circumstances will I be in, in say 10 years' time. Ah well such is life, and as one of our 'great' Prime Ministers yelled to the country at one stage, "life was not meant to be easy". One wonders how Malcolm Fraser would know about that one seeing as how he was born into a rich family and probably hasn't worked a hard day in his life nor gone without.

However, one must be optimistic. After all, there is $32 Million up for grabs in Lotto New Year's Eve, and if I could win just a portion of that, I would be happy as. So, I'm going to think positive. Saturday night I could well be smiling from one end of my face to the other, and, if I'm not, then there's always next week.

Keep smiling and have a great New Year with everything good coming your way.

Vena McGrath
December 30, 2005

Christmas/New Year Thoughts

2005-12-27T02:37:00.000-08:00

Christmas has come, and gone, again with some speed. After all the preparations, perhaps months of hoarding away gifts as you find them for friends or loved ones, it's all over. I always think it's a shame once Christmas arrives as the pre-Christmas period is one of anticipation. Not for gifts, well not as far as I'm concerned. I'm more interested in having a couple of weeks break from the robotic routine of going to work 5 days a week. It doesn't matter if I wear makeup or not, I can spend the day in a big Tshirt and nothing much else and no-one cares. My feet are bare, the way I like them to be. I get familiar with my home again, spending 24 hours a day inside it's walls and outside in the yard, having a swim if I feel like it. There's no need to plan any of my days; whatever I feel like doing, I do, and if I don't feel like doing anything, then so be it.

I love the non routineness of the break, and I mourn it when it's gone again for another year. It seems that I spend most of the year thinking about the end of it. For the last 6 years I've had breaks of a week or so perhaps 3 times through the year, travelling to Queensland to see my mother. But these breaks were never holidays as my time away had to be scheduled; arrangements to have my pets looked after, deciding whether to leave my car parked near the airport or to have someone drive me in and then pick me up on my return, arranging to hire a car in Brisbane at the airport, booking flights, booking accommodation if I wasn't staying with family. On arrival I would pick up the car, drive to wherever I was staying, have a short chat, then go and visit my mother. That would be the start of a day by day depression that lingered with me after I returned home. For all the efforts I made to fly to see my mother, she showed no recognition mostly that I was even there. She rarely said my name and in fact called me by her sister's name. When I would tell her I had to return to Sydney and wouldn't be seeing her for a while, she would look at me blankly. No kiss goodbye, no sadness, just nothing.

My breaks at Christmas haven't included flying to Brisbane as it's too hot to fly north and it's also school holidays so everything is more expensive, and there are too many people everywhere. That's why I always look forward to this break because it's a chance to spend time with my little family, and a chance to veg out at home. I don't go to the sales because I know that most of what is on sale is junk the retailers couldn't flog off during the year. A lot of the so called specials are actually the same price, or even dearer, than they were during the year! I know this to be true as I used to work in retail and I knew the prices of some things before the sales and the price of them during the sales. Total ripoff for the unsuspecting looking for a bargain. The only real bargains I feel are in manchester and it is a great time to buy sheets, towels, beach towels etc. Anything else, forget it.

There will be no more visits to Brisbane to see my Mum as she passed over on 10 December. I still have cousins up there, and my brother and his family, but there won't be the need to go up every few months ever again. I guess if I were truthful I would admit that I will miss going away every few months. I have this adventure gene in me and I love to fly away. Each time I go to the airport to drop someone off, or pick someone up, I get this strong urge to go get on a plane and take off.

The New Year is looming but for me it doesn't hold any great excitement. It's just another day in another year of uncertainty. My aunts and uncles are aging and 2006 is shaping up to being a sad year for some of my cousins who will have to face what I have this year. For my ex husband, who has had both his legs amputated above the knee, the year ahead, if he survives, will be one of trauma, anger, despair and frustration. He, along with many others in our society, will perhaps wish that 2005 had been his last year in this world. It makes you wonder why so many people who you don't think deserve to suffer, do suffer in cruel pain before they die, and yet others who don't deserve to breathe, live on seemingly untouched by hardship. One of the frustrations of life, an unanswerable question ... why?

May the New Year bring you peace and fulfilment and may you make others less fortunate travel their roads easier by a smile or a helping hand. The richest man in Ausralia died last night - Kerry Packer. I am now richer than Kerry Packer; he has nothing and I have a few dollars. Money can't buy health, and his death proves that you can't take it with you. You might as well have little as having a lot doesn't give you eternal life nor can it save you if you are terminally ill. Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone.

Take Care & Happy New Year 2006.

Vena McGrath
27 December 2005

Penny Wort - The Elixir of Life

2005-12-25T18:36:00.000-08:00

‘GOTA KOLÁ - aka ‘Penny Wort’ in Australia
“ 2 leaves a day keeps old age away!”

GOTA KOLÁ (commonly known as Penny wort) energizes and rejuvenates the brain and body. Penny wort, a tiny leafed, low-growing plant, has been called the “Elixir or Life”.

Research herbalists have called Penny wort the finest of all herb tonics and nutrients. It appears, they say, to have no equal in the treatment of general debility and decline, digestion is strengthened, and foods better utilised, and the process of metabolism increased.

This low-growing ground cover herb has been used by the Sinhalese, and the people of India who live along the Indian Ocean, for many hundreds of years, because they believe that it contains remarkable longevity qualities. They say that Penny wort will increase the span of life 50 years by developing the brain, thus making it incapable of breaking down for a long period of time.

The leaves act as a brain food. 2-4 leaves eaten raw each day will strengthen and revitalise worn out bodies and brains to a remarkable degree and will prevent brain fag and nervous breakdown. “Two leaves a day will keep old age away” – this is the claim of the ancient Sinhalese.

It is the belief of the Sinhalese and of the Indians, that one or two leaves are necessary daily to bring about a gradual return to health and strength, provided the body is exposed to the sun for a time each day.

It is said that if the leaves are eaten daily, disorders like poor memory, rheumatism, arthritis, neuritis, nervous breakdown, abscesses, blood pressure improve. The natives of India use the plant medically too as a diuretic or stimulant to the kidneys and bladder as well as a blood purifier. Gota Kola also has been found to be a safe aphrodisiac.

This rejuvenating herb has also been used medically for:

Impotence
Endurance
Menopause
Fluid retention
Age spots
Depression
To strengthen the heart
Combat stress
Nervous and mental problems
Senility
Skin problems
As a thyroid stimulant
Abscesses
To improve reflexes
Help the body defend itself against various toxins
And, in cancer treatment.

It was renowned Chinese herbalist and Professor, Li Chung Yun, who lived to the age of 256 years using this herb that awoke our western world as to its values.

Li Chung Yun was born in 1677 and in 1933 the New York Times announced the death of this remarkable oriental, whose life span had reached over 2.5 centuries. His age was officially recorded by the Chinese Government.

At 200 years of age, Professor Li gave a course of lectures for 20 weeks (each lecture lasting 3 hours) on longevity, at a Chinese University. Those who saw him declared that he did not appear older than a man of 52. Professor Li outlived 23 wives and that is perhaps proof enough of his age. He stood straight and strong and had his own natural hair and teeth.

After Li Chung Yun’s death, the French Government, under Professor Menier of Paris, undertook extensive studies and experiments with Penny Wort to see what was so special about this plant. They found that it contained an unknown vitamin, which they called Vitamin X, the ‘youth vitamin’. It was called this because it was found to have marvellous rejuvenating effects on the brain and endocrine glands.

Another French biochemist, Jules Lepinė, conducted an examination of the herb and after extensive study, found that it has rare tonic properties which have a marked energizing effect on nerves and brain cells and keeps them functioning well.

Many people who take Penny wort daily tell how they no longer feel brain fatigue and feel physically well and energetic. One person who took the herb for 6 weeks said she did not fee fatigued in spite of a busy schedule. She stated she was more relaxed and arthritic pain had gone. This person, whose fingers were quite knobbly and bent from arthritis, could not praise Penny wort enough. For years she had not been able to remove the rings from her fingers and, after taking the herb for several weeks, was able to again.

Penny wort (Centella Asiatic or hydrocotle asiatica) is a low-growing ground cover with a leaf the size of a thumb nail and with a serrated edge. It has a long tap root and matts over the ground. It grows in sun, but will thrive in shade and grows taller. If grown in shade, the flavour is milder too. It is propagated by seed or root division. The flower is extremely small, in fact hardly visible between the leaves.

Penny wort can be eaten straight from the bush, added to salads, or chopped up at the last minute as a garnish on a meal. If chopped finely as a garnish and added to meat or savoury dishes, even the youngest child will not object. Leaves can be used fresh or dried as tea, and sweetened with honey if desired. It is important to take Penny wort daily and for several weeks before any marked beneficial effect is noticed. Some people find it helpful, until they have the habit ingrained, to make a reminder note and tape it to the refrigerator or kitchen table, to remind them to take their leaves daily.

This amazing tonic plant is rich in chlorophyll. Vitamins A,B,C,G,K and particularly, the mineral magnesium.

Plants and seeds are available from nurseries and some larger stores with garden departments where plants and seeds are sold.

This article was distributed by Shipards Herb Nursery, Nambour Qld Australia, date unknown.

Postscript: I have found it difficult to find the plants in Sydney although my daughter did find one plant at a nursery near Richmond. Fortunately an Aunt has Penny Wort growing, having obtained plants from my brother in Queensland, and she has potted some for me.

Vena McGrath – December 26, 2005

A Christmas Message

2005-12-23T14:00:00.000-08:00

A Christmas Wish
Good Morning to all my friends and visitors.

It's Christmas Eve in Sydney Australia and at 8.21 am Daylight Saving Time, it's 35 degrees celcius already (in the shade)! We are expecting a top of 38, but where I live, close to the bottom of the Blue Mountains, we usually can expect it to be hotter than that. It's very humid so the chance of being energetic isn't high.

My Christmas this year is one of mixed feelings. My mother passed away on the 10th December, two weeks ago today. In her passing there was sadness, and yet there was relief that she was no longer in the limbo land of dementia and more importantly, her family no longer had to live with the knowledge that she had gangrene in her limbs and that it was spreading. My mother died without dignity, although I am told she died peacefully, with morphine being administered over a three week period that I imagine helped her to slip away quietly and with no pain. The only good thing about dementia is that the disease allowed her to be relatively pain free in spite of what was going on with her body.

My youngest son, who is 36, lives in Geraldton Western Australia, with his lady Helen. Geraldton is approximately 4,500 kilometres from where I live, so it's a long way from home. Aaron's father, my ex husband, has been ill for all of this year with circulation problems. He also suffers from emphysema which is affecting his heart. Earlier this year he was taken to hospital by our daughter suffering extreme pain which was diagnosed as a blood clot in the groin. He was hospitalised and operated on to clear the arteries of the clot. Then he was watched for a few weeks. His right toes began to blacken and he was told that he would need a toe amputated. The gangrene progressed and the amputation of a toe became amputation of more toes, then a foot, then a leg.

Finally after weeks of intense pain and morphine for relief of the pain that sent him into hallucinations and a dark place no one wants to see a loved one in, they amputated his right leg below the knee. To cut a long, sad, painful story short, he now has both legs amputated, has undergone surgery 7 times, 4 times in the last 4 weeks, and the legs have been amputated as far as they can be. I am horrified, distressed, saddened. My two sons and my daughter are in deep shock. I flew my youngest son, Aaron, over from WA yesterday, his first flight, and picked him up from the airport late yesterday. My daughter was with me waitng for him at the airport. I took them straight to the hospital and sat outside in the car for 1.5 hours while they visited their Dad. When they came back out we hugged in a group and they cried for him. He was screaming in pain, hallucinating, thought he was going home, worrying about his shirt, about catching a train. He thought Aaron was our other son, John.

We came back to my home a sad family and my partner Bryan had dinner cooked for us. We ate at 10.15 pm, which wasn't late for Aaron as in WA it would have been 7.15 pm. I had a troubled night, tossed and turned in the heat, and because of my thoughts for my kids' dad. They have one wish for him, and that is he goes to sleep and to his resting place. Aaron is troubled also as he had to leave Helen alone in WA for Christmas. They had their dinner planned and their weekend. Helen is now alone. It was important for Aaron to come back to see his father as it's really not expected that he will live very long. It was also important for him to be here with his sister now, as it is important that my eldest son, John, be here for her as well.

My children have been told that their father's illness has been caused by excessive alcohol consumption over many years and excessive smoking over many years. As a smoker myself I now see what could lie ahead if I don't kick the habit. My New Year resolution, and I never make them, will be to give up smoking and I will start the process of weaning on New Year's Day. As much as I love to smoke, I now see what it can and does do to the body and what my ex is going through is horrifying and enough to scare anyone off smokes.

So, whilst my Christmas Day will be complete with my three darlings around me, this isn't Christmas for any of us. We will try our best though to make it the happiest day we can under the circumstances, for my grand-daughter who is 11, and count our blessings that we are together and that we are, as far as we know anyhow, all well. The missing link is my son John who is driving down this morning from Orange, west of Sydney, some 3 hours drive time. Once he arrives I will breathe a sigh of relief.

I wish you all the very best for Christmas and may your New Year bring you peace and happiness. And for those who are spending Christmas with sadness, as my family and I are, all I can wish for you is closure, acceptance, and perhaps relief as your loved ones are released from the pain of this life.

Take care, drive carefully, and see you all in the New Year, 2006. Vena

2005-12-10T04:30:00.000-08:00

Tonight my Mother passed away in the Nursing Home she has lived in since 2000. My Mother actually left her body quite some time ago I believe, with just a remnant of her being remaining for the time it took for her release to come. She died peacefully with a nurse holding her hand. I received a call 15 minutes before she passed over to say she was failing fast but it was too late for me to do a thing about getting to her. It was the one thing I really wanted, to be with her at the end. I visited her 3 weeks ago for 8 days, having been called to her bedside as the end was near. But Mum had other ideas and I had to return home, not wanting to, but having commitments I needed to be here for. If I could have I would have stayed but as there was no way anyone could say how long it would be, my options weren't favouring my stay.

I was bringing in the washing this afternoon, in a howler of a wind, grabbing the clothes before they blew out of my hands across the yard. My mind suddenly was with my Mother and I knew a call was near. I felt she had died and a voice told me I would be going back to Brisbane on Tuesday. I came inside and told my partner Bryan about what I had experienced and then I waited. My daughter and my granddaughter were visiting me, and my son-in-law, and we were in the kitchen making up one of my mother's Christmas puddings from a recipe of hers I had found in the cupboard a couple of days ago. The phone rang; it was my brother telling me Mum wasn't well and to expect a call either tonight or tomorrow. My cousin rang to ask after my mother and I had no sooner hung up the phone than it rang again. It was 15 minutes after the first call from my brother. Our mother had died peacefully; neither of us were with her.

We talked for a little while about Mum and about how we both felt and then we said our goodbyes until my brother makes the arrangements and calls me. At that time my daughter, grand-daughter and my eldest son and I will drive north 1100 kilometres to the service. My mother's wish was that her ashes be placed in my eldest brother's grave, along with my father's ashes that I have safely here with me. Her ashes will be returned to Sydney and I will arrange a small service at the graveside for Mum and Dad.

The end of part of my life occurred tonight with the passing of my Mother. Both my parents have departed this life and now there are just memories. Tonight we celebrated my Mother's life by having dinner together and drinking a bottle of wine, by candlelight. Mum would have loved that and the table looked as she would have had it herself. We had a photo of Mum and Dad on the table with us and we toasted their lives and our love for them.

I'm not devastated by my Mother's death as I have known for weeks it was going to happen. I just didn't know when. She had dementia in an advanced stage, and she had gangrene in both feet and a finger. As far as I'm concerned Mum was already gone and no doubt was hovering above her body wondering why her heart wouldn't stop beating and release her from the hell she was in. My brother, although he isn't what anyone would consider religious, told me tonight he prayed to God to take Mum and he did.

So tonight I sit here late, thinking about many things, and I guess most especially about how I knew my Mother was about to die. It's not a strange thing to happen to me because I often know things before they happen. I'm glad I told Bryan because if I had said it later, then I wouldn't have been believed most likely. I felt her dying although I shook my head and thought I was just wishing it would happen so she would be out of pain. It will be interesting to see now if I head north on Tuesday.

My Mother is now at peace, I hope. She has suffered enough, she deserves peace.

She is not gone, she is just away.

The Curse of Dementia

2005-12-06T04:40:00.000-08:00

6 December 2005 – Today was just another day in my life. Up early, off to work, doing my best to concentrate on the jobs at hand whilst my mind wandered to a place where there is no light, no hope, just total frustration.

My mother, aged 88, resides in a nursing home Wellington Point, on the coast out from Brisbane. Wellington Point is a lovely place and, as you could judge by the name, the main street in Wellington Point leads down to the point, where Moreton Bay is on both sides of the tract of land. That part of Wellington Point is picturesque; a place where fishermen take their boats out to try their luck, where others fish from the small jetty, and where countless others sit on the grassed areas either inside gazebo like constructions or on the grass, and gaze across the Bay.

The tides are quite huge in this part of the world and can be treacherous. The water recedes quickly leaving many a hapless fisherman sitting in his boat on a sandbar, stranded until the tide turns and he can be freed. If you walk out to the edge of the water at low tide and the tide changes, you have to run to try and keep ahead of the water as it rushes back to shore. Wellington Point is also a haven for people of all ages who flock there with those kites on skis that fly across the Bay in the wind. There’s a restaurant that’s open long hours and it’s a beautiful place to sit and eat and drink and just gaze.

The nursing home isn’t on the point; it’s about 5 kms south of there (I think). I’m not from Brisbane so my sense of direction isn’t very great. It’s a shame the nursing home doesn’t have a water view as I’m sure it would enhance the lives of the inhabitants who all go there for the few years or months or weeks before they pass over to the next life.

When my mother became a prisoner there, in 2000, she had mild dementia. She had suffered a series of strokes in September 2000 and was assessed 24 hour care. As most people would realise, there are few families that can afford the money or the time to care for a loved one on a 24-hour basis. That’s where my brother and I found ourselves; in a position of having to allow our mother to be committed to a nursing home for the rest of her life.

When I first visited the nursing home I was appalled. It was in a very old Queensland mansion type home and because of the wooden floors and the age of the building, the smell of stale urine was always in the air. Visiting there was certainly no pleasure, living there must have been a nightmare. My mother wanted to go home most of the time during her first year there, and yet there was nothing my brother or I could do about having her go home to either of our homes. I lived in another state, in Sydney NSW, and although my brother lived quite close to Wellington Point, he knew he couldn’t take care of our mother. She had to be lifted as her ability to walk was limited after the strokes, and he knew that he couldn’t handle it. Two people always moved her around at the home.

In the beginning Mum was alert, taking in a lot that went on around her. She wasn’t like most of the others who sat around with their mouths open, eyes closed, like they were doped out of their minds. She watched the traffic of people who passed by her bed and she knew who did what and when in the home. The conditions were not the best, and yet we counted ourselves lucky that she had found somewhere to be placed that was close to my brother, as many people were being shunted off to homes that were an hour or more from their loved ones.

No one appeared to have any privacy, just a curtain pulled across between the beds on a veranda. What the conditions were like in other areas of the home I don’t know; I didn’t venture to find out. I would fly up to Brisbane, stay with a cousin, and visit my mother a few times over a few days before I had to fly home again. She was doing okay in the beginning and would read the magazines I bought for her. She loved flowers so I always arrived with the brightest coloured flowers I could buy. She had a TV set and watched and actually enjoyed watching shows that she knew.

Those days were short lived. With each visit I noticed my mother deteriorating. Where once she was alert and interested in her surroundings, she was now withdrawn and becoming more withdrawn each time. She rarely spoke or made any indication that she knew me. A new nursing home had been built just down the road from the old one, and now Mum had a lovely room of her own, with a window looking out on a garden, and a bathroom she shared with the person in the next room. She wasn’t reading anymore by this time, and she wasn’t doing much walking anymore either. My brother bought her a ubeaut airmchair that is electronic and would place her in a standing position with the push of a button. It didn’t get used much at all except as a place for her to curl up in the tv room where all the inhabitants were lined up daily so they were out of their beds. They stared at the TV, I’m sure not really knowing what they were looking at, and then at other times they would all be asleep, mouths open, in a state of comatose.

Each visit to see my mother became a nightmare for me. There were times when I would be at my cousin’s home for a day, even two days, before I would get up the courage to go and see Mum. When I did go, I couldn’t stay long. The walls closed in on me together with the despair and total frustration I felt at a situation I couldn’t change. I didn’t want her there and yet where else could she go where she was looked after 24 hours a day? She didn’t know me and in fact, thought I was her sister. She asked me how our parents were (my grandparents) and of course they had been gone for many years.

She called me by my aunt’s name, Joy, and she even showed me a photo of my aunt and uncle and said, “See, I have a photo of you and Doug”. When I tried to talk to her about my childhood she closed down the shutters. When I spoke of my children, the children she spent so much time with and loved, she thought they were her sister and brothers. I would always return to Sydney depressed and guilty that I was so useless to my mother and that I was so insignificant in her memories that she had totally forgotten who I was.

My brother, who visited our mother regularly, became her brother Eric. He and my mother had always been so close and I guess if any satisfaction could be gained from any of it, it was that she had forgotten who he was as well. As each visit came around, communication with my mother disappeared. I sat in her room with her, or in the TV room staring at the walls. Sometimes she would look at me with dead eyes, other times she would just look. Most of the time she looked away from me and would even turn her head away. If the TV were on in her room she would stare at it the whole visit and never look at me. When I first started to visit she would wave to me as I walked down the corridor. Now there was nothing.

In 2003 Mum, in her many attempts to escape from her bed (forgetting she could no longer walk) fell heavily onto the floor and broke her hip and her arm. My daughter and I flew to the hospital as soon as we received word of the accident and we stayed a few days. They intended to operate but because of her state of health, the operation was delayed. We returned home and some days later her hip operation was carried out. She had a broken arm for weeks before they attempted that operation. Remarkably, as close as she looked to death when I visited her before the operations, she recovered and her wounds healed quickly. Now she was almost totally bedridden as it was impossible to get a woman her age, and in her frail state, back up on her feet.

She was now lifted around with a big belt that went around her middle. It had two handles, one each side, and a nurse would get on each side of her and lift her. Once her arm healed she could once again feed herself, but the decline in her health began in earnest. Each visit from then on was a bigger nightmare for me. She was wasting away before my eyes, and with about three month spaces between visits, I noticed it dramatically. There was little if any communication then. She suffered another stroke before, during or after the fall and lost the ability to swallow. She had to be taught to swallow and gradually she spoke a few words again, a very few.

Three weeks ago tomorrow I received a phone call at work, mid morning, from my brother. He told me our mother was not expected to live long and that perhaps I would want to go to see her. I packed my bag at work, excused myself, and left. I rang my daughter on the way home and later that day the two of us climbed into my car and started the 1100 km journey to hopefully see Mum before she passed over. My one wish was that I could be with her when she left, as I didn’t want her to be alone. In spite of all the differences between us throughout my lifetime, now was a time to forget all that and be there for her. We left home at 4.30 pm Sydney time on the Wednesday and arrived at the nursing home at 4.30 am Queensland time (5.30 am Sydney time) on Thursday. My daughter rang the home a few times during the course of the trip and was told that they couldn’t say that Mum would be alive when we arrived.

We saw Mum as soon as we arrived and then pulled some chairs together and laid down best we could to try and get some sleep. We saw the doctor at 9.00 am and he told us it wouldn’t be long, but how long he couldn’t say. We visited Mum twice a day most days for eight days and some days she looked good, other days she looked terrible. It came to the crunch. I had to get back home and to work and my daughter had to get back home to her family and her work. And so, with heavy hearts, we packed up and drove home. I felt that during the eight days we had made contact with Mum. She actually held our hands and squeezed them, something she hadn’t done for a long, long time. She seemed as though she was pleased to see us walk in, even though there was no communication from her. She watched us quite a lot when she was awake, and if I was sitting in the corner of her room and my daughter was standing by the bed, I would see her moving her head so she could see me.

While we were visiting Mum we were told she had gangrene in her right foot, in a toe, and that it needed to be amputated. But the doctor told me he would not be doing the amputation as it would be too cruel when there was no future for my mother, she was after all dying. I despaired about her being left to die with her foot rotting off and I believed, and still do, that the kinder thing would be to prepare her for the operation and hopefully she would go to sleep and not wake up again. I was told emphatically no, it would not be done. Last week I learned that my mother has gangrene in her other foot, and much more advanced that in the foot where it’s in a toe. I was told today that she is being administered morphine so that the nurses can turn her in the bed and tend to her without causing her extreme pain. Again there is no chance of operating.

I know I’m not the only person to have to live through something like this and I won’t be the last. But I ask why? She is dying, there is no hope, and yet they let her lie there rotting from the feet up until she dies of natural causes. How can they call that natural? If she was a pet animal she would be humanely put down. But she is a human and therefore we can’t be humane.

I tried to speak to my brother about our mother and how I felt, but he became very upset, angry even, at me. How could I possibly think that putting her through an operation was the answer? I told him that as he was the eldest, and he was there close by Mum, it had to be his call. He wasn’t happy with that either but I had no intention of having an argument with him as I knew, from my visit and spending the eight days with him, that he wasn’t handling things very well at all. I didn’t wish to add to his pain knowing that both options are not options at all.

My mother would be devastated if she knew what she looked like now. She is like a child, a baby even. She is fed, bathed in bed, changed, her nappy changed, and she sleeps. That is all her life comprises of and they call it the right to life? I call it the right to die with dignity and without pain when there is no hope.

When will the world decide that euthanasia is acceptable and indeed, humane? I guess not until a long time after my mother dies and many more like her. I can fully understand now why people who realise they are terminally ill take their own lives. They are brave for everyone else who is a coward, and if there is a God, then I hope he blesses them with eternal peace. A nursing home is really just a waiting place for death, and those that reside therein have already left their bodies. My Mother left quite some time ago. The body I visit sure isn’t hers.

God save my mother because no one else is going to do it for her.

Vena McGrath
6 December 2005

Love Bytes

2005-10-21T23:32:00.000-07:00

Comment for RADAR re Love Bytes
The Sydney Morning Herald
19 October 2005

Love Bytes

As a once 'addicted to chat' female who also experimented with online dating websites, I found the article interesting for a couple of reasons.

It was clear to me that the writer has never personally been involved in either chat online or dating websites. This, of course, lends itself to people coming out of the woodwork to comment, and a way for the writer to perhaps find out some of that information not readily available.

I too, have been approached by journalists for information about chat and dating, and the repercussions primarily, but their ultimate aims were to have me provide other contacts for them to interview to produce a 'grab' story. I know only too well, that the people I used to spend time online with, would never speak to anyone they don't know and trust about their experiences online.

I appeared on Today Tonight and spent over two hours being interviewed for a segment on online dating. As an author of a novel about my life online that was about to be released in the USA, I was promised promotion for the book in the segment. The cameraman painstakingly took footage of the book in strobe light, and I was impressed. Not so when the story hit the airwaves. What I saw was not what I expected and I learned a good lesson about the media. There was not a single mention of the book; however they did use my real name. They also used a stand-in actor in part of the segment about me that angered me immensely. The story was what I regarded as absolute trash, and the fact that I was a part of it made me shudder.

People who use the Internet frequently, who become involved in whatever way with the opposite or same sex, are not going to come out and tell their stories freely. Anonymity is the name of the game online and that's exactly what most people want.

The 30% quoted of married people online is way below the mark and I would put it closer to 90% of the males over 30 online are married. Women fall into a lower percentage, but many married women chat during the day to fill in their hours alone, and some extend it into the nights when their husbands are either at work or in bed.

If writers of articles on online chat and dating spent some time online themselves they would see that at night, for instance, the married and flirting rooms are full of people. The name of the room has little to do with what is actually going on in those rooms for a large proportion of the chatters.

A room of say 60 people, where maybe only 6 are typing on the screen, says a lot for what is going on in private. Not with everyone, no, but the majority yes. Enter one of those rooms with a suitable nickname, and the private conversation requests will astound you, both in the sheer number you receive, and the comments made about what the other person wants from you.

Cyber sex is a priority for many people online. It fills a void in their lives where they can fantasise with a willing, anonymous partner, and go to bed feeling a bit better than they did earlier. This participation often leads to a meeting in reality and can, and does, then lead to marriage breakdowns and broken hearts.

These people believe it is their right to share intimacy with strangers while their partners are asleep, or at work, or out for the evening. They don't see it as a new way to cheat, as they have no fear of being caught and losing their safe lives.

The Internet is another form of society, and I repeat, an anonymous, and insidious one. The owners of dating websites are laughing all the way to the bank as the majority of people using that medium to look for love, are sadly disappointed. Yet they join up in their thousands, in the hope they will find their perfect match in what they consider to be, a safe place.

A large proportion using the medium are looking for free sex, even to the extent of making up lies to tell their spouses so they can escape for a weekend. The sad part is, these people usually hook up with someone who is genuinely lonely and looking for love and affection, and is single.

Manipulation by words online gives the lonely surfer the notion that they may very well have found their soulmate, so they throw caution to the wind and allow themselves to be used by those that have no consciences. Some people can be very persuasive with the written word and, if you are like me for instance, meeting someone online who can string more than two words together, is a definite plus; and of course, a fantastic bait.

The Internet is growing in leaps and bounds as millions come online each year. If you put everyone on an island together that use the Internet in the search for a soulmate, you would have a huge population of people from almost every corner of the globe.

My advice to anyone contemplating entering the world of the Internet in search of love is, be aware, be wary, and beware. Many people have already been hurt, and some are no longer with us, due to liaisons that began online. I personally know of women, young and not so young, who have been raped and stalked by men they met online and then chose to meet in so-called reality. I don't consider the Internet as fantasy; it is a very real and very dangerous place, depending on how you use it and how tuned in you are to people you can't see or hear.

What the Internet brings to the world in other ways is outstanding and I doubt anything will ever replace the good it can, and does do, for people all over the world. But, as in all societies, there is that darkness there. Many never find it and scoff at those that say it exists. I for one can attest with all honesty to the fact that there are some fairly obscene and dangerous things going on under the surface, and some of them I have experienced first-hand, by choice.

Instead of looking for stories to blast across the Internet or newspapers or magazines to grab readers, I believe journalists should start to work in the other direction. They should use the tools they have at their fingertips, and the voice they have, to tell the real story and to make people aware that all in the garden is not so rosy.

Educate people about the Internet. Warn parents about their children being exposed to things they would never allow them to be exposed to if they knew about it. Make the Internet safer, just like many are already trying to do. The Government of Australia, and I imagine Governments of other countries are doing the same, has websites set up for children and parents where information is readily available on the dangers of the Internet and how to handle issues and who to contact if help is needed.

That's my opinion anyhow, for what it's worth, after six years of surfing, three of which were intense and centered on chat and online dating.

Vena

A note to my blog visitors :)

2005-10-18T19:11:00.000-07:00

Thank you to a group of people for taking the time to visit my blog and leave a message. However, I would appreciate it if you want to use my blog as an advertising tool for dating websites etc., that you refrain from doing it. I don't have a very good opinion of dating websites or some of the people who belong to those groups, having met a few myself and having my fingers burned.

I don't wish to appear unfriendly, but if you came here to read anything I wrote then your comments sure didn't show that you did bother to read anything. Just a 'this is a great blog I'll sure visit it again' and then the link to your own business. I find this annoying and in my face and, once again, if you had read anything I wrote, you would have come up with one plus one equals two .... I don't like dating websites.

Thanks again.

Vena

The Devastation in Kashmir

2005-10-09T22:46:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday evening, 10.17 pm, Sydney time. As I sit here at my computer I seem a world away from the tragedy that is Kashmir, as reported in our papers tonight. 30,000 dead, as an estimate, with thousands more suffering probably horrendous injuries, and thousands upon thousands homeless. It's hard to imagine what it must be like for those people. For those mothers and fathers who saw their children off to school and now know they have all died in those schools, what comfort can anyone offer them? As a mother my one fear always was that something would happen to one of my children, or to me, when we were not together. I couldn't have faced that.

I extend my most heartfelt feelings of sadness to the people of those countries affected by this latest world disaster. I know it means little, nothing really to anyone, but it's all I can do. Sitting here in the relative safety of my own life, I have no measure of what it must be like for those people and I thank whoever that I am safe here. The sadness and grief that must be overwhelming those countries is more than I can fathom.

I won't accept that it's an act of someone's God. I am more inclined to wonder at what men are doing to this world of ours. How many nucleur devices have been allowed to be tested both in the atmosphere, and underground, and in how many regions of this world? How can anyone say that these actions are safe and will cause no harm or damage to the earth? Are we all so intellectually lacking that we believe that?

Perhaps it's time for people power to start a wave of revolt against the powers to be who wreak this havoc on our earth. Perhaps it's time that we began to say, "enough is enough, it's time to stop testing devices that you say will never be used". If there is no intention that they ever be used then why do they need to be tested? Maybe it's time to stop being complacent and accepting, and get back to standing up to be counted, as they did in the 60's.

When are the peoples of the world going to realise that there is only so much the earth can stand before it starts to show strain from abuse. It's no different to anything else that exists; stress will eventually break it down and perhaps that's why all these disasters are occurring now; it's simply had all it can take and is cracking under the strain.

I'm no scientist, I'm not even particularly academic or highly intelligent, but I don't think it takes too many brain cells to know that something isn't right and that it's probably a man made illness that our earth is suffering from.

It's too late for the people of Kashmir and for the other countries affected by this disaster, but perhaps it's not too late to stop killing our earth, this beautiful place where we all live. Just look around at the sky, the land, our sun as it rises and sets, cloud formations, the sea, the animals, the people even, and see the beauty. Imagine all that gone. It may well happen and it will no doubt be the fault of man; note I have deleted the human part of man as there is little that is humane about a lot of the people of this earth.

As always, these are my thoughts alone.

Vena

An Australian Movie - The Proposition

2005-10-08T22:35:00.000-07:00

Saturday night, 8 October 2005. Arrived home a short while ago after having visited Penrith Plaza Hoyts Theatres to see 'The Proposition', a new Australian movie starring Guy Pearce.

As is the normal for Australian movies screening in Australia, there weren't many patrons in the theatre and you could choose just about anywhere to sit that you wanted. It's a real shame that we do not support our own creativity, and a sign of a trait in Australians that stems from a long way back. We are the biggest knockers of our own people I'm sure of any country in the world. No matter how hard you try, how well you may do, try and gain recognition here at home and you will soon have your teeth kicked in, and you will be put in your place, or where your fellow Australians believe is your place.

As usual I thoroughly enjoyed the local product. It showed our country for what it was, and really, in the remote areas it was filmed, still is. It's a harsh dry country where only flies should live. Anyone who looks at a map of Australia will see that we all live around the coast, and mostly in the larger cities too. Very few live in the centre, or in the very hot regions up north, or the very cold regions down south.

The film reminded me of another Australian movie I saw a long time ago 'The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith'. It was a raw and cruel movie too, and yet, if you read about our past, then the films are pretty well spot on without creating dramas that didn't exist. Men were cruel in those days, and those who were supposed to be upholding the law, were evil and often worse than any of the so called perpetrators or criminals.

I would imagine that a lot of people wouldn't go to see the movie because of its starkness and the reality of it. Many would choose to believe our past is not like that. I choose to see movies that shock my senses because I know that in the main what they are portraying is a true rendition of what did happen in this country. I'm Irish heritage, and I feel it when I see movies about the Irish families in this country and what they went through to survive. My great grandparents arrived here from Ireland as dirt farmers, and my family history is one of hardship. But no one will ever destroy the Irishness in any of us, not even fourth generation like me.

I recommend this movie to those who aren't afraid to step outside their safety circle, who are thinkers and believers, and who choose to believe that our past should be remembered, as should those that were treated so cruelly. It may be fiction, but this kind of thing happened with regularity. The Aboriginal people were slaughtered, and the white people were slaughtered in retaliation. The English white preyed upon the Irish and others, and that's all part of our history as well. The oppression of the Irish in Ireland travelled to our shores with them, because their lords and masters were over here running this country.

So if you aren't afraid of the sight of fake blood, of mutilated bodies, of raw evil coming from man towards man and woman, then go see the movie. The setting is spectacular, the scenery is savage and yet, in its way, beautiful. It's like Ned Kelly, Jedda, Jimmy Blacksmith all rolled up together.

As an Australian I applaud Nick Cave for his script and all those involved in the movie. I would judge that this is definitely the best movie I've seen Guy Pearce in, and he played a very believable part. Congratulations to all involved, and I just hope that the Australian movie goers get off their rear ends and go support you by paying for a ticket.

Vena

Australian Icons - The Angels

2005-10-08T22:09:00.000-07:00

It's Saturday night, October 8, 2005, and I'm filling in some time, drinking tea, before I hit the hay. Bryan and I have an early start in the morning as we are booked to do a market day at Gordon, which is about and hour and a bit away from where we live.

I wanted to write a short blog about one of my favourite bands, an Aussie band of course, The Angels. The Angels were around in Oz when my 'kids' were in their teens, and the three of them saw the group appear live. I don't remember their music from then as I think I was too busy in those years to have much interest in any music that wasn't on the radio and I didn't hear before work, in the car on the way to work, or in the car on the way home from work.

Australian singers and bands had a hard slog to get any airplay in Oz, and really things haven't much changed. I found that out with my book. No one is much interested unless you have the money to expend on a huge campaign and get yourself through some doors that are bolted.

Anyhow in 2002 I began a relationship with a guy in Brisbane. He was 41 then and I was 56. Yes, I did like men younger than me (and still do :) I live with someone 5 years younger now and call him my 'toyboy' lol. Ian (my friend in Brissy) asked me to see if I could find a song for him, The Angels and "The Dogs Are Talking". He told me that he thought I would like it and encouraged me to suss it out. I eventually did get a copy of the song, and he was right, I did like it. I then began to get together a collection of their music and loved the live versions much more than those done in a studio. I played them all the time and when Ian and I were together, we always had their music with us. Even after we broke up I remained loyal to the sound and I introduced other people to their music as well. I knew all the words to my favourite songs and wondered how come I missed out on seeing them when I was younger.

I read some time ago that the band was going back on the road, but I also read that one of the members, Doc, wouldn't be with the other four as he had started his own Angels Band up. I didn't think much about it after initially reading the article, but a couple of weeks ago my partner noticed a billboard on a telegraph pole advertising they were going to be appearing at Rooty Hill RSL Club in Sydney. I rang the club, subsequently went along and joined up as a member, and bought two tickets to the concert. The original four members of The Angels had regrouped, but Doc, who sang lead all those years ago, wasn't with them. It didn't matter to me, as I was hellbent on seeing even some of them sing and play live.

My partner, Bryan, and I rocked along to the club on the Friday night, 30 September. We played the poker machines for a short while then went to the auditorium for the show. There didn't seem to be many people there and it didn't bother me at all as it meant I could enjoy the music without a lot of yobbos around. The first act, Black Label, was what I call a 'hard rock' band and the sound was so loud that it was distorted and made my ears ring and go sort of deaf. I thought they were chit, just woeful and when they left the stage I destressed!

The next act wasn't much better, although Kevin Borrich did at least sing so I could understand what he was singing about and the sound was down a few decibals and my ears were very grateful. Kevin was trying to gee the crowd up and get people up dancing, but only a few game ones made it to the dance floor and made a pretty poor attempt at dancing. Bryan and I had a great table looking across at the stage and once the intermission came after Kevin and his crew finished, we decided to go into the club and have a smoke between acts. When we came back, our table was taken by four young people, so we had to stand up as the place had filled up with people by that time. Obviously there were a lot who knew the other two bands and they didn't bother coming into the auditorium until The Angels were due on.

The Angels came out; I was spellbound. They played all the songs I had become so close to, and sang them so well. Doc being missing didn't mean a thing, the sound was there, the music was divine. I stood up against a wall with Bryan and rocked along happily, and sang along too. People filled up the dance floor and applauded and whistled and called out often. It was just as I had imagined it would have been in the pubs all those years ago. When the band finished and left the stage I was feeling euphoric, the sounds still in my head. But something was missing! The one song I wanted to hear, they hadn't sung. I wondered if because of the audience participation that went with that song was in a coarse language, the club had banned it being sung.

We all started to chant 'more, more, more' and the announcer came out and started to get the crowd going. Next thing we were doing just what the pub patrons used to do; we were chanting 'Angels, Angels, Angels' and of course, out they came to the uproar of the crowd. By now almost everyone was on the dance floor, although Bryan and I, probably two of the eldest people in the room, stayed seated (yes we had managed to score a seat by this time). They started playing again and I was disappointed; it wasn't the song I wanted, although I still enjoyed it.

After that song finished, John Brewster, lead guitarist and singer, said a few words of thanks and assured the room that the band would keep on keeping on. Then they started to play again, and, yes you guessed it, my song ..... 'Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again'. The room erupted, everyone on the dance floor crowded around the stage and we all chanted, in the right places, after 'Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again' .... 'no way, get fucked, fuck off' ... over and over again. It was a total buzz out and when it was all over I wished there was more.

So to anyone in Australia who knows The Angels music I recommend you go along and see The Original Angels live as you will definitely not be disappointed. The tickets were $22 each, cheap as chips.

Vena

Bali - Not on my list of places to visit

2005-10-03T15:59:00.000-07:00

After I wrote a blog last night I read the Sydney Morning Herald online and was astounded to read about bomb attacks in Bali. I thought I must have logged into the archives, but noted the date was right.

Dumbfounded is a word that could describe how I felt reading about the latest attack on tourists in that country. Disbelief is also a good word to describe how I felt reading that once again, Australians have been killed and injured critically in that country. It sure beats me how anyone would still be travelling there for a holiday, in spite of the cheap rates, after the horrendous events of not so long ago.

I read the story and then switched on the TV to the ABC news and saw the horror, with vivid pictures, of course. One man was being interviewed as he waited at the airport to board a plan to Bali for his holiday. He maintained he would still go because he didn't intend for the terrorists to win by scaring him off. Sorry if I missed something, but haven't the terrorists already won?

The perpetrators no doubt were suicide bombers so they can't be captured and tried. Now they are wiped off the face of the planet, their mates will take their places, and so it will continue. To die, for them, is an honour, and they believe their rewards in the next world will be grand. It's beyond the comprehension of the ordinary person to understand their thinking, and yet there are probably hundreds of thousands of them willing to die for what they believe in, and they will do just that.

So to the traveller who won't be stopped by fear I say forget it, find a new place to have a holiday. The terrorists don't care who dies, as long as someone does, so playing with fate isn't a very sensible option for any sane thinking person. And his death won't make a damned difference to anyone except for those that are left behind to mourn him, and those unfortunate enough to have to gather up his bits and pieces and try to identify who he was. Perhaps it's time our Government banned travel to Bali by anyone except those needed in the aftermath of the terror campaign. My thoughts, totally of course, so don't go blaming anyone else.

Vena McGrath

Glaucoma - The Silent Thief of Sight

2005-10-02T22:16:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday evening in Sydney, the Sunday of a long weekend. Tomorrow, Monday, is the worst day in the week in my opinion, so having that particularly negative day off work is a bonus. Don't you just love long weekends? I'm always on countdown to the next one, even if it's three months after the present one; it gives me a goal to work to.

Fortunately, working for the Government, I am entitled to 26 flex days off a year. A flex day is a day you have to work extra time to earn so in order to have a 9 day fortnight, I would need to work 3/4 hour extra for 9 days to make my 7 hours up. Even dangling the carrot of a day off a fortnight isn't enough to get me to work all the extra time. I've only taken 11 of the 26 days this year and the year finishes in November. All days not taken are then lost, therefore I'm looking at losing probably 13 days minimum that I could have had off if I didn't find going home at the end of my core hours more of a priority than having a lot of time off work. I am taking a flex on Tuesday so my long weekend is extra lonnnnnng and a three day working week has a certain sparkle to it!

Yesterday and today Bryan and I spent at the markets trying hard to get his toy business up and running. It's a hard slog and this weekend was probably one we should have just stayed home due to it being a long weekend with an RDO (rostered day off) for a lot of people on Tuesday, and on top of that, it's school holidays. We had three customers today and sold $42 worth of toys. Not even enough to pay the cost of the market site. Yesterday we sold $86 worth of toys and did make our stall site cost plus petrol plus an extra $30. But unfortunately Bryan's stationwagon had a problem with a radiator hose and there went the $30 on a new hose.

It seems like he isn't supposed to get up and running in the short term. Yesterday was a beautiful day in Sydney and we attended a street market in Chatswood, but the people just weren't around. Today it was even hotter, 30 degrees, and again, the people weren't around. The market today was at Moorebank, in a park, next door to Flower Power. There was even music to shop by as Leather and Lace were there for most of the day doing brackets of songs. Just a lousy weekend for all marketers I imagine.

Bryan is starting to wonder whether he will ever find his nitch in the Sydney markets. We have been to a lot of different ones now, with our best sales being at Castle Hill Craft Market where we sold $152 worth of toys. I know it's only been a couple of months but we expected things would be going good now as Christmas approaches. If you don't sell stock then you don't have the capital to buy timber and paints to make more product to sell. That's where he is now; but we are forever optimistic, and we have markets lined up for the weekends in October. Here's hoping they come good for us.

Now to the subject matter - glaucoma - the silent thief of sight. I found out a few weeks ago, when I visited my eye specialist to arrange for some day surgery on my eye that has been ravaged by keratitis for over 20 years, that I have something even worse wrong. I have glaucoma in both eyes, with nerve damage, and have already lost a large percentage of the vision in my left eye.

It's been explained to me that even if the drops I am now using daily stop the progression of the damage, or slow it down, I will never regain that sight again. It may stay as it is, but the odds are that I will eventually lose the vision in that eye. My right eye, suffering damage also, is nowhere near as bad, with only a small percentage of sight lost. I'm fighting a battle now in a war I can't win. Where once I thought keratitis may eventually take my sight in my left eye, I now know glaucoma has already stolen a lot of it. Daunting thought, losing your sight, so I'm going to think positive that it won't become any worse than it already is.

I have a problem when I'm looking at things, like faces when talking to people. Their right eyes and the top of their heads disappear as I look at them and it's very offputting and annoying. I used to think I had hair over my eye or my glasses were dirty. Little did I know what really was going wrong. My eye specialist was sure that the problem was my eyelid was drooping as a result of keratitis and age and he intended to cut the eyelid and pull it up a bit. When he was doing the tests to see what he would need to do, I had to read the chart on the wall with my right eye covered. All I could see were the two bottom lines, not read them, but I could see them. The rest of the chart was in darkness. Next thing I'm having different tests done and after a field test the prognosis was bleak.

No operation to lift my eyelid will make any difference to my vision. Anyone who is reading this should seriously consider having an eye test for glaucoma even if you don't wear glasses and don't think you have eye problems. If you have ever taken or used drugs or ointments with steroids in them, go have the test done NOW. I believe that the reason I have glaucoma could be because I have used eye ointment with steroids to treat the keratitis. But then it could also be hereditary and that's something I don't know about.

My three adult children are having the test done and my brother has just been for the test. His eyes are okay but he now has to have the test six-monthly as a precaution. If I had known I had this earlier, I perhaps would be in a better position to save my vision than I am now. How no-one ever twigged to this is beyond me as I have spent a lot of money in the last 5 years going to eye specialists for treatment for keratitis. I can't understand my specialist not testing me for glaucoma at some stage except that every time I saw him my eye was ravaged by ulcers from keratitis so any tests were out of question. I also wear glasses and it's two years since I had my eyes tested last. It seems the glaucoma must have hit me pretty quickly, as I know each time I saw the optometrist I had a glaucoma test.

Please don't leave it like I did. Go have the test done and keep going every year or so just to be on the safe side. Trust me, you don't want problems like I now have where even new glasses don't help very much. A simple test could save you from something you couldn't imagine happening to you.

Take care.

Vena

Spring in Sydney

2005-09-20T22:42:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 20 September 2005

So it's Spring. One could be forgiven for thinking perhaps that's not quite right as the evenings are still cool enough for a fire and the mornings have a chill about them. The winds have been a'blowin daily and sometimes border on being balmy, but mostly are cool. Rain has been almost non-existent and grass has died off from many areas into dust bowls. My lawn is still greenish, but sparing too. There's sure no depth to it and it wouldn't take much to kill it off. I haven't turned the solar heating on for the pool as the sun just isn't hot enough most days yet.

I love winter so summer coming slowly suits me fine, but I wish it would rain, and rain heavily for days. We have been on water restrictions now for months and I'm tired of washing the car with buckets of water. I'm sure I use twice/three times as much water, and I sure get a lot wetter myself chucking buckets over the car that ricochet back all over me ! The gardens look sad as we can only water twice a week; in the mornings Wed and Sunday before 10.00 am and again those same days after 4.00 pm. It's dark almost when I arrive home from work on Wednesday and I don't have time in the morning to water. Sunday is market day now for me, so that only leaves Sunday afternoon to water and it's just been too cold to go out after 4.00 with a hose. Or am I a wimp?

I've been going to market days, hiring stall space, and trying to sell some of my books. However, I've had more luck selling some of my older novels and dvds and cds and videos than my own new beautiful book. Markets are mostly places people go to bargain hunt and a new book isn't a bargain I guess, even though I am selling it much cheaper than it's value. It's all been a big disappointment to me and I realise now that I won't recoup much at all of what I have outlaid to get my manuscript to a book. But, I've learned a lot in the last few years on the road I've travelled on, and it can only be to the good. I could have spent the $30K plus on a holiday, and come home after a few weeks with nothing but memories. I do, at the very least, have a book with my name one it... a dream became reality.

As the days grow longer there's more time to spend in leisure activities once the work day is over, so I intend to do some gardening and also to get back into my writing again. I started painting my outdoor furniture on the weekend and my partner's daughter, who is here for a short holiday, is continuing the painting whilst I'm at work. Bonus! After a cold winter the place looks drab, and the lack of water around has made everyone's gardens and yards look the worse for wear. Perhaps some new plants and soil will make things look a bit brighter for the summer as long as the heat doesn't kill the plants before next winter comes along and the frost gets them. Woops not much positive in that little lot. Ah well.

It's time to think about hitting the hay for the evening so, until next time, take care and be happy. It could be worse (or so they say lol).

Vena

My First Market Day

2005-08-22T22:45:00.000-07:00

My first market day as a seller didn't turn out the way I hoped.
Yesterday, Sunday August 21, my partner Bryan and I decided to try our luck at a market day. I wanted to see if I could sell some books, create some interest in the book even, and Bryan had his toys to sell. We decided on the Kiama Seaside Markets as we had visited the last market day there in July and were very impressed.

The venue is idyllic, in a park by the sea with the ocean gently breaking against the rocks onshore. The market stalls stretch almost across one side of the park along the water's edge, and back towards the roadway. The sellers can either face their stalls to the sea, or to the inner part of the park. The buyers have a concrete pathway to use to access all those stalls close to the water, and grassed areas to walk across for the other stalls. It's a craft market so there are no stalls selling imported or shop goods. There are of course second hand book stalls but the majority are selling goods made by the stall holders or their families. It's a wonderful, colourful market, and as it's only on once a month, it draws large crowds from 9.00 am until 3.30 pm each time it's held. There are a few food stalls selling wonderful cakes and bread and vegetables.

As Kiama is quite a distance from where we live (near Penrith), we set out from home at 5.30 am. Bryan was up until 2.30 am finishing off his toys, and I hit the sack at 1.30 am after helping him all I could, doing a bit of work on the computer, and catching up with a chat friend who lives in Kiama to tell her we would be down there later in the morning. At around 4.00 am the clock radio swung into gear... LOUDLY! I almost fell out of my waterbed, which is difficult to achieve, with fright wondering what on earth the noise was. I ended up kicking Bryan out of bed first (not literally, just ear bashed him a bit lol) and some time later I managed to crawl out. Bryan packed the car and I got myself ready ... I had to do the important things like get dressed and do my make-up and hair.

It was a fairly cold morning as we are still in winter, and we left home in the dark, on our 2 hour trip. Saturday had been a horrible day as far as the weather went, and it was a wonderful surprise to see the sun come up and a clear sky emerge. I wasn't too sure about which way to go to Kiama and decided to go a different way; one that my daughter assured me was quicker and a better drive. I made a fatal error in a right hand turn and we ended up on a freeway that seemed to have no left hand exits! I knew we were heading south, for Goulburn actually which is on the way to Melbourne, certainly not east to the sea. I was sure there was a turnoff to Kiama, but it wasn't long and I began to feel a bit afraid that I had taken us on a wrong road. And I was right, it was wrong. I finally suggested to Bryan that we exit to Moss Vale, not telling him where I thought Moss Vale was. He is from northern NSW and knows nothing much at all about south of Sydney. Actually he knows nothing much about Sydney either!

Anyhow off we went and headed for Moss Vale until we hit a T intersection and I wasn't real sure then where we should go. Bryan opted for left, he was sure it headed east. Trouble was around the next bend we seemed to be heading directly west. I started to fidget and chew my fingers. I was worried, not that we had to be anywhere really, but we were both so excited about doing the market. It was now 7.30 and we had been on the road 2 hours. We should have been at Kiama, but we were lost. I saw a man walking along the road up ahead so Bryan stopped the car and called out asking which way to Kiama. The man scratched his head and looked at us disbelievingly. "You're about one and a half hours away from Kiama" he said as our mouths dropped open.

After getting directions on how to find the right road to head east, we took off and found ourselves eventually on a Scenic Tourist Route. Now this was some tourist road. It was barely wide enough for one car, let alone another one coming the other way. The sign said "7km of winding road" and that was very true, it wound alarmingly, all downhill, with the car hanging off the side of the cliff it seemed at times. We came into the rain forest and it was very pretty, but I was too nervous to appreciate it. "Hope we find a servo soon", Bryan said. I glanced over at him and my heart sank. "Had half a tank when we left home, now it's almost empty", he added. I moved slightly so I could see the fuel gauge and felt very ill then. I had these visions of the car running out of petrol, nowhere on the road to pull over, Bryan having to walk to find help (on a road where there appeared to be no human life), and me having to stay in the car alone, waiting. I silently prayed to whatever God might exist that we wouldn't run out of petrol and, at the bottom of the 7km winding road we hit Jamberoo, and I saw it up in front, a servo sign! I almost jumped out of the car and ran ahead to stake my claim on one of the bowsers I was so excited.

Fuel was extremely expensive there so we only put in $20 worth - I think it was $1.26 a litre so $20 didn't buy much fuel, just enough to get us to Kiama. The sign said "Kiama 10km" so off we sped and eventually arrived at the gate to the park at 8.30 am, one hour late. I suggested to Bryan that he explain to the woman sitting at the gateway collecting money and allotting spaces, that we had car trouble on the way from Penrith. It wasn't a lie really, as the car was trouble, it headed in the wrong direction! She was very understanding fortunately, and took Bryan for a walk so he could choose our spot. He came back and drove us around the park to where we were to set up, unloaded the car, left me there with our bits and pieces, and headed off out of the park up through town to the public carpark.

Upon Bryan's return we began to set up our stall area. I had bought us a pergola type contraption to keep the sun off and protect us a bit if it rained so it came out of its box first. I looked at it with my usual disinterested look at anything that comes out of a box in pieces. Bryan found the directions for erection and started putting all the pieces of rod together to build the roof trusses and the legs. I started to straighten out the cover that was all squashed in the box. The wind was coming up and I had to stand on part of it so it didn't blow away. A young chinese couple has the stall area behind us and were sitting looking out to sea before we plonked ourselves in front of them. I saw them watching us with interest, grins on their faces and figured what they may be thinking. Two old farts trying to set up a stall who obviously had never had the pergola out of the box before. Bryan eventually started to put the pieces together and I think it was all too much for the Chinese guy as he wandered over and asked if we would like some help. Would we? Wasn't long then before the men had the thing erected and we thanked our helper gushingly before setting about putting up our tables and arranging our goods on them.

Finally we had ourselves sorted out and settled down for a cup of coffee before the market officially started. People were already wandering around and the day was just superb weatherwise. The sea looked dreamy and the air was fresh but not too cool. The sun was a delight on our backs as we sipped our coffee and laughed together about our trip down from home and getting lost. As the day wore on the crowd grew and a lot of people stopped and looked at Bryan's toys, remarking how lovely they were, well made, how much time must go into each toy, have you been to this market before to sell, are you coming back next month etc etc. Many lookers, many touchers, but few reaching into their purses or wallets. However, Bryan did sell three toys and that paid for the cost of the stall. I, on the other hand, didn't sell a book. I also had a few people chat to me about the book and the Internet, but no buyers. Disappointment but the result wasn't unexpected. I'm thinking of ways that I could get Bryan to make furniture out of the 480 books or so I must have left in the house if I can't sell any of them.

We had our lunch that I had packed, chicken on bread with tomato and cheese and coffee we made ourselves with the hot water in the thermos flask. Our stall was set up near the Lions Club stall that was selling steak sandwiches and sausage sandwiches, so the chicken was a bit boring after smelling onions from the time we arrived. Around 2.00 pm we became drowsy after almost no sleep for about 32 hours or so, and we sat there next to each other, in our chairs and snoozed. My daughter remarked later that night when I told her of our adventure that it was no wonder we didn't sell anything, we were asleep!

Eventually 3.00 pm arrived and we packed up. Bryan had to make the long trek, uphill this time, to retrieve the car and I impatiently waited at the site for him to come back so we could go home. The wind had picked up by this time and we had fun pulling down the pergola, not. No way could we get it back in the box so we just did the best we could and tossed it all in the back of the stationwagon. Gear once again packed, we set off home. We bought more fuel and I settled down to have a snooze. I woke up sometime later and Bryan said, "were we supposed to turn off on a road that said to Picton?" I replied in the affirmative and he said, "oh oh, I passed that a while ago". Why wasn't I surprised? We found another exit before we hit Brisbane (joking of course) and ended up arriving home around 6.00 pm.

We dragged all our mess inside and I unpacked and Bryan cooked us a quick but tasty dinner. We ate, cleaned up, and then we decided not long after that it was too hard to stay awake and we should hit bed. I'd already had a shower so I hit the bed first and was almost asleep by the time Bryan got there. I tried hard to not feel guilty this morning and to stay in bed and feign illness, but like a good robot that I am, I rolled out and got ready for work. I left Bryan in bed sleeping away like a baby and he finally arose just before I left for work.

We were disappointed in sales and yet we had a great day with lots of laughter, and just enjoyed being where we were, out of the house, in the sea air, together. That's the story of my first market day as a seller and our first market day together as a team. I think next market day I'll let Bryan go early and I'll make my way there later in the morning. He is after all the marketer, I'm just the novice having a bit of fun doing things I've never done before. I'm hoping that the next market he goes to will bring him some much needed sales and I'll keep working on the idea for furniture items to make out of all those green covered books I have stashed in cupboards in boxes.

Until next time and hoping whoever reads this enjoys the laugh.

Vena

Teenagers In Chat In Australia

2005-08-16T21:46:00.000-07:00

It's Tuesday evening, 9.17 pm Sydney time, 16 August 2005. Before I get onto the subject ‘Teenagers in Chat in Australia’ I’d like to reminisce a little first.

The cool air comes in on dark still even though Spring is around the corner. We have had the coldest weather of winter in the last couple of weeks with the biggest snowfalls recorded in about 50 years in Australia, I believe. Some people have never seen snow in areas where it has been falling this month. It's forecast to be around 3 degrees celcius here tonight, with -1 only 1/2 hour away. It's great weather for bed though, and much preferred, by me anyhow, to our hot summer nights that drag on for most of the year it seems. I dread the summer coming and hope that by summer 2007 I will be in Western Australia, by the sea, where at least I can walk on the beach with my feet in the water. I have a lovely inground pool and yet, in the heat of our summers, there are days when the only way to get to the pool is with shoes on because of the intense heat of the concrete outside the house. As I am fair skinned I burn very quickly, so outside in summer is not the place for me to be, not in Sydney anyhow. The heat, the flies, and at dusk the mozzies, ruin having a pool to cool off in.We are drought stricken and have been for the last few years. Water restrictions have been in force now since last year, and most of our gardens are dying along with our lawns and indeed, our countryside. The frosts of winter have almost destroyed what greenery there was left from the sparse rain we have had this year. The winter has been idyllic, cold nights and beautiful days with an azure sky most of the time. Small white clouds waft across the sky and, if only the rains would come, it could be called paradise. Our Governments are now at a running pace trying to find ways to increase our water supply by building a plant to convert sea water into water we can use for gardens etc., and devising plans to find other water sources.

Once upon a long time ago everyone had at least one water tank in their yards, but the city fathers in their stupidness outlawed them as unsightly and they were banned in the suburbs. Now, after the horse has bolted, water tanks are back in vogue at high cost to the home owner, and new homes are being built with water tanks under the slab or built into the guttering, along with a water tank standing in the yard, as mandatory items. I wonder when they will allow the urban dwellers to have their chooks back and backyard vege gardens will come back into vogue. I often think about what will happen to all of us if war breaks out. No longer can many of us go out into our yards and feed our families on our own produce. The only thing in my yard that can be eaten are lemons.

Can't anyone see that we have been made to be reliant on supply of all our necessities to the degree that if something goes wrong, we will all be at the mercy of those suppliers? I for one don't fancy lining up for food like my parents had to in the Second World War. My intention is to get out of Sydney as soon as I can and make very sure that where I end up living I can grow veges and have some chooks and also have a water supply that comes from rain. Perhaps I am fretting over nothing, but I trust my instincts, and I feel strongly all is not well in this our world, and there are worse things coming than those that have already invaded our living rooms. I know I'm not alone in my thoughts, as there are many people opting out of city life and Sydney, I believe, is experiencing not only an influx of new inhabitants, but a departure of many others who have had enough and want out. The simple life my parents had, the world I grew up in, was so much further advanced than this world is, even without all the mod cons and all the 'things' we think we can't live without. I visited Camden and Menangle on the weekend, calling in on a couple of my delightful aged aunts, and the memories flooded in of the times in my childhood when I went to the same areas with my parents and swam in the rivers around Camden and Liverpool and the creek at Menangle. Today you wouldn't put a toe in any of those places. The children of the future and indeed of the present, will never know the pleasures in life, the simple ones, that I grew up with. An unspoiled city, a poorer city yes, but what is poor? We had family, we had values, principles, respect. We never missed what we didn't have, we were grateful for what we did have. I treasure those memories and feel a sadness that no one will ever know them again. Prosperity has ruined Sydney and it's time for those of us who mourn the passing of all the things we knew and loved, to move out and leave it to those that never knew those pleasures and therefore don't care they are no longer there.

Now to the subject matter. As an author of a recently published book about online chat and dating, I have managed through some exposure in newspapers and on television and hard work to get my profile into search engines, to become ‘noticed’ by some people who are surfing the net or reading the papers looking for insight into the subject of my book. Since writing the book and experiencing all I did online and in ‘reality’, my passion, an overused word I know, is children online and teenagers. I’m not slow to point this out to anyone who chooses to read what I write or listen to what I have to say. I have said for a few years, and still say loudly, “the Internet is a wonderful world of knowledge, an incredible medium, but it is also a dark place, an addictive place, and indeed highly dangerous”. Some people listen, others make light of what I say, others ridicule me. I take it all on the cuff because those that deny there are dangers have their heads stuck in the sand and are too involved in their own agendas to care about anyone else. I allowed my life to become public knowledge because I care about others more than myself. I have made no money out of having a book published and on the contrary, it has cost me a great deal. I believe I spent my money well and I have already reaped my reward.

I have been contacted by two sets of parents from Sydney. One couple have read the book and now realise their daughter, who they thought was just having some fun on the Internet, is in fact addicted to chat and has brought a degree of danger into their lives by giving out personal details. She has also lied to her parents, something they now realise after reading my story and seeing some signs in her that I wrote about in the book. I received an email from the mother thanking me for giving her an insight into what was going on; something she refused to believe for quite some time. That family is now working hard to turn the tide in their home, and not a minute too late either from what they have told me.

I received a call at work one day after a local newspaper did a story on me, and the book. The lady who called was distraught, unable to work out what was going on in her son’s life. He had become mixed up with a chat group online and had started acting in strange ways. He began wearing all black clothes, had body piercings done, started drinking and taking drugs; all at the age of 14! His parents were distraught, didn’t have a clue what was going on in his life or why. The father took time off work, learned to surf the net, found ways to research the information he needed and when he had enough evidence, he went to the authorities. He and his wife have had a torried, horrifying time; nothing worth doing is easy and this proved that to the extreme. Only for the fact that one person actually listened to them, they would still be fighting for help. But that one person opened doors that hopefully will soon allow the authorities to move in on this group and shut them down. The story they told me is frightening and yet, knowing as much as I do about the Internet, I was not in the least bit surprised to learn all I did. I can’t say anymore than that as I respect their privacy, but be assured, their son is not alone in this. This group is spreading their web across our city, and I imagine across many more cities throughout the world, and all parents who know their kids spend a lot of time online, should sit up now and take notes. Any changes in attitude, dress, activities, friends, should send out loud alarm bells that something is going on that they should find out about post haste. From what I heard this is not something any parent would want their kids involved in, and it starts out so insidiously, so innocently.

Please all of you who have kids who use a computer, take the time to watch them, talk to them, ask to sit with them and watch them online. If they have nothing to hide they won’t object. If they do object, then you best find a way to suss out what they are doing on their computers. A crash course in how to find hidden documents on the puter is a necessity, a spy program, anything at all. This is not a joke, this is not something any of you should be taking lightly. Your children are at risk. If you know they are exchanging photos with other people, be afraid, very afraid. Learn how to surf the net, do searches, find help. I recommend in Australia http://www.netalert.com.au/, a Government run help website that has so much information and help for kids and parents. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, don’t think you are being paranoid. This is a whole new world and it is one that you, as parents, should know as much as you possibly can about. Teach your children never to give out personal information like their real names, their addresses, phone numbers, school information, sporting groups, friends’ names. There are some very clever people online who can track down others with just piecemeal information. Do some serious reading about crime online because it is happening, and your children may very well be mixed up in it already without even knowing it. There is mind manipulation going on to the max in these groups, self mutilation, suicide, attacks on other people are all on the agenda. Kids are being programmed online to carry out some pretty horrific things, and believe me, IT IS HAPPENING as I type this.

Take care, and remember, be aware, be wary, and beware.

Vena