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

Catch Up Time :)

2005-08-04T22:30:00.000-07:00

It's now 9.35 pm in Sydney Australia, Thursday 4 August 2005. How hard to believe that winter is 2/3 over already! I personally love winter, love my fire at home and the different heat from that of artificial heating that I have to spend 5 days a week in at work and then another kind in my car. All drying heats, so different to a wood fire. Yes I know all the arguments against wood fires and yet the stacks spew out their gases 7 days a week all over the country with never a whimper. So, whilever I can burn wood of a winter I shall continue to do so as I firmly believe that human beings found how to use fire for many reasons, and one was to keep warm by and another was to cook by. As in most things fire was a natural progression, something that was put there for early man to find and respect. The so called better alternatives line the pockets of those that produce them and at what expense to the world as a whole?

I managed to sneak away 0ut of Sydney for a week to God's country, Queensland, last week. I had some family obligations, mostly to visit my mother who suffers from dementia and is in 24 hour care in a nursing home not far from where my brother and sister-in-law live. I trek up there two or three times a year to see my mother even though she doesn't always know who I am and forgets I was ever there as soon as I walk out the door. I used to come home extremely depressed until I realised that she doesn't seem to know a thing is wrong and the family are the ones that are suffering, not her. My greatest sadness is knowing how my mother would be totally apalled if she knew what she looked like now and would feel so degraded. She was always proud of her appearance and never went without lipstick, was always repairing it after a meal. Now I rarely find her with her teeth in her mouth although once the people in the nursing home know I'm around the teeth miraculously appear in her mouth each day after the initial first toothless visit. If she would touch me, say hello, just show some recognition I would feel better about things, but then she may be distressed when I leave if she knew; now it doesn't matter whether I go or don't. I usually sit and stare at the walls as trying to talk to mum is like talking to a brick wall. She either stares at anything but me, or focuses on the television set, or rolls over in the foetal position and goes to sleep. But is she asleep or is she just ignoring me? I wonder about that as sometimes I catch her out and she knows only too well what I've said to her. I tried to make her acknowledge me, to look at me and not the television set and eventually I stood at the end of the bed where she had to look at me. She stuck her knees up in the bed so she could look up at the television and not at me. Clever mum, well done! I took a copy of my book to show her on my last visit in February. I wanted so much to hear her say 'well done, I'm proud of you'. How insane of me to expect that. She stared at the book showing no emotion or acknowledgement that she even knew what it was. I wanted to leave a copy with her but there wasn't any point, it would have disappeared for sure.

This trip to Brisbane was different to all the others I've made since mum moved up there in 2000. I was going to fly up as per the norm and meet my man, Bryan, and go together to visit my mother then spend a few days out in the mountains with him. However plans changed and Bryan moved to Sydney, to me, before my holidays and we drove from Sydney to Brisbane together. How neat it was, after 17 years solo, having someone to carry the bags, load the boot and unload it, to fill the petrol tank, open the door of the car for me and do all those loving things a lover does for a lover :) How neat to have someone to visit my mother with me, to hold my hand and know why I felt like I did after being there with her. Sharing mealtimes, wake times, just being together times. It was a special week for me.

We left Sydney on Monday and drove to Coffs Harbour and found ourselves a bed for the night before driving on to Alexandra Hills on Tuesday where we stayed in the Alexandra Hills Hotel for the next 4 days. We spent the days busily visiting the nursing home, my relatives and Bryan's daughters and friends from chat who live in Caloundra. After leaving Brisbane on Saturday we idly drove to Nimbin but arrived after dark and decided to mosey on to Lismore for the night with a planned return to Nimbin the next morning. It was so dark out there driving on narrow country roads. As Bryan's night driving vision isn't too good I did the driving and I was pleased to arrive in Lismore and find a bed for the night. We went to town to find somewhere to have dinner and ended up finding a takeaway place. After placing our order we thought we would eat there but were told they were closing and we would have to take the food away with us! So much for country hospitality. Next morning we drove to Nimbin and spent an hour wandering amongst the locals and visited a marketplace where I bought some jewellery for my daughter and grand-daughter that was made by the locals. Nimbin is like going back in time to the 60's - flower people. They still wear clothes like we did in that era and everyone is very layback. The air is thick with the smell of incense and ..... leave the 'and' to your imagination :)

We left Nimbin and went on to Lismore once more and then headed south, ending up in Port Macquarie on Sunday night where we managed to get a motel room overlooking the beach. We had our last dinner away from home (thank heavens for that I was sick of takeaway and hotel and club food). The motel in Port Macquarie is built on the site of an old gaol and has a wishing well. We both tossed in some coins and made our wishes, climbed in the car and headed south once more, this time to Forster/Tuncurry. Bryan had never been to either town and I had wonderful memories of Forster, having spend some happy holidays there when my children were young. We initially stayed in a caravan and then when I was back in full-time work I used to rent a two bedroom unit for us near the beach. I found a Forster I didn't remember, with the exception of the beautiful waterway where the bridge crosses from Tuncurry to Forster. There are so many apartment buildings there now, so many houses, cars, people. I'm glad I have memories of it when it was a sleepy, lovely place for a holiday.

After lunch on a cliff overlooking the rocky beach below, we set out once more, this time for home, Sydney. We eventually arrived back here just on dark on Monday evening, unpacked the car, lit the fire, unpacked our bags, had a shower and hit the sheets for a while to recoup. (It gets like that when you get a bit ragged around the age edge :) Tuesday and Wednesday were the last two days of my leave and I spent them catching up on washing, ironing, a bit of shopping and washing my car.

Today was my first day back at work and it was nice to have a few people tell me I had been missed and everyone seemed pleased to see me back. The fact I wasn't all that happy about going back didn't matter after a while, and I got stuck into the work that had piled up on my desk while I was away. I had a tree to organise to be removed from a part of the work site so I look forward to perhaps a boot full of firewood for next year. The tree has been marked as offending a neighbouring property by ripping up the sewer pipes continuously over the last few years at the cost of a few thousand dollars to the house owner. Our dry weather has caused this kind of problem all over Sydney with many householders finding their pipes clogged with roots from trees. One thing about it, the plumbers are never short of work and builders must be getting plenty of work as well repairing cracks in ceilings and walls and concrete slabs. I have noticed in my own home that there are a few cracks appearing and it's probably time I contacted the builder as I have a 25 year structural guarantee on the house due to the fact I had 35 piers sunk under the slab and two huge concrete beams built into the slab at a cost of $7.5K in 1990. Time to call them in and see which way they dance.

So, until next time, for anyone who cares to read this, well done! Take care and see you soon :)

Vena

Cross City Tunnel Secrets & Lies

2005-07-08T07:37:00.000-07:00

Cross City Tunnel – Sydney Australia
Wednesday 6 July 2005

The recent stories emerging about the Cross City Tunnel still do not reveal much of the true story of events last year. As a friend of a man who worked in the tunnel for several months during 2004, I can report with honesty, that things below ground were apalling, and dangerous to the extreme. My friend told me when he commenced work underground in the tunnel, that it was the most dangerous tunnel job he had ever worked on. Safety was non-existent, in spite of there being 'safety officers' underground. The men attended the obligatory safety courses and once they returned to the job, were told to forget it and get on with it. Many of the workers were from New Zealand and practiced no safety. They seem oblivious to the dangers of the poisonous and dangerous air they were breathing and had no fear of what the exposure they encountered would no doubt do to their health in years to come. When requesting that breathing apparatus be provided that was adequate for the conditions, my friend was told it was too expensive. He changed his face masks up to six times a shift, but still he knew he was breathing in toxic fumes and dust that was detrimental to his health. As in most things, the money was good and he, like many others, suffered through twelve hour shifts to try and get ahead in life.

When the worker was killed, my friend was working on the same shift, but in a different part of the tunnel. The men sat in the tunnel all the hours it took before the body was removed, in respect for a dead workmate. Once the tunnel was closed down and investigations began, I became angrier daily by what I was hearing. Having found out from an acquaintance, who is involved in a workplace in OH&S, the name of one of the WorkCover inspectors handling the investigation, I phoned him anonymously and told him everything that I knew. He assured me that a full investigation would be carried out and that no work would commence until they were satisfied that the tunnel was safe.

I asked how often WorkCover inspectors visited the underground workplace, and was told 'about once a month'. I was horrified and asked how could WorkCover, who sprouted about safety and constantly were seen active above the ground, could allow dangerous work underground to go unchecked. His reply was that there were safety officers underground who were supposedly handling safety issues. I assured him they were not handling any safety issues, and in fact, could rarely be found at the worksite. It seems obvious to me that, as this was a Government job and important to the Government that it was finished on time and below budget, WorkCover stayed away. It was too late by the time they did go underground and find all the dangerous work practices and construction faults, one man had died, and many others were distressed at having been there when the accident happened. What price the life of one man, what price the cost of the many who will in years to come, die from cancers and lung damage?

My friend felt so strongly about the lack of safety after the death of a workmate, that he resigned and vowed he would never work underground again. On hearing a representative of Baulderstones on the radio this morning where he stated that safety was the number one priority in the tunnel, I felt the passion again and I wondered when the true story will be told, when the men who do these jobs will realise that money is not everything, and will speak out. I wait for that day and I wait to see the heads tumble of those in power who allow men to work under these conditions. I add here that WorkCover did not see any work being carried out in that tunnel after the accident, as it was shut down. How opportune for the contractors that their work practices were not witnessed. A few fines and the job started again. Now a man has died on another Government job. When will our Government become honest and show that they care more for the lives of the people who work in those places than they do for how soon construction can be finished and the new tunnels opened to the public. Will they ever have a conscience? I would like to see some of those in power going down underground during a shift, unannounced, and let them see exactly what does go on and the conditions those people work in. Do any of them have the backbone to do it? I doubt it.

Vena McGrath

Yahoo Closes Chat Rooms

2005-06-25T16:33:00.000-07:00

As a concerned adult who has been involved in online chat for almost six years, I was pleased to see the article regarding the closure of privately owned rooms on Yahoo. My concerns for children and teenagers online have grown over the past years as I have come into contact with people online that I, as a parent, would never have wanted my children to be around, even just on the Internet.

The anonymity of the medium is the biggest cause for concern. This is a whole new world, growing everyday, whereby people can meet and chat without ever having eye contact, or the advantage of reading body language. It also opens a huge window of opportunity for those that get a 'high' out of manipulating the minds and emotions of the naive and vulnerable of our society. And the naive and vulnerable probably make up a large proportion of those online, because of the anonymity factor, because of the lack of eye contact, and the lack of body language. These people find it hard to interact in their real lives, and yet online, they come out of themselves because no one is there to make fun of them or deride them. All they need do is hit the X up in the corner and they can move on from perhaps someone who is verbally abusing them in a room, to a safer room.

The problem I have with chat rooms is that in spite of a room being labelled 'teenage' or a Peers age room, anyone can go into those rooms and do whatever they like in private. I advocate everyone naming the nick that comes into a room and starts to click on other nicks for private conversations. And yet, if you do that where I used to chat, in BigPond chat rooms in Australia, you are warned and often kicked out of the room, or you are told to take your problems private. I am strongly in favour of networking to weed out the sleazes from chat, and yet again, this is frowned on. It doesn't take much nouce to work out that someone who comes into a room comes in with a motive other than pleasant chat with those already in the room. These people should be outlawed.

BigPond, quite recently, changed their rules regarding rooms. They opened the chat scene up so that anyone can now own a room, whereas for the first five years or so I chatted in there, you had to apply to open a room and it had to be run on Telstra rules. Chat is dying in BigPond since they changed the rules; people have moved out of the main rooms into small isolated rooms and the whole concept of chat has changed. This is a shame as chat can be wonderful for many people who don't look below the surface and see what is beneath that isn't so good. It can be, and is, a lifeline for many and the demise of the quality of chat is sad.

Whilst Yahoo is doing the right thing in only having rooms open that they monitor, I must say here that I have only ever visited Yahoo a couple of times and the language and abuse I saw in the rooms I visited, scared me out very quickly. I can understand from what I saw, why there is now a problem regarding chat rooms for children/teenagers. I don't see how closing those rooms down will achieve much unless Yahoo are going to instigate hosts into each and every room on Yahoo and run the server with strict rules and guidelines. A room without hosts is a room that can be taken over by unsavoury people and who will police it?

Whilst I am not an advocate of heavy handed, control freak hosts, I believe if the owners of chat servers paid people to host rooms on the proviso they follow the guidelines set down by the server, then things would improve. No one wants to go online and enter a chat room run by a control freak host, but there is a feeling of safety if there is a host in a room and I believe all owners of chat servers should be forced to ensure that every chat room in their server is monitored 24x7, or is only allowed to be open during the hours there is a host to monitor the room.

I now chat on a new server in Australia and this server has no rules really, just guidelines for safe and decent chat. There are no swear filters like there are in BigPond. Anyone can open a room and own it, and my friend and I now have four rooms. I have my own room secretslieschat where I advertise my website and my book, two things I couldn't do on BigPond, and we have the Peers50, Peers60 and Peers60+. We took those rooms over from the owners of the server in an effort to get back some decent chat rooms where people will like to chat. It's early days yet with few visitors, but we have opped ourselves in the rooms and plan to monitor them to try our best to ensure that there is fairness and decency in the rooms.

I applaud the efforts of Yahoo. It is good to read that people who can make a difference are now working to do just that. We have to protect the young because those of us, who have been around the Internet for a while, know that there are things we all need to be protected from, but especially the kids. If we don't teach them the right way to act online then this place will end up destroying itself. That would be a great loss, as we all need someone to talk to, even if our talk is the typed word, not the spoken word.

In my own small way I am trying to make a difference too, and will continue to do so. Long live chat.

An Australian Cattle Dog Named Scrubber

2005-06-25T16:30:00.000-07:00

Scrubber was my best friend, my mate, my protector, and the sweetest newborn little being to come into my life in the last 11 years (with the exception of my grand-daughter who was born the same year 1994). Scrub, or Scrubbie, was born in January 1994.

Scrubbie was a beautiful red Australian cattle dog, pure breed, with the worst kennel name anyone could have ever come up with (someone else did this not me) - Averdale Red Big Boofer. Scrubbie's mum, Missy, was my son's dog. She was a small blue cattle dog, and a mean little miss too when she liked. She mated with a big red dog, and had 5 puppies, all red. The first male was stillborn; Scrubbie and his 3 sisters survived. They were big pups, and Missy had to have a hysterectomy to bring them into the world. Scrubbie came into my life at the tender age of 3.5 hours, after my son and I collected mum and the pups from the vet clinic.

I really knew him before he was born as I had a big part in looking after Missy during the gestation period. My son had taken her to the cattle dog breeder’s to try and mate his cherished Missy so her breeding would live on. She didn’t seem at all interested, so he came home leaving her there for a couple of weeks at the mercy of all the randy dogs. When she arrived back home he was disheartened, and sure there weren’t going to be any pups as the breeder said that Missy spurned all the dogs. However he said there was a slight chance that his prize big red dog had maybe had his way with her. My son had planned to go away fishing for a week, so he packed up and left, leaving Missy with me. I watched her over the next few days and saw changes, and I was convinced she was ‘up the duff’. By the time my son arrived back from his trip, I confidently told him puppies were on the way. Mind you I had never had anything to do with a pregnant dog before, but I could see her shape changing, day by day, and she was always hungry.

My son wasn’t convinced at all and I think he thought I was having a daydream. However over the next week or so he knew that Missy was in fact going to produce a litter, and he was ecstatic. She had obviously decided one of the dogs was okay J My son adored Missy, spoilt her rotten, and the rest of the family and I always blamed him for the way she was – mean when she felt like it. She would bite unprovoked, and wasn’t choosy about whom she bit, even me, the one who looked after her and fed her when my son was away. She now became queen of the castle and whatever Missy wanted, Missy was given.

When the time came for her to go into labour, my son advised me that he had been told we should leave her be, let her get on with the job without interference. I worried about her, she seemed to be in pain and a lot of discomfort, but I followed his orders. We knew she was close to her time this one night, but we left her alone in the special pen my son had knocked up for her in readiness for the new family. In the morning I wandered outside to see what was going on, and found Missy in the yard with a pup part the way out. I thought she was giving birth to it, but on closer inspection I saw that the pup was stuck fast. We tried every which way to help her, to no avail, so we packed her in the car and took her to the vet. The puppy was dead, and the vet removed him, and sent us home with Missy so the other puppies could be born during the day. But Missy was having dire problems, she was in a lot of pain, and distressed, and worn out. Once more we put her in the car, drove to the vets, and suggested she needed help. The vet decided we were right, that she did indeed need help, as the puppies were too big for her to birth naturally. And into the world came four squealing pure white puppies, three females and one male, and home they came with us once they were checked out and okay. Missy wouldn’t even acknowledge that we existed; she appeared to be totally wiping us out of her life as if we had done her an injury.

We worried ourselves sick about the puppies. We didn’t know if Missy was feeding them or not. I bought tiny bottles with little teats on them and we had puppy formula that we tried to feed them. They hated the bottle, and we became more and more frustrated. We finally gave up and left them to it, and started weighing them every day to check if they were getting enough to keep them alive. I had a set of scales that I used to weigh ingredients for cooking, and we used to lay them in the plastic bowl each day and weigh them and keep a record of their weight. All was well; they were gaining weight day by day. They would spend a lot of time inside on the tiles as it was January and very hot outside. We had newspaper everywhere and spent our days cleaning up after them. At night they would be returned to their pen outside and our sleep was often disturbed by one of them screaming. Out we would run wondering what was going on, and we would find either Missy laying on top of one of the puppies, or one would have fallen out of the box and would be crawling around blindly looking for Missy. We weren’t very good nurses.

As they grew they changed of course, and started to get their colour and markings. The four of them were red with some blue on their faces. They were all different in colouring and markings and easy to tell apart. We had pet names for the four and Scrubbie was always Scrubbie. I was never a dog person, I loved cats, always had cats as a child and teenager and young adult. We had dogs at home too but they were guard dogs, not house pets. These puppies enchanted me and snuck into my heart. I loved them all, but as they started to develop little personalities, Scrubbie won my heart. All he ever wanted to do when I sat outside on the grass with the 'family' was sit on my knee, or lie next to me, while his sisters tore around the yard getting into all the mischief they could.

My son of course owned the dogs, and wanted to sell them once they were weaned and old enough to go to new homes. I asked if I could have Scrubber, and he said no, that Missy wouldn't get on with a dog, even her own pup. I said I didn't care; after all it was my home they were residing in at the time and my son and Missy would no doubt leave at any given time. I offered to buy him so my son didn't miss out on the income from not selling him. One day he piled them all in his car and took them to the breeder to sell, ignoring my pleas to keep Scrubbie. That's where Scrubbie had his papers done. I cried for 3 days, and wouldn't speak to my son. I had already become so close to that puppy that I felt something precious had been torn away from me. My son eventually relented, although he didn’t tell me he had. He arrived home on the third day with Scrubbie in the car and I was so happy. He soon learned that I had chosen a beautiful animal, a dog with a nature not to be believed.

As the years went by no one who ever met Scrubbie didn't fall for him almost instantly. He would be wary, let people know they were being watched, but once he knew they were no threat, then he was a gentleman and became a friend easily. Missy died a few years ago; my son had to have her put down, as she couldn't walk anymore, her body just gave it up. It broke his heart to have to make that decision, but she was in pain with no light at the end of any tunnel that she would heal. From then on Scrubbie became his mate, slept with him every night, and wherever he went, Scrubbie was with him. He wasn't a one-person dog, he loved all of us, and whichever one of his 'family' he was with, then that was the one he protected and stayed close to.

My son left her home about 2 years ago, leaving Scrubbie with me, as he knew I would be heartbroken if he took him away again. He had been away from home for a few years after Missy was gone, then came back, then left again and came back. He had no ‘roots’, no home for Scrubbie, and he knew he was best left with me as I would look after him and love him and treat him with the respect he deserved. So Scrubbie once more became my protector and my best friend. He felt the loss of my son out of his life, but gradually he forgot about it and he and I became as one. Whilst I never encouraged him to sleep with me, he was inside the house whenever I was and slept wherever he liked. For the first few weeks he slept on my son’s bed, no doubt waiting for him to come home. Gradually he realised this wasn’t going to happen, and he moved out of there to the family room where I allowed him to lay on any chair he liked and the floor was also his, wherever he liked. He was such a clever dog, would come and tell me when he wanted to go outside. He would come into my bedroom, stand beside my bed, and make noises until I awoke. He would then walk right up close to my left leg while I found my way in the dark down the hall to the back door. Once he was done outside, back he would run, and off I would go to bed once more.

We had a wonderful time together. Wherever I could take him, I did. The backseat of my car was his, and if we went on a trip, then he sat in the front on the passenger seat because he suffered carsickness on long trips. We used to go for long walks every day before and after work, and on the weekends once a day. We were both fit then, and he loved his walks, and was never a problem. He just walked either in front of me pulling me along by his strength, and as he got older, he walked beside me. I could take him anywhere with never any fear that he would bite anyone or show any aggression. Other dogs he ignored when he was out, and my grand-daughter’s little flighty dog, he tolerated in a gentlemanly manner. He loved my grand-daughter and there was never a moment in the almost 11 years they knew each other, that I feared for her safety when she was near him. Of course I watched him carefully around her, not being a ‘dog person’, but there was never a need for any concerns.

On Monday 13 June this year, Scrubbie and I went to my daughter's home for a bbq lunch. It was a farewell bbq and early birthday get-together for my son (Missy's owner) who was leaving Sydney that week, with his lady, to start a new life in WA. We had a great afternoon, with everyone remarking on how well Scrubbie looked, and how fit he was. On Tuesday morning, after sleeping near the fire as usual, he went outside while I went to work. Nothing seemed amiss, just his usual 'oh no you are leaving' look. After working back a half hour that day, and having to go to the local shops for a quick stop to buy him some more biscuits etc., I arrived home to find him very ill. He walked very slowly to the back door where usually he ran, and when he came inside he fell on his hammock and didn’t move. I knew by his eyes he was sick. I went into terror mode, I didn’t know how long he had been like that, and I knew he was perhaps too ill to get himself out to the car and into the back seat to go to the vet.

I rang my daughter and she and my grand-daughter came over to help me get him to the vet. The local vet had three options for me, two I wasn't interested in. The third was to take him to the Animal Referral Hospital at Strathfield. They carried him back out to my car on a stretcher and my grand-daughter sat in the back with him, patting him and singing to him all the way there. He was admitted as an emergency patient and after speaking with the doctor we said our farewells to a very sick boy, telling him to hurry and get well and come home. The doctors rang me often through the night with updates. I sat up for hours crying; the tears wouldn’t stop. I was broken hearted; I wanted to be with him and yet I knew it was best that I wasn’t. The hospital was like an emergency ward in any hospital, and there was nowhere for relatives or owners to go except in the waiting room.

At midnight the prognosis had improved from a code red to yellow or orange. They had found a tumour on the spleen, and while it could have been operable, he developed an even more dangerous problem with his heart. The internal bleeding was not severe; he was not anaemic and his blood readings were good. He showed some signs of diabetes but nothing that couldn’t be treated. His heart rate was 300; they tried different drugs to bring it down through the night, and rang me often to tell me how things were progressing. By early morning he had taken a turn for the worse, and it was now imperative that the heart rate come down. The next call an hour later wasn’t much better; things were grim. Two hours went by with no word, and I rang out of desperation to know what was happening. I was told the doctor would ring me soon, as he was tied up with something and couldn’t come to the phone. Approximately an hour later he did ring to tell me that they had the heart rate down to 160, and Scrubbie had been sitting up while they were getting organised to take x-rays of his chest. He went into cardiac arrest and could not be revived. He died just before 9.00 Wednesday morning and I was not with him. I now have to try and live with the fact that I wasn’t there and that he died with strangers, something I would never have let happen if only the circumstances had been different. And yet I had prayed to whoever in those long lonely worrying hours, that if he couldn’t make it, his heart would give up so I didn’t have to make a decision that would break my heart even more than it was breaking already.

My daughter drove me to see him a few hours after he had gone, for the last time. He looked so peaceful sleeping. Through my tears and heartache I remembered vividly on the Monday night, that he was on the floor behind me while I was using the computer, snoring his head off. I loved to hear him snore, as I knew he felt so safe with me, as I did with him. To say his passing devastates me, is putting it mildly. I have lost something precious from my life that nothing can ever replace. The safety I had, and the love I felt from Scrubber, is something now missing. No more coming home to a wagging tail and a dog that couldn't wait to be let inside to lick me and cuddle with me. No more waking up of a morning to find him on his back on the lounge wagging his tail for a tummy rub. No more excitement when I lock the back door and he knew he was going either for a walk, or out in the car with me. No more Scrubbie.May he rest in peace. He is not gone, he is just away, and will be in my heart forever and the hearts of those that loved him and mourn for him now.

I decided on cremation. I had a dream to take Scrubbie to a new life in the not too distant future to WA. My promise to him I will keep. He will go with me and when it’s time for me to depart this earth, my wish is for our ashes to be scattered together on the sea. Together forever.

© 2005 Vena McGrath

Talkback Radio, Today Tonight, ABC National Radio

2005-05-01T00:20:00.000-07:00

It's 11.47 pm Saturday night 30 April in Sydney Australia. The weather tonight is cool after a brilliant Autumn day. I spent most of the day wandering around Windsor with my daughter; lunch in an old pub, browsing in a Balinese furniture and nick nack shop, looking at clothes (I hate shopping). Then it was back to Mount Druitt and KMart to buy some gear for my TV taping on Tuesday 3 May with producer and host of Joy's World on satellite TV Channel 31, Joy Hruby. Yes I'm a big spender lol. I've decided to wear the black gear and wanted something to break up the total black look (the hair is auburn streaked blonde) so I settled on a couple of really nice dusky pink toned scarves. One I'll decide on to wear with the black. I also purchased myself a pink and black evening type handbag. No new shoes, squashed toes are not on the agenda for the evening. Joy has a segment in her show on books and has graciously invited me to be a guest for a future show. Channel 31 is off air atm due to change of ownership but will set sail on the airwaves via satellite in about a month's time courtesy of the new owner, University of Western Sydney. I'm looking forward to meeting Joy as our telephone conversations have been interesting and she is, I'm sure, a lovely lady.

On Tuesday morning I have a live to air interview on ABC National Radio from the studios at Ultimo. I am excited that, as a result of having sent a review book to Julie McCrossin, she has invited me to be a guest on her popular morning show Life Matters. My spot is around 10.30 am on Tuesday 3 May. I hope that all goes well with this interview as it could do a world of good for the book and for what I want it to achieve, education of people of all ages about Internet chat rooms and dating websites.

I managed to get on air on WSFM a couple of weeks ago (Friday 15 April) and was allowed to plug the book at the end of my conversation with Jonesy and Amanda. I thank them both very much for allowing that to go to air :) Every little bit helps and I was surprised and happy that so many people actually heard the segment I was part of. Was I nervous? Of course lol ... and I sat with the phone for about 1/2 hour before I went online and when Jonesy said 'Vena' I was listening to the show on the phone and missed my cue lol. Jonesy made some remark about 'eyes front Vena' and I felt like a goose. However it was the first time I've ever phoned a radio station and been on air so I guess I can be forgiven for not quite getting it right. I secured a copy of the segment from Rehame and have a wav copy of it. I'm quite happy with how I sounded. I sent Jonesy and Amanda a review copy of the book with a thank you.

Last Friday night was Today Tonight. A big disappointment! After waiting over 2 months for the segment to air, I found that there was no mention of the book or that I was a Sydney based author of a book to be released soon in the USA. When I was approached to do the segment I was assured the book would be promoted and when John Healey and the cameraman and lighting/sound man came to my home to film, one of the tasks they were required to do was film the book. They took great pains to set it up and train a light on it to show it in its best light and filmed it and all for nothing. As I said to everyone who asked me what happened to the book, "it was a story about lies and Today Tonight joined in the party and did some lying of their own". However they did do an article on the show on their website and because they mentioned my name the search engines have picked the story up. So guess there was a Clayton's plus about the whole thing. Another lesson learned.

I should also add here that they used a model in part of my segment in the story who looked something similar to me and yet not me to anyone who knows me, using my voiceover to what she was doing. I watched the story unfolding and I couldn't understand when I used a phone because I knew I didn't, then I noticed this woman was sitting at a desk with a window behind her computer and I sure don't have a window behind my computer, just a wall :( I also noted the phone and it was sure not my phone. So even I was hoodwinked into thinking she was me except for the things I noticed. Her hair was also different slightly to mine. They did however make an attempt to dub in someone playing me, and I wasn't too impressed about that either. Considering how much time I spent being interviewed I imagined they had more than they needed, and I sure didn't like the actress playing me like it was some kind of staged event. When I saw her put her head in her hands I almost fainted ..... staged to the maximum. Anyone who doesn't know me would have thought that was me .... an actress, so no credibility! Bugga.

Anyhow on to bigger and better. Tuesday next week will see me involved in two media adventures that will focus on the book. That is what I'm interested in, it's a tool that can be used for good. My true story about the mistakes I made can become positives if the book is used in the right way and lands in the right hands and I am seen as being credible. I believe I have a lot to offer as an advocate of wariness on the Internet and as a guide for the unwary, naive and vulnerable. That's what I want out of all the hard work and the expenses I've incurred to get the book to where it is ..... the satisfaction of knowing that baring my life and allowing people to read about the crazy and dangerous things I became involved in, will ultimately help others not to go where I dared to wander.

Next week - news on how my two adventures unfolded :)

Vena McGrath
1 May 2005 - Yes it's gone past midnight :)

TODAY TONIGHT FRIDAY 22 APRIL 2005

2005-04-21T19:58:00.000-07:00

FINALLY! THE SEGMENT GOES TO AIR TOMORROW NIGHT ON NATIONAL TELEVISION - TODAY TONIGHT AT 6.30 PM.

Unfortunately I don't know which States of Australia receive the Melbourne version other than my own, but I hope as many of you as possible are able to tune in ..... am I nervous? An understatement! I'm extremely nervous but all I can think is, any press is good for the book, or that's what I'm hoping.

If anyone has the chance or the inclination, please ring or visit your local bookstore and ask if they will be stocking the book. It is listed on Amazon and other online bookstores - ISBN 1-58982-264-1 - Publisher Bedside Books - American-Book Publishing. Release date 18 May in the USA. I will be eternally grateful for the support and thank you to anyone who chooses to do this for me.

Vena

'ON SALE NOW'

2005-03-31T07:24:00.000-08:00

Finally, the shopping cart is in place! The books are ready to go! My pen is poised in readiness for signing messages in those books. All I need now is for readers interested in my subject - online chatting and dating - to take that step and read my story. I look forward to hearing from YOU!

www.secretslieschat.net.au
If you want the adventure without the bruising, read the book

Vena
31/3/05

New Website

2005-03-20T21:33:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday night 20 March 2005. Please visit my new website www.secretslieschat.net.au and I hope you like my new home. There's a Forum and a GuestBook for anyone to make use of if they choose to. In the next week there should also be a shopping cart where copies of the book can be ordered. I have 500 in Sydney for sale and will sign them personally if requested.

I finally managed to secure my other website and domains and they are now safely in my possession. secretslieschat.com is parked and anyone accessing the domain will find they are redirected to my new website. I'm very happy with the 'newbie' that Bryan and I worked hard on (Bryan much harder than I did). Anyone wanting any help with a website give me a yell I have some handy contacts now ... easy when you know how :). And Bryan has a wealth of knowledge too about all kinds of bits and pieces for websites. He is the brains :)

It's been a long haul but things are starting to come together now. The official release date in the USA will be 18 May and I am busily sending out review copies in the hope that some of the recipients will read the book and do a short review that I can post on my website and forward to the USA to the publisher. I believe a reprint of the cover may happen if enough reviews are received from enough creditable sources. So here's hoping. I'd love to see some Aussie reviews on the back cover of my Aussie book.

Until next time, yours in chat and writing.

Vena

Best Laid Plans are often best forgotten

2005-03-04T01:50:00.000-08:00

Here it is, Friday morning Sydney Australia and the news could be better.

After battling on at work for two days, I succumbed to the dreaded flu and took Thursday and Friday last week off work to recuperate. Not so easy! A week later and I'm still at home after chest xrays and blood tests, two courses of bighit antibiotics, and home nursing by Bryan who flew here from his mountain retreat last Saturday. Unable to drive the car due to the extreme pain that beat me, Bryan became my chaffeur to doctors and specialists and my chief cook and bottle washer, and my personal masseur. This morning I'm faring better although the pain still can knock me for a six. My doctor is convinced that I had pneumonia but I'm more inclined to believe that I have sustained some kind of rib damage even though it didn't show up in the xrays. Monday will be the day of truth when I once more have to get myself to and from work and make it through the day at my desk. My doctor tells me there is a lot of flu around this year and it is untimely now for this to happen. It is also hitting all ages so guess we have some kind of epidemic raging through the country.

Whilst I have been home, Bryan and I have completed work we started on the Gold Coast on a new website. It is now online and we are both happy with our endeavours. The new addy is www.secretslieschat.net.au. It follows the blue theme of the Blog, blue being my favourite colour.

News on the book is not making me too happy but I'm resigned to the fact that this is not going to be easy to complete. My agent in the USA has only just now received the 300 review books, so a release date of 16 March is useless. I am now liaising with the publisher to push the date back to 18 May to allow review copies of the book to be distributed in the USA and Canada. The 700 books to come to me still have not arrived, so I am in the same situation as regards review copies and distribution of same. Whilst I resisted changing the release date in the beginning, I decided it was in the best interest of the book to stop being stubborn and face up to the facts. I have expended too much time, effort and cash to throw it all away through being stubborn, without at least giving the book a chance of some kind of success.

Today is another day. Who knows what it will bring.

Flu, Today Tonight, my Website

2005-02-23T22:17:00.000-08:00

Nothing much to report except a continuing battle with the flu. I feel like I've sustained a cracked rib from coughing and the feeling of a cough coming on is enough to bring terror to my mind. A visit to the doc this afternoon leaves me with two different antibiotics to take and a piece of paper to go have a chest xray. The word pneumonia was mentioned but I'm sure once these pills kick in and the pain eases in my ribs when I cough, I will be fine. Damn I'm not sure what's worse, a flu in summer or winter. I'm sure it's the summer one because at least in winter it's a pleasure to fall into bed and stay there. Not so now, it's very humid and I have to almost sit up in bed so I don't choke on a cough. groan*.

However I'm battling on at work; second day back today and slightly better than yesterday as far as coughing went due to scoffing two different cough medicines; one to break things up and one to stop the cough. A losing battle? Hope not.

No word from Today Tonight but at least I know that is going to happen one day.

Still trying to wrestle my website from my agent who built it for me (for a cost of course) and for the last few months has been having great difficulties in passing it over to me so I can work in it myself. I'm about to bite the bullet, and him too; I'm not a happy camper at all. I own a website I can't access. However I have a few cards up my sleeve so all is not lost. I will take the loss of the money I paid to have the website built on the chin and get on with it by utilising my newly found skillbase. People may tread on my corns once but try it too many times and the scorpion comes out with tail twitching.

A Sunny Hello from Kirra Beach Queensland

2005-02-16T08:39:00.000-08:00

As I sat eating brekky, gazing out across the expanse of white sand to the beautiful Pacific gently rolling in, I thought how wonderful it would be to have this view every morning, not just for a week. But then a week is more than some people ever have in an idyllic place, so I count myself extremely lucky.

I arrived here on Sunday afternoon, 13 February, and within a few short hours had the beginnings of a flu, great! My dreams of a fantastic Valentine's Day started to dull as the hours ticked by and I went into the progression of the flu symptoms. However, I managed to enjoy the morning with my lover Bryan, and he handed me a card with personally written words from him to me, and a beautiful gold claddagh ring with two diamonds in the crown. I slipped it on my finger - perfect fit. I haven't worked out yet how he knew my ring size, but he is very resourceful. I didn't have a gift for Bryan, just a card as I figured our gifts for each other were ourselves. However luck prevailed. He dropped his watch in the bathroom and broke it. Perfect! I bought him a new one - cheap but nice lol.

Today Wednesday I'm much better with just some chest junk to get rid of. The sun is out, the heat is kicking in and we are off to the Moreton Bay area of Brisbane to visit my mother in the nursing home and to call in on other rels. I spoke to my contact at Channel 7 Today Tonight and was advised that the story on lying is still being worked on and I will be advised in advance when it is going to air. I was told my part of the story will be excellent, so here's hoping. All I really want is my book up there in lights.

News on the shipment of books is improving with ABP finally recognising that it will be much easier if they do the arrangements from the US and I forward the freight charges to them. I've given up worrying as the most important review books have gone to my agent in the US and hopefully before long will be posted to US and Canadian reviewers. I have already found out that getting my book into bookstores in Australia is going to depend on success overseas and I have therefore decided not to have a book launch here as there is little point when there are no oulets to purchase from.

That's it for today. Havagood one!

Interview with Channel 7 Today Tonight (9.2.05)

2005-02-09T21:11:00.000-08:00

I received a call from the Melbourne office of Channel 7 Today Tonight on Tuesday 8.2.05 asking if I could arrange to be available the next day for the interview.

The original story that was to have been filmed was canned but a storyline had come up that it was decided I would be ideal to participate in.

The story will be about lying ... is it okay to lie and if so, when?

My participation, of course, was to be about lying on the Internet, with the question being asked 'is it easy to lie on the Internet? Has it opened up a new arena for people to lie about themselves and their lives?'

The interviewer, cameraman and assistant arrived at my home at 3.30 pm today (9.2.05) and once the lights were set up, the camera was ready, and the interview area set up, the interview began. I had spent 24 hours nervously wondering what on earth I had gotten myself into and as 3.30 approached I again asked myself .. why? However all went well and I actually enjoyed the experience. Once the camera started rolling with the light boring down on me in the hotseat, I forgot about why and concentrated on doing the best job I could with the opportunity afforded me.

I found it easy to talk because I knew my subject. I didn't need reference notes and I only stumbled a couple of times I recall and the phone rang once so we had to retrack a little. I said a lot and I know only a little will go to air, but my main aim was to promote my book and if they follow through with their promise, this will happen. The book was displayed on black fabric that highlighted the green colour of the cover and a light was partly shone on the cover to enhance it. It looked very spiffy up there in lights and I think I fell in love with it, finally.

The guys took a lot of time with setting up various shots and the time passed with ease and friendliness. My daughter and granddaughter (aged 10) were there as my audience and support team, and they were excited about being part of the show, even just as onlookers. My grandy can't wait to get to school tomorrow to tell all her friends about how her Nan is going to be on TV.
I shudder to think what I will look like and my daughter said that it wouldn't matter what I looked like I would always be my most critical critic. And she is right.

At the conclusion of the interview I was congratulated by the Channel 7 team on a job well done. John, the guy who interviewed me (I wish I could remember his last name) told me, when I said I hoped that some of the interview would make it to air, that he knew who the star of the segment would be and to have no doubts, it would make the screen.

So here's hoping. I had one shot at it and I gave it my best one, for my book, and for all those that I hope read it and learn from it.

I was told that the segment could appear on the Today Tonight show either tomorrow Thursday 10.2.05 or possibly Friday 11.2.05. So all you readers who are in Australia, keep a look out for my book in lights.

News on the arrival of THE book/s

2005-01-25T19:54:00.000-08:00

It's Australia Day, Wednesday 26 January 2005. Good one, another Public Holiday, another excuse for a lazy day with family.

After a barbecue lunch there's not much energy floating around the house, bodies lying around stuffed full of food and nothing better to do than lie down and recuperate (from overeating). I enjoyed a long, slow, large glass of Baileys on the rocks and now feel slightly numb lol.

It is very hot and steamy in Sydney with the temperature out here over 30 celcius, a cloudy storm infested sky. I'm undecided whether to try and motivate myself to pull on the togs and go have a swim in my pool that beckons to me, or to turn on the air conditioner and just sit here and dabble on the net. I don't really have the energy to get up and change my clothes, and I'm all sweaty from the humidity. Too many options.

I have news on the book. Finally I have been able to get in touch with the person who handles the orders and despatch of same. Talk about pulling teeth! I am fortunate to have someone over there in the marketing department who is pushing for me and managing to move this other person to contact me.

Release date ................. I decided on Wednesday 16 March, the week prior to Easter holidays. Wednesday appeals to me as 'hump' day. About all I've done in the past almost 2 years is either knock humps down, crawl over them, run over, walk over or lie deflated at the bottom of them. And the number 16 is a special number. It was my dad's birthdate and is my daughter's.

According to the guru in charge of orders, my books I have ordered should be ready for freighting out next week; I am supposed to be advised of the date and details this week. I won't wait with baited breath, I might catch something I dont wish to.

Watch this space. I may well have a quantity of my book for sale on the internet within a couple of weeks. And each book I sell will be autographed, if requested. The first 500 I will sell are pre-release books, and there may well only be 500 of them available with the same jacket. Depending on reviews the publisher receives before release date, the jacket may be reprinted to reflect those additional reviews.

Until then, Happy Australia Day everyone. Yeah yeah bring on the Public Holidays when almost everyone, with the exception of the greedy retailers, are enjoying the day with family and friends. When it comes to retail dollars, pride in our country comes bottom of the priortity list, and those that work in retail aren't given much option but to work. I wonder if the big bosses of the retail trade are having the day off?????

PS I did turn on the air conditioner

The Postman Knocked - I Wasn't Home

2005-01-17T20:50:00.000-08:00

Today is Monday 17 January 2005. I have been waiting for this day for so long and now that it has finally arrived, it is like a minor incident, not the day of euphoria I expected. My feelings are interesting to me; I guess over time I have lost the excitement that I thought today would bring me. It's like a love affair that went on too long with nothing much of a positive note happening, and then, when the big moment arrives, it is all a bit too late. I remember when I received the email in July 2003 that announced my book had been selected as one to be published and I was offered a contract. My feet didn't touch ground for hours; I sailed around in a kind of fog that was enveloping and entrancing and exciting.

I arrived home this afternoon from work to find shoved under the wire frame of my security door, a note from the post office that a parcel had arrived. As I wasn't home it was returned to the post office, and I was requested to pick it up personally after 4.00 pm. I knew what it would be and I even tossed it around in my head not to bother going out again to pick it up today. However, the need to see it got the better of me, and I drove to the post office, not sure if I would make it on time. I arrived to find a line half way out the door of people waiting to do their business at the front desk, or collect a parcel, like me. I stood in line for close to 1/2 hour, not in the least bit excited.

I decided, while I was in that line, to take the parcel home unopened, ring up my daughter and invite my little family over for a home-delivered dinner so they could share with me the moment when I opened the parcel. Perhaps I was a bit afraid of it; afraid of being disappointed in how it looked, or felt. I handed in the card to the woman behind the desk and she brought out the parcel, asked me for ID, and I signed the register book. I felt what was inside and knew it was 'the book'; the book I had been waiting for and had lost a lot of interest in over those months of waiting.

On arriving home I placed the parcel on the table, rang my daughter, then rang for home delivery. A short while later my daughter arrived with my granddaughter and a young friend of hers. Perhaps my granddaughter's friend took something away from the moment as well. She didn't like anything that was for dinner, and I thought how rude some people are, and how lacking their parents are that they allow them to act like that in other people's homes.

I poured my daughter and myself a Baileys and brought out the parcel. I handed it to my granddaughter and said that as she was so special to me, she could have the honour of opening up the parcel. I made the moment a bit exciting for her by explaining that no one in the world but the publisher had seen the book before us. She saw it first and her eyes lit up. My daughter helped tear the wrapping off and also saw the book before I did. She said "Mum I love the colour". I smiled and enjoyed their pleasure, even if I felt a bit ho hum about the whole thing.

I finally saw the book, well two of them actually. I imagine after being told the book was being sent early December, and chasing it up early January only to find out it probably was never sent, the publisher decided to send me two copies instead of the miserly one free copy the author is given. It looked nice, it felt nice in my hand, and I opened it to read the dedication. My daughter hugged me and kissed me and congratulated me, as did my granddaughter. And yet I still felt nothing much at all about any of it. Where did all my enthusiasm and euphoria go? The one thing that carried me through the almost three years since commencing writing, was the thought of having my book, with my name on it, in my hands. The moment was here. I felt little. How sad for me that the frustrations and the seemingly never-ending dramas, had left me empty inside. I know that if the book had been released as it should have been in June/July 2004, those feelings would have been strong. I would have been floating on air again, delighted, as I had been when I learned a publisher wanted my book.

But here it is and now begins the task of more promotional work to drum up some interest. I have to work on my feelings and over the next days try to recapture some of the really good positive ones, because in spite of all that has gone on leading up to today, my dream has been realised. I always said that if nothing ever came of it of any magnitude, just having a book with my name on it, knowing I had achieved something that in my wildest dreams I never envisaged would happen, would be more than enough for me.

I have to skim through it now and make sure all is as it should be and then contact the section at American-Book Publishing that handles the orders. Once I approve it then I will be organising for 700 of the books to be air freighted to Australia. More headaches, more expenditure. I completed a rough promotional and business plan a few days ago and found out that my rough estimate of expenditure thus far, including air freight of the 700 books and the GST I have to pay on them on arrival in Australia, totals over $30,000 AUD. I intend to sell 500 books myself, or try to, and will recoup approximately 1/3 of that expenditure. However, you can't place a price on a dream, and if my book saves even one person from coming unstuck on the Internet, then it's been money well spent.

As Arnie said "I will be back" - hopefully my next Blog will be on a much more positive note. Thank you to my friends who have seen me come this far. I think I will need you for a while yet to pull me over the hurdles yet to come. Until next time ............

Update on Secrets, Lies & Chat - the book

2004-12-24T23:25:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday morning, 18 December, 1.10 am, in Sydney Australia and I'm here working in my blog. Time to update news on the book. I have now ordered 1000 books and paid for them. 300 will be distributed around the USA and Canada to media, publishers, bookstores, reviewers etc and 700 will be airfreighted to me. 200 are review books and 500 I will be selling online and personally and all will be autographed if requested. I expect the books sometime in January and the BIG release will be April. What a long journey this has been, and an expensive one. I estimate at the end of the road and at release date I will have expended close to $30K to get this book into stores and for sale on the internet.

Advance copy orders for the book can be placed on http://www.pdbookstore.com/comfiles/pages/VenaMcGrath.shtml

My very own copy is supposedly soon on the way to me via snail mail from the USA. Mind you, it's the only free copy I will receive. I guess I might sleep with it or even wear it around my neck lol.

I've been working away solidly in my spare time away from my paid job and I'm proud to say I have a high profile on search engines for key words related to my work. I've expanded my writing into other areas besides chat and have some of my work, well all of it really except for the book, published on www.authorsden.com/venamcgrath and also on my own website www.secretslieschat.com. I have now clocked up over 5000 visitors to my authorsden webpages and I am very pleased with the following I seem to have attained.

I've been fortunate to have gained some very funny stories from two chat friends that I have built my own fiction around, and have created some short stories that I'm proud of. Three of the stories involve Trev and his dogs and the other story is about a special wink* man in my life Bryan, who appeared to me to be so straight when we first met. He finally owned up to a very colourful past and I'm having the time of my life writing about his escapades. And I thought I was bad??? lol. So if you get a chance go to authors den and read about Bryan, An Englishman in Australia in the 60s. So far I only have one Bryan story but I'm working on a long one now on a lot of his life in Australia.

Bryan is a very talented man who designs and makes handmade wooden toys for children. He also hand paints them. We talk about my writing a book of funny short stories with Bryan illustrating it with funny pictures. Bryan has some wonderful toys and puzzles for children 1-6 so if anyone is interested in buying some real Australian wooden treasures for littlies please visit http://adhair.tripod.com/timelesstreasuredtoys/ to view some of his work. Click on 'next' above the large pic and the next pic will appear with details. You can contact Bryan at sirbluey@bigpond.com.

I have had a local press interview and gasp* photo shoot and the article appeared in one of my local newspapers on 1 December. You will find this article posted on the websites also. I was proud that the paper considered I was newsworthy enough to give me 1/2 page in colour.

I have a television interview lined up for February with Joy from Joys World on Channel 31. Joy has a book section in her show and will feature me there.

Things are moving along. I'm working as hard as I can and keep pounding the editors at the SMH with my views, none of which have been published. Well one was, online. I also hit Poynter Online regularly and my views are posted on there as I write them.

I'm now looking forward to Christmas with my family and following closely behind that, some leisure time with Bryan and his daughter Jennifer, who are visiting me for a week or so in Sydney. New Year this year will be the best I've had for a long, long time and Bryan will have a birthday while he is in Sydney, so another excuse for a celebration.

I hope you all have a wonderful happy and merry Christmas and a safe and rollicking good New Year. 2005 is shaping up to be a year of excitement for me and a year of perhaps big changes in my life. I'll keep the blog posted.

Channel 7 Today Tonight

2004-12-22T23:55:00.000-08:00

Today, Wednesday 22 December 2004 - 10.55 pm Sydney Australia

I had an email from Greg Tingle today (my PR agent Mediaman Australia) re Channel 7 'Today Tonight'. He advised that I would be contacted by a lady from the show, which I was.

A segment is being planned on online dating and they were looking for people to talk to about experiences (not so good ones) using online dating sites. I was asked if I had any contacts they could approach and of course, I do know a number of people who have had bad experiences, including myself. However I don't imagine any of them would want to talk about their experiences so I explained that I couldn't put them in touch with anyone. What I know I know because of who I am and because those people trust me to be confidential. They talk to me because I have had similar events in my life to theirs so I can understand how they feel and why.

We talked about various aspects of online danger. The lady I spoke to appeared to think that bodgie photos were the big cheat/lie thing going on. I told her that as far as I was concerned bodgie photos were not much of an issue as once you met someone for real you would know that the photo was realistic or not and so you would just walk I imagine. I explained that in all the meetings I had with men I met from either chat or online dating, I had really never been sent a photo that wasn't close to the truth. I expanded my comments by telling her my views on the real dangers and the biggest lies and they are the "I'm divorced, I'm single, I'm separated". These statements are hard to disprove and are very much more dangerous than any bodgie photo.

I was then asked if I would consider being interviewed by 'Today Tonight'. Only one answer to that, whilst shaking in my shoes, and that was 'yes'. I explained that as I had a book about to be released, with my name on it, and my photo was already featured online and in press articles, I really had no reason to hide out. Exposure on TV is important to my agenda to raise awareness to the dangers growing online for adults and children alike. The conversation ended with a possibiity i could get that interview and the possibility I won't. It is all up to how they see their segment going; whether they want truism or fantasy. I'll keep updating progress.

2004-12-18T07:58:00.000-08:00

December 2004

The Book goes to print - finally

2004-11-11T22:50:00.000-08:00

It's now Thursday 11 November and today in Australia it was Remembrance Day for the men and women who gave their lives in the First World War. Those of us who choose to remember and revere those men and women, take time out at 11.00 am on the 11th day of the 11th month every year to spend two minutes in silence while we listen to the Last Post. Most workplaces play the Last Post over their PA systems. I for one spend two minutes each year in reflection for all those lives that were lost. I see war in a different way to those that wage it on their fellow human beings, but all those that died thought they died for their country and for a very good reason. That I choose to disagree doesn't stop me from spending a little of my life thinking about them. Lest We Forget.

The past week has been exciting with the news from the USA that finally THE manuscript has gone to the printer. But the long haul continues with the big release date being at least 5 months away. I wonder how I will make it through another 5 months. But at the very least it is out of my hair now and I can concentrate on the other important things, like the promotion of the book. My website is up and running www.secretslieschat.com and under construction.

Well that's about it for the day. The cover, front back and spine can be viewed on www.authorsden.com/venamcgrath.

Thursday 14 October 2004 Update

2004-10-14T08:20:00.000-07:00

It's now 8.30 am on another hot day predicted in Sydney. Yesterday was 40 celcius at home in the shade; the sun? well that's another melting moment. It was even too hot to swim in my pool as it sits in full sun and the heat was better to stay out of.

I'm on leave from work for a couple of weeks and last week travelled firstly to Orange for a couple of days and then flew out for Brisbane on Tuesday 5 October. The weather there was much the same as here, only hotter. My daughter and granddaughter went with me and we spent time with family and visiting my mother who is an 'inmate' in a nursing home in the dementia ward; visits we don't look forward to as my mother doesn't really know who we are most of the time.

I had some t-shirts printed while I was in Brisbane, with the cover picture on the back and my new website that is under construction. I only had a few done for family and a friend, just to see how I felt about them and if people felt comfortable wearing them. I also had a few calendars printed and a mousepad. It's kind of neat having people ask me about the book and the interest they show in it. I visited my nephew's place of business and some of his staff asked for the website address and requested signed copies of the book once it's released and they purchase a copy.

My website www.secretslieschat.com is coming along nicely after a major colour scheme change. I still have a lot of information yet to provide to the designer so it can be completed and turned over to me to manage. Another learning curve, maintaining a website.

I met a friend from chat whilst I was in Brisbane. I rented an apartment for my girls and myself at Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast, for 2 nights, and my friend met us there and stayed with us. We had a lovely time together and he and I spent time getting to know each other on a face to face level instead of the chat/phone levels of the past 7 months or so. I arrived back in Sydney on Sunday 10 October and my friend arrived here, after a 12 hour train trip, on Tuesday evening. We decided that as he could spare the time, we might as well spend the last week of my leave together here, in Sydney. It's been too hot to do anything but keep out of it, but today we have decided to take a trip overseas, to Manly, lol. My friend doesn't know much about Sydney, so a nice ferry ride down the river from Parramatta and then across the harbour to Manly, seems a good way to spend a hot day.

I've written once again to the USA to the Director of Editing to find out the status of the manuscript, which is still with the copyedit section. No information from him yet, just a reply that he would chase up details and let me know.

I have just about tied up things with an agent in the USA and I have confidence that he will prove a worthwhile addition to my marketing plans. His name is Evan Ginzburg and he has a radio program in the USA that is mostly concerned with wrestling I believe. I'm looking forward to working with Evan if things work out, and I can afford him. He can give me a lot of exposure for the book on his radio show, and has untold contacts that may prove astounding to the success of my book in the USA. As with my agent in Australia, Greg Tingle, I have a good feeling about Evan and I'm following that gut feeling. The cost of bringing Evan into the picture is one issue I don't know the outcome of yet.

It's been said to me in chat that I'm only in this project for the money I'll make out of it and to ruin chat; little do people know about publishing and none of them would realise that this project has done nothing so far but cost me money. To recoup my outlay will be a bonus even if that's all this book ever accomplishes. And chat? Well I happen to have had a pretty hefty addiction to chat and still see it as having a lot of positives and no way do I wish to bring it down. My only desire, if you can call it that, or passion, is to see chat cleaned up so the people who have left in droves may return and find it a happy, safe place again. I have no agenda but to be of service and to share my wisdom about chat and the very real possibilities that exist regarding the danger aspects of chatting to both women and men and, even more importantly, the danger to children and teenagers.

Until next time, take care and keep watching for news.

Vena

Thursday 23 September 2004 Update

2004-09-23T19:10:00.000-07:00

No news on the book as of today. I have sent a couple of emails to the USA for an update and the word is it is still with copyedit.

Last night I took part of my little family out for dinner. It was my granddaughter's 10th Birthday and she wanted to have dinner at Lone Star at Penrith, NSW, Australia. If I ever go back to that particular restaurant I need my head read. In the two hours or less that we were there, six annoying incidents happened to spoil our night including rudeness of staff, incorrect meals turning up, no ice cream for my granddaughter arriving even though it was part of the meal deal for kids, an incorrect account that had to be corrected before I would pay it. I had heard negative stories about this particular restaurant but thought it maybe was a one-off and surely wouldn't happen to our little group.

At the risk of being a bore here are the annoying incidents that occurred during our short stay.

We arrived without a booking which is fine for that restaurant especially in the middle of the week. We were told there was a 15 minute wait, and yet half of the tables were empty. So we moved to the bar area and I went to the bar to buy drinks for us. There were about 6 people at the bar, but as I settled in, most of them left, with just two of us remaining. The guy up the other end from me was being served. One barman. He made a number of cocktails and I waited. By the time he had finished more people were at the bar. He came to the cash register right in front of me, added up the guy's bill, gave him his change and then asked who was next. I put my hand up and said I was. He looked at me and then served the guy standing directly in front of him. I stood there smarting for a couple of minutes and then went and sat down with my family and we decided to have drinks with dinner.

We were eventually shown to our table, which was vacant when we arrived, and my granddaughter opened her presents. We finally had a waitress turn up and we ordered drinks. Then came the dinner order with the same waitress. My daughter was the spokesperson for us all and by the time she got to her order and mine (which were the same) she said "two of the steak and prawns please". The waitress looked at her and said "no, I'll take your order first and then hers", as she nodded across at me. grrrrr I was seeing red by this time. My daughter asked if she could change the chips to sweet potato for my granddaughter and was told NO, emphatically NO. I'm getting angrier here but because it was a special night I kept my tongue inside my mouth.

Our entree turned up (2 of them). We only ordered 1. So 1 had to be taken away. Our meals arrived and the food is always pretty spot on. We had eaten, the table had been cleared and we sat there waiting for my granddaughter's ice cream, and waited, and waited. Eventually I went and found someone and requested it be brought to her. She had been so excited telling me that the waitress would come and ask her what flavour she wanted. Didn't happen, I had to relay the flavour bit for her. So ice cream down the hatch and I ask for the bill. It arrives and we had been charged for the 2 entrees and for my granddaughter's Pepsi, which was part of the kids meal. And so the bill had to be fixed up because no way was I paying for something we didn't have. If it had been any other occasion than the one it was I think I would have walked out when the barman ignored me. I remember saying at the time that I hoped it wasn't going to set the scene for the evening. I should have shut up because that's exactly what it did do.

But, little one was happy; she had her ribs and her ice cream and opened her presents when she wanted to.

I wrote a letter to the restaurant today, to the manager, and I'm sure she/he won't be pleased to receive it. I feel better though for having told her/him exactly what I think of their restaurant and that no way will I ever return.

The Cover Unveiled

2004-09-01T11:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, 31 August 2004, I received the mail I had been waiting for. I looked at it sitting in my inbox and was excited, delighted and apprehensive. I wondered what I would find, would it be as I had seen it in my mind's eye? Finally it got the better of me and I opened the jpg attachment, and there it was - my cover! I have to admit I didn't like the colour and the picture wasn't anything like I had imagined. Time got the better of me as I had to leave for work, so I hurriedly forwarded the jpg attachment onto special people, turned off the puter and left. On arrival at work I found emails from friends expressing their views that the cover was a 'winner'. I looked at it again a few times and found things that interested me. During the course of the day a workmate told me the meaning of the flower - innocence. The design editor at the publishing house told me the meaning of the colour, acid yellow - deceit. And the stem/cord? Well it could mean hurt, pain and any other words that readers may come up with after reading the story within the cover.

As not everyone will see the story within the cover - innocence (flower), deceit (colour) and hurt/pain etc (stem/cord) I will in the weeks to come tell the story of the cover as often as I can and it will become part of my promotion - The story behind the cover.

I hope that I can find a way to attach it to this site but if not, please visit www.authorsden.com/venamcgrath and 'news'. There you will find the cover.

2004-09-01T04:08:00.000-07:00

The cover is unveiled

An Update on Spam Attacks - 23 August 2004

2004-08-23T01:49:00.000-07:00

Spam Update
23 August 2004

Copyright 2004 Vena McGrath

Since my last blast at spam mail I experienced a period of relative freedom from it due to the closure of one of Telstra’s ports. The lessening of spam mail was astounding, and a great relief. Once I started to think about the amount of spam I was receiving daily and the content of most of it, I began to become neurotic about it, and what started out as an annoyance, became bigger than Ben Hur.

Damn, the peace ended, and abruptly two weeks ago. The spam mail changed from pornographic and content about viagra and penis enlargements to gambling sites. Suddenly I was inundated with at the very least 20 mails a day from casino sites and affiliated companies. I was offered thousands of dollars to gamble with, thousands of dollars worth of merchandise free, except for the cost of postage US$. The majority of the offers were for US citizens only. When are these spammers going to realise that an ‘au’ address means Australia? Oh, and invitations by young women to chat with them online; the invitations included scantily clad pictures of them and ‘come on’ text.

I began to get suspicious. I had purchased online a computer from Dell Australia, a computer made in China. Everything was above board with the purchase; they kept in contact with me via email and phone and the computer eventually arrived by courier, all intact. I should add here I was more than happy with the purchase and delivery of the computer. This spam mail, the new lot, didn’t start arriving until I had the new computer up and running a couple of days. I wondered about this, was there a connection? My mind started thinking up scenarios; there was something built into my new computer that allowed them to track me or else Dell had sold or released my email address to these groups. I asked a friend of mine to have a look at a few of them and they all appeared to be coming from the same places, and he managed to find me an email address to write to.

I noted that some of the mail said that as I was registered as a member of winsweepstakes.net they were sending me mail as per my agreement to accept mail from affiliated sponsors. I have never been a member of any online gambling site. So once again my mind began making up stories – Chinese computer/gambling/spam mail. I decided to send an email to the address I had been given and I warned these people if they didn’t refrain from filling my mailbox up with spam I would report them to the federal authorities in Australia and the US. Some of the mail also was coming from the UK and Europe. I then wrote to Dell and hinted that I had a feeling they either had installed something on my new computer that allowed these people to locate me or else they had sold my email address. I let them know in no uncertain terms I was most disturbed and annoyed by the prospect. Of course I heard nothing back from either and the emails kept arriving.

Yesterday morning I logged in, downloaded my mail; 29 spam emails all from gambling and affiliated sites. I spat the dummy when one of the emails was an offer for a free spam filter! A spam filter from a spammer? This was fast becoming ridiculous and there didn’t appear to be an answer other than ride it out until they became sick of sending me mail I didn’t respond to. Then I remembered an email from BigPond about extras I could make use of, for an additional monthly charge, of course. The fact that I pay $50 for Broadband Cable, with I might add limited downloads/uploads, doesn’t count. Extras are just that with BigPond.

I went to the BigPond homepage and read up on the spam filter and decided for $2.50 a month it was worth a trial and I signed up there and then. Almost instantly the spam mail ceased; I missed it – I kid of course; I was delighted. I wondered where it had gone; as usual I only half read the information and just went for broke. Tonight I went back to the homepage and re-read the information and found my spam mail in my web mailbox. 34 of them for the last 24 hours. All rated 93% to 100% spam! Oh how wonderful peace is in my Outlook Express mailbox. $2.50 a month well spent.

So all of you suffering from spam attack visit the BigPond homepage and read about the spam filter. It is far superior to one I trialled some time ago where all my mail went to the spam filter and I had to sort it out so I didn’t lose the mail I wanted to keep. The BigPond spam filter only isolates known spammers and luckily for me all of my pesky visitors of late are known spammers.

Peace reigns over my mailbox and I’m smiling.

Cyber Cop, Going, Going, Gone

2004-08-09T20:39:00.000-07:00

Copyright Vena McGrath 2004

I read with interest the article appearing in the SMH on July 20, 2004 ‘Cyber cop going, going gone’ (Alastair MacGibbon), and written by Patrick Gray.

My interest stems from my exposure to the internet, specifically chat rooms and internet dating sites, where I became involved in relationships with men I met from those mediums. I personally ran the risk of being implicated in a crime as the receiver of stolen goods. The ‘gifts’ were given to me by one of the men I had a relationship with for seven months in 2001, and only that I found out he was in fact married with a child, I would still no doubt be blissfully unaware of what was going on. Although he held a middle management position with his Company, once I knew for sure he was married, I questioned how he could have afforded the gifts he gave me. Even taking into account his story that, as part of his salary package he could purchase product at cost price, I knew a married man could not possibly account for the money he was supposedly spending on me. He was eventually questioned about the goods I had in my possession after I contacted his company and asked anonymously for some information. My anonymity vanished once it was ascertained that none of the goods had been paid for. In his interview he owned up that he had stolen the goods and was subsequently given the option of the Police or resignation. He of course took resignation and then made certain threats to me that caused me great anguish and forced me to seek legal help.

The actions of the company executives to offer him a way out is, in my opinion, reprehensible. Whilst I never set out to ‘get’ this man, he was a thief and should have faced the legal ramifications of his deeds. I hoped that I would be allowed pay for everything I had that he had given me and then plans made for him to be watched and most likely caught doing it again. I doubt very much I was the first person to receive stolen goods from him. He is now no doubt working for another company doing the same thing, as one of the executives from that company told me he would do everything he could to ensure he gained employment elsewhere, This isn’t the first time I have seen this happen in large corporations. They prefer to cover up the truth, pay the person off, and then set them free to do the same things to someone else. Publicity they don’t want, at any expense, and to hell with the next company they manage to infiltrate. As the old saying goes ‘the rot starts at the top’.

I had quite a few experiences from my three years of addiction to chat, but that one was so bizarre as to not be believed. I felt so passionate about trying to make others see the dangers that are constant in chat rooms and online dating sites, that I was motivated to write a manuscript about my experiences. My book ‘Secrets, Lies & Chat’ will be published in the USA later this year and released in other countries, including Australia. In laying my private life bare for anyone who reads the book to judge, I am attempting, in my own small way, to help clean up the parts of the internet that have impacted on my life and the lives of many others. I know people online, women and men, who have had similar and even worse, experiences to my own that filled a book. I know a woman who was raped by a man she met online and has been stalked by him ever since. I know of a male who has been stalked by a female, so seriously that he was forced to take his story to the Police. These are only two of many ‘horror’ stories online. We all have choice though, and if we choose to meet people from the internet, then we are taking a big chance, unless we know someone who knows that person in reality and can vouch for him/her.

There are however many people online who, like myself, are naïve to what actually is going on under the surface of friendly chat rooms where you can meet people from all over the world, and from different backgrounds. These are the people who we need to help, to educate. I’m already educated; nothing surprises me at all anymore about the internet and the dangers. I know there are some very undesirable people frequenting chat rooms, and I fear especially for young children who are involved in kids’ chat, innocently so a lot of parents think. Nothing on the internet is innocent, and the fact that we who surf the net regularly are constantly under attack from a barrage of viruses and threats of hacking, is proof enough. I fear also for the teenagers already in teenage chat rooms because I know the ‘sleaze’ factor of males and females online. There is no way they can be stopped from entering teenage rooms. I could go there and say I’m 15. Who is going to prove that I am not what I say I am? I can send a photo of a young girl to prove who I am and it’s either accepted or not.

Mr MacGibbon is correct when he says “individuals cannot leave it to corporations or governments to protect their interests, they have to protect themselves.” However, sadly, our society now isn’t geared up for self-help or being accountable to oneself. Everyone wants to blame everyone else so I see a great difficulty in changing that around especially on the internet as most people don’t believe it when you tell them it can be a not so nice place. Education is the only way people will become aware of the dangers of the internet, but even then you have to have a receptive audience. Don’t get me wrong, I love being online and I wouldn’t want to go back to 1999 when I refused point blank to learn how to surf the net. It has brought so much to my life, a lot of it good. The not so good is what I want to get across to people, the very real risks that live just a keystroke away from the living room. I have been called online in chat rooms an alarmist, a hater of men, and a bitter person who is trying to bring down chat, to quote just a few. I absorb it all and I wonder at the mentality of those who speak so foolishly. I await release of my book so that I have a tool that I can use to get out there and talk to groups, anyone at all, who will listen and take heed.

I applaud everyone around the world involved in efforts to clean up the internet. I see it as a battle that will be never-ending because as soon as one loophole is closed, the deviates of our society will find another way in. I have been in chat rooms where someone has come into the room with a nickname relating to terrorist activities, and I have seen the threats appear on the screen. And I have seen the majority of people in the chat room treat it as a joke, when I see a dark side to the threats and a very real, if perceived on my part, danger. Fanatics are to be feared not laughed at. People find different ways to express their frustrations, anger, hate, and the internet is one place they can do that and be anonymous. The anonymity is what needs to be feared, as none of us knows who is on the other side of the monitor. Some of what goes on is probably grand-standing, but can anyone be sure that’s what it is?

Mr MacGibbon is involved with one aspect of online crime, educating people about eBay auction-related fraud. Whilst this is most likely a huge issue, I haven’t been involved in it personally. The educating I want to do has to do with the very human emotions of unsuspecting people who see chat rooms as a way to escape the reality of their lives and their loneliness. It’s a very easy way to meet members of the opposite sex without meeting them until and if you decide to do so. This is where the secrets and lies come into the equation, and they are used to manipulate peoples’ minds and emotions to gain sexual favours for free. This mind manipulation can be even more dangerous than meeting in reality, and only those that have been exposed to it personally, or know someone who has, realise how very frightening this can be.

Online crime will continue to fester and grow, as the internet is the perfect medium for those that live and prosper in dark places. It is also a cheap way to set up a business, where any room in any home can become an office with the click of a mouse. I wish I could see that the efforts of those working now to educate the masses would be an almost instant success, but for all the reasons I mentioned, it will be a never-ending battle as thousands more each day join the tidal wave of internet users and are exposed to the elements. My one wish is that I can save a marriage, or a relationship, or a child being hurt, or a woman being raped, or a man being devastated, from exposure to the internet. If each of us concentrates on our chosen field and we keep chipping away, even when we are made a mockery of and threatened, we can make a difference. I have been successfully silenced, almost, by the provider of the network I chat in and told I am not allowed discuss my book in public chat rooms on their network as it’s a breach of their advertising rules. I have become a victim of the ‘no free speech’ syndrome ruling the lives of Australians by ‘big brother’. However, no matter how small the difference may be, the wave will grow, and day by day a few more in the world will know, and be aware, that the internet is like any other society where the millions around the world who are at any moment on any day surfing the net live. It comprises of the good, the bad, and the very ugly. It’s often said to me when I attempt to talk seriously online about the internet, “it’s fantasy”. To many it is a fantasy, but to others it’s a new reality, unexplored, and waiting with open arms to be taken over and controlled by underworld elements. I for one won’t sit back and watch that happen and neither will Alastair MacGibbon. I applaud you sir, and may the force keep you and your family safe.

Have you done any online searches lately?

2004-07-26T03:07:00.000-07:00

It's Monday 26 July 2004 and wonder upon wonder, it's finally dropping some of that wet stuff on us ....... thanks all of you who did a rain dance, most appreciated.

I'm going to do a bit of boasting here. Thanks to the efforts of my fantastic agent, Greg Tingle, my name is all over the net on searches involving either my name, one of my chat nicknames 'megasec' or a variation of words including 'chat lies' 'chat secrets and lies' etc etc. And the biggest boast of all, #1 in the world!!!!!!!!! on a number of those searches with Greg often just below me or above me. What a buzz out this internet is. I'm having the time of my life watching this pre book release little wave growing bit by bit and I hope that anyone who stumbles upon my attempts is not disappointed.

My official website is under construction where I will eventually be selling some of my books from. I also hope to incorporate a chatroom function into the website where my friends, peers and anyone interested, can meet and talk in an open forum with freedom of speech. No one telling anyone they can't talk about their projects 'because they might make money out of it one day'. Free advertising will be there for everyone and hopefully some really quality chat times too. I'm tired of being told what I can and can't say. This is Australia, or it used to be, the land of the free. The more I move around in this land I call home the more I realise I am becoming a minority without the perks of the minority groups, and as a dinkie die Aussie I dislike that feeling intensely. Call me racist if you choose, but I'm proud to be Australian and I can't get used to feeling like a stranger in my own country.

I've decided to move out of Sydney in the not too distant future to the West Coast of my country, to the last frontier as I call it. Only problem is that upon researching the area I was interested in moving to, there's hundreds of others with the same idea and property prices are rising in accordance with the interest. Seems I may have to rethink my relocation site to find some resemblance of the life I knew as being Australia. Where neighbours are friends, where people in the stores greet you and are genuinely pleased to see you, where life slows down enough that people see people and smile from within. That's the Australia I remember so fondly and I refuse to believe that I have to let all that go and move into this alien world where no one cares much anymore about anyone, even their own families.

That brings me to another subject dear to my heart that makes me despair for our society. Childcare. I can't for the life of me work out why people have children only to discard them like a car they park in a garage and only bring out when they choose to have some fun with it. What happened to the Aussie family pride where children were the greatest assets parents could ever have. Where did love of family go? How anyone can take a babe to a creche and leave him/her there all day and allow other people they don't know from a bar of soap shape their minds, is way beyond my ability to reconcile. When did we become a nation of go-getters that only think about how many assets we have? When did a fabulous home, new cars, expensive holidays, everything imaginable that opens and shuts, become more important to us than our own flesh and blood. Have people forgotten how precious life is? Do people have children because they think they should? Is it proof of adulthood to bring a babe into the world?

My own children were the world to me, nothing else was important but that I did all I possibly could for them. My husband and I lived on one wage, and a labourers wage at that. All our furniture was cast-off or borrowed, some of the rooms of our home had no floor coverings, we had one car. But we made it through those days and if I never achieve another thing in my life that anyone thinks is worth achieving, I have achieved the one thing that mattered to me. I raised three babes into decent adults and the pride I feel when I'm around them no money could ever buy. I didn't go without what mattered, I just accepted that to be a decent parent I came down the end of the pecking order so that I gave the next generation the very best I could. And if all I could give for a number of years was love and time then it sure didn't hurt me. And now I get off my soap box but first and last on the subject of childcare my opinion is our Government should be ashamed of themselves for buying votes by making it easy for both parents to go to work. And that brings up another gripe; what about the parents who do care about their children and they do make sure one parent is always home with the kids? Does anyone reward them for doing their bit to bring up the future citizens of our beautiful country by giving them some well-deserved handouts of the taxpayer's money? I would prefer to see some of my taxes going to those parents than these greedy ones who think every dollar they earn or get for free is all that matters in this world.

I rest my case and the opinions above are totally mine, minority opinions I know. I'm glad I am who I am and that I care. I'm waiting for the cycle to complete and for the world and Australians especially to come back to grass roots, to family and love. Perhaps as in the past, another World War is the only way this will ever happen, at the cost of many lives and much sadness. I hope not for all our sakes.

Trev & Jen - An Australian Story

2004-07-25T02:54:00.000-07:00

Copyright Vena McGrath 2004

Trev & Jen
An Australian Story

There wasn’t a thing about the Boardroom that impressed Trev. After all, he had been here many times before, and although he tried in vain to find just one thing different on each visit, he hadn’t been able to in five years. The same tired looking people sat around the same tired looking table on chairs that had seen better days. One thing about being a regular visitor, Trev had the best chair for his height sussed out and always made sure he was early enough to secure it. He was a tall man, slim, with long legs, and needed a chair with a bit of grouse about it.

He remembered his first meeting in this room and the chair he ended up with and how, if he bent his legs and sat normally, his knees were half way up his chest. That afternoon had been most uncomfortable for Trev. In an attempt to find a comfortable way to sit, he had extended his legs out straight under the table and of course found himself continually slipping partly off the chair as there was no grip for his feet. The memory of the wink from the woman sitting opposite him when his shoes touched her shoes on one of his slides down in the chair flashed into his mind. He had smiled back at her and mumbled ‘sorry’ but her eyes told him she had perhaps come to the wrong conclusion about the accidental shoe tap under the table.

When the meeting closed Trev had wandered out into the reception area and heard the sound of high-heeled shoes tapping behind him on the hard floor as someone hurried across the room. By the time he had reached the lifts the heels had caught up with him, and there she was beside him. She introduced herself as Amanda and chatted to him while the lift descended to the ground floor. Trev studied her face as she spoke and decided he liked the lady. He took a chance on enquiring if she was staying the night in town, and once this was confirmed he plucked up the courage to invite her to have dinner with him. The invitation was accepted and Trev hailed a cab, giving directions to his favourite Thai Restaurant on the outskirts of the city and not too far from his hotel.

Dinner was pleasant, with only a fleeting mention of the meeting and its outcome before the talk moved into more trivial issues. Trev remembered Amanda had been an interesting dinner companion, who knew a lot about canoeing and owned dogs, two of Trev’s favourite subjects. They swapped funny stories about their adventures canoeing and about their dogs, laughing together easily. He wondered why she kept looking at him with those ‘come to bed’ eyes when really all he wanted was someone to talk to. Going to bed with anyone that night was not going to happen, it was Lent and he had given up sex. Trev was sure he wasn’t sending out vibes that she could possibly consider as sexual, but he was flirting with her, he knew that. When it came time to consider dessert they discussed the possibility of either apple strudel or lemon cheesecake, but Trev had a feeling that cheesecake (his choice) wasn’t the dessert the lady was thinking about. As their chosen desserts weren’t on the menu in the restaurant Trev asked for the bill, and a few minutes later they walked out into the night air and meandered along laughingly to a trendy, nearby, coffee shop.

A pleasant few hours together passed easily and it was time to say goodnight. Dessert and coffee had been the finishing touch to excellent Aussie wine and exotic Thai food. They shook hands, smiled and parted, walking in opposite directions, with Trev pleased to escape that look she gave him. He couldn’t quite make up his mind if it was disappointment, anger or frustration he saw in her eyes when he declined the invitation for a nightcap at her hotel room. She had pressed a business card into his hand as they shook hands and invited him to call if he would like to. He wondered what was wrong with him passing up the best offer he had received all year, but deep down inside he knew the answer – never mix business with pleasure. The walk back to his hotel calmed him and he whistled quietly as he strolled along the beach path. The night was cool, but not cold, and the smell of the sea and the sound of the gentle waves rolling in to shore set the scene for a sound sleep. He unlocked the door to his room, dropped the keys and his mobile phone on the bedside table, pulled back the curtains and opened the sliding door onto the balcony. He stood and studied the night skyline from the fourth storey room for a few moments, then undressed lazily and had a quick shower before crawling into bed, sighing deeply as his body relaxed.

The sound of the mobile phone ringing invaded Trev’s dream. Damn, he had been about to enjoy a moment of ecstasy with Amanda too. He reached across to the bedside table in the dim light, picked up the mobile, spent a moment working out which end to speak into, and answered the call sleepily. He sat up abruptly in the bed unable to believe what he was hearing. Confusion set in, his mind was still on what he had been about to do in his dream, and his body remained in a state of eagerness to meet the challenge of Amanda. He swung his legs over and off the bed, and once his feet hit the floor he was up pacing around the room with the phone pressed hard against his ear. Dumbfounded, he let the phone fall on the bed and stood looking out the window at the scene below. It was dawn, and a few people were out walking or jogging; now and then a car would be driven down the one-way street towards the beach. He looked out across the ocean and saw the lights reflected in it from the shore. He shook his head in disbelief again before moving away from the window to find his clothes, making his way to the shower to wake himself up. He could hear the sounds of movement in the hallway and hushed voices, along with the sound of running water in other rooms as people readied themselves for the day ahead.

After dressing hurriedly, Trev gathered up his discarded clothing and belongings, packed his suitcase, grabbed his briefcase and walked out into the hallway, closing the door to the room behind him. He had the usual “I’ve left something behind” feeling, but was sure it was just a feeling as he had checked the room thoroughly before leaving. His mobile was stowed safely in his briefcase and his keys and wallet in his pockets. He caught the lift to the lobby and, as it was still early and no one was at the reception desk, he hit his hand a few times on the small bell glancing around impatiently. A lady emerged from a side door, mumbled good morning, took Trev’s hotel room key from him, and proceeded to type on the keyboard near the monitor of the computer. Trev handed over his credit card, signed the documents, thanked the woman, gathered together his luggage and walked towards the lift, picking up a newspaper from a small table as he passed. The lift was waiting and the ride down two floors to the car park was quick. It was a short walk to the car, and after tossing his luggage on the back seat and closing the door, he lowered himself into the front seat and sat there quietly for a moment gathering his thoughts.

In the hour it had taken to shower, dress and pack, Trev had refused to allow himself to think about the phone call. But now it was time to think. His friend John, the local police sergeant, had made the phone call to him and the story he relayed seemed so fanciful that it couldn’t possibly be true. And yet Trev knew John to be as honest as the day was long, so he had no option but to believe that what he was told wasn’t fiction, but was fact. He fumbled around in his briefcase that he had placed on the front passenger seat, located his mobile and positioned it in the charger. After locating John’s number in his address book, he pressed the call button. John answered after a few rings and Trev asked him once again to go over the facts while he drove out onto the highway and headed for home, two hours in the distance.

Two years prior to that morning Trev had taken under his wing an ageing dog. His thoughts wandered to her now while he tried to concentrate on John’s words. Jenny was a red Australian Cattle dog, purebred, old and arthritic, but with beautiful eyes, gentle and intelligent, belying the usual impression people had of a Cattle dog’s nature. Her teeth had seen better days, her coat was unruly and unkempt and dirty and she appeared to have rarely had a decent feed. He remembered her ribs and how they were just covered by a thin layer of skin and hair. She belonged to an elderly couple who lived out of town, and whenever Trev saw them in town shopping he would spend a short while chatting to them. On one such occasion Trev was asked if he knew someone who could care for Jenny, the best friend they could no longer provide adequately for. The old couple looked distraught and tears welled in the lady’s eyes when she spoke about their canine mate.

Trev had seen Jenny of course, and often felt sorry for her, as her life seemed to consist of just lying around the yard, nothing to do and no one to do it with. He wondered who would want an ageing dog to look after and was sure that none of his friends or relations would be interested on taking on a commitment like that, especially a Cattle dog. He could see genuine concern from the old couple for Jenny and he heard the words come out of his mouth, “how about I look after Jenny for you?” After shaking hands and coming to an agreement about when he would pick Jenny up, Trev walked back to his office wondering what had made him make an offer that would tie him down somewhat.

Before Trev picked Jenny up from the old couple he had to make a few adjustments to his home, the most important being a doggie door. Jenny wasn’t a huge dog, but she wasn’t a small dog either so the doggie door ended up one a child or slim adult could squeeze through without too much difficulty. Although Trev wasn’t too happy about this he figured that the house would be safe when Jenny was inside as her bark was loud and ferocious if she felt it was justified, and her hackles stood up on her back in a menacing way that frightened most people. Trev lived a short distance out of town on acreage and he looked forward to sharing his home with Jenny, picturing her running around the paddocks enjoying a freedom she had never had. Later that week Jenny moved in with Trev, and moved in was about it. She was too old to sleep outside as she needed some comfort and she needed a friend who had time for her. Not that Trev had much time for anything but work, but he figured at the very least he could make her nights more pleasant, fatten her up, and he could take her for walks and away for weekends, if he found she could be trusted.

He decided that Jenny wasn’t a very appropriate name for a stud bachelor’s dog and shortened it to Jen. Once she was part of his home, Trev made sure he spoke to her often, calling her Jen, and it wasn’t long before she recognised her name instantly. He spent whatever spare time he could at night grooming her, and it wasn’t long before she looked like she actually belonged to someone who cared. Within a month her appearance had improved remarkably and the townspeople began to recognise Jen as being Trev’s dog. The old couple were delighted to see Jen whenever Trev dropped by with her, and tears sprang to their eyes when they saw how improved her appearance was. Trev had taken Jen to the vet and she was on a course of tablets for her arthritis and her teeth had been cleaned and her coat shone. Bit by bit Jen became Trev’s dog and her loyalty and devotion to him warmed his heart. She sat by the fire at night with him and ate out of a bowl nearby while Trev sat in front of the TV with his dinner on a tray. She had her own armchair, covered by a warm blanket, and her own small pillow that she liked to lay her head on.

After a few initial bouts of insecurity about Jen, Trev’s neighbours soon became used to her and she became used to them. It wasn’t long before they were all fast friends, and an offer to feed Jen whenever Trev was late home or away was a bonus for him. On this trip the deal was the same, Jen was at home, with full run of the house, and the neighbours fed her twice a day.

Thoughts of Jen were in his mind as John retold the story of the events since Trev had gone to the city for the meeting. He heard how a man had wandered into his yard and apparently noticed the doggie door and decided to climb through it, after canvassing the house for a few hours to make sure no one was home. The neighbours had been and fed Jen, and although they saw a man sitting across the road under a tree, they didn’t think anything about it as any number of people walked around the area every day, and on this hot day a rest in the shade seemed sensible.

John told Trev that at around midnight, during his on-duty shift at the station, he had a phone call from Trev’s house, and was astounded to hear an unknown man’s voice on the other end of the phone, terrified, begging for John to come and release him from Trev’s house. The story unfolded bit by bit and Trev learned that Jen had bailed the intruder up once he entered the house via the doggie door, and of course there was no way he would attempt to crawl back out after seeing Jen’s teeth bared at him. Trev, for a fleeting moment, actually felt sorry for this hapless person who most definitely was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The intruder had used a chair to climb on top of a cabinet in the kitchen so as to find a safe place where Jen couldn’t reach him. Fortunately for him it was high enough for Jen not to be able to jump up and bite him. From what the man told John, he had spent five hours there, lying in the narrow cavity between the ceiling and the top of the cabinet, until he noticed Jen was asleep and could safely lower himself over the side to grab the phone and ring the police. There was a problem though that only Trev could solve, and he was two hours away. John and his men knew Jen and also knew she would probably not welcome anyone into the house with the exception of Trev. They did however go to the house and attempt an entry, only to be driven back by Jen, who was after all just doing her job.

John had called Trev in the hope that he could drive back home that morning and let the police into the house to arrest the intruder. Trev assured John that he would be there within two hours and, as he had intended travelling home that morning, it was no problem. He pressed the end call button on the mobile and smiled to himself, actually enjoying the thought of arriving home with this drama going on. He could picture the police outside his home, the neighbours, probably even photographers from the local paper, and Trev being Trev, knew that any press was good press and that this story would make a lot of people smile and make Jen an instant canine celebrity. He actually grinned when he thought about the local single ladies he fancied who may well now look at him in a different way, and he intended to play hard to get, well maybe. After all, Lent didn’t last forever. The two-hour drive was spent lost in fond thoughts about this special dog that had come into his life and had enhanced it.

Two hours later Trev drove into his driveway and was disappointed to see only John and a constable were there. John greeted Trev with a handshake, as did the constable, and they had a laugh together about the circumstances of the morning. In spite of the humour there was still of course the chance the intruder may be armed, although if he had a gun he would have shot Jen and escaped. Trev turned the key in the lock slowly and pushed the front door open and called for Jen, who came bounding out of the house and almost knocked him over as she jumped on him and licked him, wagging her tail excitedly. John and the constable hurried inside, guns drawn, and within two minutes ushered a man out, handcuffed. He had a terrified look in his eyes, and Jen growled at him and bared her teeth as she saw him come through the door. Trev told Jen to ‘stay’ and she obeyed him but he was sure she would have liked nothing better than to have had her moment with this man who had invaded her home. The intruder was put in the back of the police van and John said his farewells to Trev and Jen. He didn’t attempt to pat Jen, just said goodbye and hurried to the van. Trev watched the van disappear down the road, patted Jen, told her what a great old gal she was and wandered inside with her to see if any damage had been done to the house or contents.

The story of Jen’s exploit soon got around town and did make the local paper with a cartoon drawing of Jen with a mask on holding a smoking gun and a whimpering skinny male huddled on top of a kitchen cabinet. Trev pasted a copy on the fridge door as a conversation piece and also for Jen to see when she sat in the kitchen. He really believed Jen was so clever she could read the paper! One wonders about the local single ladies. Did Jen’s bravery encourage them to ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ over her and make approaches to stud bachelor Trev? That’s a secret Trev didn’t divulge.

Jen lived for a few more years with Trev and became his devoted mate. Everywhere Trev went that wasn’t to do with work, Jen was there. They romped on the beach together, watched the waves roll in eating fish and chips, and whenever Trev went camping, Jen was there, alongside him at night eating fresh fish cooked on the campfire. When Jen eventually passed on to doggie heaven Trev missed her sorely. He buried her in the garden, under a rosebush she loved to lie near in the sun, and put up a small headstone in her memory. The old couple were brought over for the burial ceremony and afterwards the three of them sat around the barbecue, eating fish for Jen, and talking about her. Trev knew he would be lonely, as he had become so used to having Jen around. He decided that before too long he would buy himself a new pup, but first off he would make sure that the doggie door was made much smaller as he had learned a good lesson from the intrusion into his home.

The morning after Trev buried Jen he visited the local pet shop, thinking that he would buy himself a pet rock to keep him company for a while before he decided what kind of dog he would buy. Pet rocks appeared to be all the rage, so he imagined there must be something there to experience and he might as well be part of it. He walked back out of the pet shop, put the basket on the back seat, climbed into the front seat and turned around at the noise coming from the rear of the car. And there they were, twin puppies, sitting up in the basket yapping away at Trev. So much for a pet rock, but then Trev never was much good at shopping and always came home with more than he intended. He drove home happily, whistling in tune with the puppies’ yapping and his mind racing with things he would need to do now he had decided to complicate his life with not only one pup, but two. The doggie door was his first priority and there was no way anyone would be able to fit through the size door these two little treasures would fit through.

When he arrived home, Trev walked down to the rose bush with the two puppies in his arms, squatted in front of the headstone, and introduced Dotcom and Data to Jen. Trev was amused at the names he had chosen for the pups and cuddled them close, knowing they would fill the void in his life that Jen’s passing had left. He sat on the ground with the pups jumping all over him, pulling at his shirt, biting his fingers. He smiled at the pups and knew that life was pretty good and was going to be even better now he had his two ‘boys’ to spoil.

How to leave a comment for Vena

2004-07-15T03:49:00.000-07:00

when you are in the site..... click on "comments"..............then you will see a link to "post a comment" click on that link and a new page will open..........enter a user name and password that you want to use for the site and click sign in then you can post a comment. You can use this user name and password from then on to make comments.

Congratulations - you have found Vena McGrath, Sydney author of Secrets, Lies & Chat

2004-06-22T10:43:00.000-07:00

Friends

Welcome to my blog! The online diary of Sydney, Australia based author, Vena McGrath!

I have been a regular Internet chatter for almost five years, and in April 2002 I decided to record events coming out of the first three years of chat exposure so I would never forget the impact they had on my life and on me personally. The stories ended up a manuscript that is now floating around the USA between editors of my publisher, American-Book Publishing. The final stage of editing has arrived and I expect to see a pdf version of the total book within the month for me to sign off on. The cover is being designed and I'm waiting anxiously to see what the design department has come up with and whether they used my vision of how I saw it, or not.

If you have ever thought about "chatting" or already do so, I would like to make contact with you. Please feel free to send me an email; I will respond. I am particularly interested in hearing stories about harrassment and/or stalking online or offline by people who chat.

In my years of "chatting", I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly of chat. It's always nice to hear a good story from chat about two people who meet and find a life together. But those stories are few and far between in comparison to other happenings in chat or out of it that trouble me. I see a lot in chat rooms that isn't good; I know many people online who have been hurt beyond belief by others they have met in chat rooms. The anonymity of the medium allows people to use, abuse, manipulate and almost totally destroy the self-esteem of vulnerable people. If you haven't used the chat medium you will no doubt read this and wonder who this ranting female is; to use two words I stole from men in chat .... trust me..... it's happened to me and it happens with alarming regularity to any number of males and females daily online.

For more information on the world of chatting, read my online press interview and book reviews located @

http://www.mediaman.com.au/interviews/mcgrath.html

http://www.mediaman.com.au/articles/secrets_lies.html

Thanks for visiting, and I look forward to chatting with you soon. If you would like to chat online you can find me via the BigPond homepage chat room link. I'm usually parked in the 60s room or in my own room, #Leisure.EasyPeacefulFeelings and my nick is Irish_Ayes. I would like to invite anyone who hasn't been to a chat room to come visit and I will show you around, introduce you to the medium and to scripts, and tempt you to open your mind to a new experience, to feel the vibes in a chat room, to understand how this chat society works. And you will be miles in front of how I started out in chat because you will have the benefit of my wisdom.

Take Care

Vena

e: pr@mediaman.com.au
b: http://secretslieschat.blogspot.com
w: http://www.mediaman.com.au/interviews/mcgrath.html

Profile Website

2004-06-15T00:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.mediaman.com.au/profiles/mcgrath.html

Chat Rooms in Australia - A Personal Viewpoint

2004-06-14T18:32:00.000-07:00

Chatrooms In Australia
A Personal Viewpoint

I stumbled upon chat in late June 1999, and at that time I had never heard of chat rooms, although my son did irregularly speak to someone from overseas. I didn’t have any interest in the Internet when my son lived at home so I didn't have a clue about where he was chatting, or how he got there.

By the time I bought a computer in 1999 I had been living alone for six months and as it was winter, long cold nights, I thought about getting back to my writing. My son, after installing the computer and getting everything up and running for me, decided I should learn to surf the net. I refused at first but gave in because he insisted computers would be taking over and I had better upskill or I would be left behind. He went back to his home and left me with my new toy and basic lessons on how to connect to the internet and find my home page; the rest was up to me to figure out.

I found a link to chat overseas and wandered in for a look. The language was strange and I sat in my study at home staring at the screen wondering what kind of place I had stumbled upon. I ventured online irregularly for a couple of months, never really fitting into that room as they all seemed to know each other and I wasn’t part of the group. They welcomed me always but I still felt out in the cold. Logging in became frustrating and often I couldn’t find the room and would give up and go back to watching television or doing some writing. Once I became a bit more adventurous about surfing the net I found another chat forum; Australian chat. I remember how long it took me to end up in a chat room; there were so many steps to take and the program was very slow to load. After a few aborted attempts I finally made it and so began my addiction to chat (although I didn’t know it then).

My surfing around landed me in a suitable age room and there were quite a few people online in that room. I sat there watching; a few people said hello the first night and my stay was short. Subsequent nights more people said hello and I began to be online more frequently and for longer periods. I still watched a fair amount of television as the Internet and chat weren’t very important to me then, they were just a new adventure and were helping teach me how to connect to the Internet and how to find the chat room and log in. The people in the public chat room were teaching me online some of the tricks of the chat program and others in private chats were teaching me about life.

The interaction of chat won me pretty quickly. The TV set became secondary of a night, with the exception of the few class shows I liked to watch each week. I had found a way to have a social life without having to meet anyone and without having to get dressed up to impress and best of all, it only cost me a phone call!

My first night in the 50s room led me into a private chat session with a male who asked me if I had heard of ‘cybering’. Well of course I hadn’t. So being inquisitive and feeling a bit brave, I allowed him to show me in written words what it actually was. I was astounded; the things he typed blew my mind. I read words I would have fainted over if I had heard them actually spoken, and I wasn’t too happy seeing them in fantasyland either.

That seems so long ago now. After spending almost 5 years involved in the chat scene, there isn’t anything about chat that shocks me anymore. It’s like any other group of people; there are the cliques, the ‘in’ rooms, the ‘in’ people, the whingers, the ill, the poor and downtrodden, those unable to overcome the bitterness of life’s disappointments, the back stabbers, the sleazes, the abusers, the harrassers and the stalkers.

Then there are the basic nice people who just want somewhere to spend some time, have a chat, laugh, and play some music to alleviate their loneliness. All in a safe venue, where they can remain anonymous. No one can see what they look like, how they speak, their surroundings, their clothing. Everyone is on a level playing field. But are they?

When I first began to chat it appeared it was only possible to have a chat room if you applied to the owner of the server for a room and if the name you selected was approved. Most of the rooms were ‘owned’ by the server (big brother I call it) and people, who again were approved, became hosts of the rooms. The job of the hosts was to monitor the room they were in and if anything unforseen happened that required ejection of chatter from the room, the host had the power by using a few keystrokes, to do that. In those days there seemed to be very few people on ‘akick’ or on a ‘ban’ as the groups were always lively and happy. The few who did cause trouble were warned a number of times before being ejected.

That was how chat appeared to me in the early days of my addiction. I learned a little about how things ran as time went on and I also learned about chat ‘scripts’ that were far more advanced and more fun than the java script that a person automatically picks up on selecting chat from the server’s home page. And I also learned about this social group I had ended up with. It didn’t take long to work out the ‘groupies’ who were always meeting for lunches/dinners/parties etc., and I used to wonder why, if they saw each other so often socially, they needed to be online chatting in a chat room as well. There were also the couples that were in chat, sitting side by side at home on two computers, or sharing one. That I couldn’t fathom at all. It seemed there must have been a lot missing in their relationships that they had to sit in chat and talk to each other on computers that were in the same room!

The anonymity of chat of course brings a lot of people online that many of us would never meet in our ‘real’ lives. Married people can join chat and pretend to be single and pursue others and lie about their marital status; males can pretend to be females and vice versa; middle aged people can pretend to be a lot younger, young people can hang around in age rooms, lesbians and gays can wander freely around the rooms, pedophiles have found a new place to practice their sickness, pornography can be advertised just by privving people in a room and pasting a web address, males and females can harrass others and stalk them – both online and offline. And the list goes on.

My reputation online is a mixed one. I have a voice, as a writer, and I’m passionate and I don’t suffer fools gladly. Also as a Scorpio I read people fairly quickly, even without seeing them, just by watching their chat and the way they interact in a room for a short time. I have spoken out many times on many issues and I have stuck up for my friends in chat who I believe were being harrassed or targeted, and in so doing I’ve earned myself a reputation amongst certain hosts of certain rooms of being a troublemaker who must be silenced. I also speak out about married men in chat who continually chase other women in chat and act like it’s their right to do so. I would like a dollar for every priv I have had over the years from married men who then abuse me because I told them to go home and #$## their wives and leave me alone. Anyone who reads my book will see this as probably being a bit strange from someone who had affairs with married men. All I will say about that is I learned my lessons well and I see how dangerous chat can be, and is.

Last year I noticed I was becoming a bit of a target and it all came about after I spread the word around that I would be a published Australian author sometime during 2004. Some people applauded me, were proud to know me. Others knocked me, trying in anyway possible to embarrass me, make me look like a fool in the rooms. However, I learned how to stand on my fingers quite some time ago and how to debate online and very few of them could ever beat me with words. So they then attempted to beat me with personal slangs. It was around this time I noticed the change in the hosts of those rooms as well. If anyone else had been getting a ‘bashing’ like I was, the chat would have been halted with warnings. But it was allowed go on; very rarely anything was said. I refuse to be drawn into personal slanging. I only know those people online so I fail to see how I could become personal. It appeared I had moved way outside the ‘clique’ or the ‘accepted’ in the rooms and I could see by various things that were happening that the crowd was becoming restless.

Most of my time online last year was spent with a friend who was dying with a brain tumour, so all of what else that was going on hardly phased me in my concern for his well being. He did, on one occasion, as he said he had nothing to lose, go into a room where I had been harrassed earlier and tell them where to go (in a good Aussie way of course). He was banned from the room but came back to our priv laughing at the good time he had had telling them off on my behalf. He is one of my treasured memories of chat, and there were others before him too, but he was special, very special. Most of the people who frequent chat rooms would never meet anyone like that because they never stop to listen to anything but the sound of their own keys as they tap away their junk words every day of their lives. I could sit in a chat room and write a script most nights for everyone in that room as I know their chat styles so well. Was it always like that and I was blissfully unaware in pursuing my other interests, or have I lost my addiction to chat and see little point in it now?

About three months ago I found out when I went to enter the room I usually chat in, that I was banned from chatting there. No one ever advised me why I was banned and it was a huge surprise to click on the room and be instantly kicked back out. I recall seeing some words on the tag as I was booted out along the lines of ‘harrassing of hosts’. I guess that it all related to a few issues I had with some of the hosts in that room about the unfair way I saw they were treating a couple of other people chatting in the room. I spoke out, was told to mind my own business or get out. I bit my tongue and backed off but apparently a couple of the hosts in the room saw it as a chance to put me on a ban. I was also warned some time prior by one of the room 'owners' that I was scaring away 'newbies' from the room and it was going to stop. I hope the room's 'owners' are happy with the so-called 'newbies' as I haven't heard many good comments come out of that room as of late. Perhaps a Scorpio would be a good 'owner' as we can smell a rat from a mile off.

I found out by fluke a couple of weeks ago that if I went into the room using another nick I could get in as only my usual nick was banned, so I’ve been in a few times just to observe and say hello to a few friends in priv who I trusted not to let on I was in the room. That came to a big halt on Sunday night. One of the hosts who was not hosting at the time I was in the room, happens to also be a long-time chat friend and out of chat friend. I privved her and told her who I was and a few minutes later one of the ‘cops’ came into the room, opped himself and kicked me out. He then privved me and laid the law down telling me I had been told I was banned from the room. I told him I had never received a memo telling me I was banned. He told me the two ‘owners’ of the room had said I had been sent a memo and to take it up with them.

I asked him a few questions about room ownership (which means anyone can now ‘own’ a room just by simply registering a name online with a password) and how come he could come into rooms that the server didn’t ‘own’ and kick people out. He said he had just been passing by, saw my addy was in the room and kicked me out, as he has an agreement with the two ‘owners’ of that room to do. I knew that was a lie; unless he had a reason to check my details he would never have known I was in the room and he also rarely goes to any room unless its to kick someone out or read the riot act. I then sent my ‘friend’ a secret message, which she ignored, asking her did she dob me in. I waited a while and then sent her a memo and asked the same question. She replied telling me she hadn’t and that she had just spoken to the ‘cop’ and asked him how come he knew I was in the room. Same story, “just passing by”. Some ten minutes later my ‘friend’ arrived in my room and owned up that she had dobbed me in; that she felt as a host of the room it was her duty to do so even though she hadn’t opped in the room. I reminded her that we were personal friends, that I freely admitted to her that I was in the room, she didn’t find out for herself and as far as I was concerned she had broken a confidence, and ended a friendship as I would never trust her again. She apologised but still stood by her decision. You eventually find out who your real friends are if you wait long enough. As for the ‘cop’ lying about how he found out I was in the room – I leave that up to the individual who reads this to come up with a ruling. My ruling is he is no better than those he tries to push into big brother’s line and he is another example of a power monger. He proved it by lying bare faced (but anonymously of course) when asked a straight question. Guess he isn’t used to people having the nerve to question him or his motives.

So that is just an example of the world of chat. Fantasyland yes, but to some people, like my ‘friend’ who doesn’t even get paid for the work she does, it becomes a lifestyle. I give her benefit of the doubt that she was afraid someone else may have twigged I was in the room and she would be hauled over the coals because she didn’t realise it was me. The majority of hosts gain power in a chat room society they never have in their own lives. They can bully where they perhaps may be bullied. They can control where probably in their own lives they may be controlled. A lot of them don’t go to work so chat is their work, their life. They can embarrass people; they can rule the chat in the room and direct it to wherever they want it to go. I often see that if a host isn’t involved in the chat he/she will suddenly object to the chat, saying someone has complained, but never saying whom. I often believe there are no complaints; the host has his/her nose out of joint because for whatever reason he/she can’t get into the chat and so they want it ended.

Since my ban from the room I spent most of my time in online, I have also been told that I can no longer discuss my book in public chat as it contravenes one of big brother’s rules. This came about after I had been stalked by someone online and a friend made a complaint to the ‘cops’ for me. Problem was the perpetrator got to the ‘cops’ first and I was blamed for stalking him! Serves me right for trying to get him off my rear by suggesting I may have to resort to reporting him for stalking. I was warned I would be kicked from the server that night; placed on a permanent ban - for no wrongdoing. The next night I was privved and told the news about not being allowed talk about the book in public chat anymore. I may make some money out of it one day and that is a no no as far as free advertising in their eyes goes. So much for freedom of speech. I can go into overseas chat and speak freely about my book and answer all the questions I’m asked without fear of retribution. The strange thing is, until my ban from the room I could speak freely about the book and even the hosts in the room asked how things were going quite frequently.

My book seems to be the issue regarding my problems in chat. Jealousy reigns supreme in there about things like being able to do something many others would like to but don’t have the gift to do. It also reigns supreme regarding online relationships. I learned a long time ago never to let anyone know who I was talking to in chat or who I might be seeing in reality as there were people in the room who would set out to undermine the relationship. It happens with alarming regularity and is insidious because you can’t see what anyone is doing in there. Each person who has a script can be talking to any number of people in private at the one time and can be in up to five chat rooms as well. And then there are secret messages no one else in the room can see, and memos and emails that can all be sent out while you are in the chat room and no one is the wiser.

This is the world of Internet chat. It’s a world I hold grave fears for with regard to children and teenagers who will be exposed to all that I have been, and because of their ages and the corruption online now, they will be exposed to even worse things. Age holds no barriers in chat; we can all be whomever we choose to be and who can prove we aren’t who we say we are? It is so easy to be caught out by manipulators of minds and this is a true concern with younger people, who may tell someone with total innocence which school they go to, the suburb they live in, even their telephone number. People scorn such statements but I know it’s true, I’ve seen enough for myself, I’ve spoken to enough reliable people online to know it’s happening, and I’ve visited enough cyber websites to know it’s happening all over the world.

I have read with interest about the money various countries are setting aside to fight cyber criminal activities and I was pleased to read that there was already a presence in chat of law enforcement officers who are there to weed out the low lifes who carry out their filth online. The laws now being set up, or those that have already been set up to combat harrassment online and cyber stalking, make me feel optimistic. If all of us who do care, who do know what is actually happening on the Internet, in other places as well as chat spoke up, then we could make a difference. We could send these low lifes back underground, or out in the open where they can be caught and locked away; people power can exist if we can become brave again and learn to object and yell loudly as a group, or alone, “I/we will not be treated as children nor bullied nor harrassed nor discriminated against on the Internet or anywhere else” regardless of how harsh and hurtful others will be towards us.

I will never back down from my beliefs and I will always hope that chat may become again what it once was. Almost all the people I knew online between the years of 1999 and 2001 have disappeared from the server I use. They have either given up chat through frustration or anger, or they have found other forums to chat in. When I visit other forums I find thousands of people chatting away, having a great party every night together. And I return to my server and count the number of people online at night of a weekend. The maximum in any room would be approximately 50 and there would be less than 10 rooms that have more than a handful of people in them. That is sad to see and the numbers keep dwindling. I find Australians chatting using many other servers and while that’s good to do to keep out there amongst the world, a bit of Aussie patriotism would go a long way too. But then, the rot starts at the top, and big brother is accountable.

It would be great to see one of the opposition Aussie servers come online with a chat room set-up, where there is freedom of speech, where having a business or having a skill is applauded and can be shared regardless of whether you are going to make money out of it or not. Where there are no heavy-handed, dull-minded people hosting rooms.

I might add I have never advertised for my book’s sale as it is still a manuscript floating around in the USA and there is nowhere to buy it. All I ever did was share and answer questions. I wonder how I would fare suing big brother for discrimination and no freedom of speech? But then I would never win because I have the freedom to go and chat somewhere else, as I was told to on Sunday night by the ‘cop’. ‘If you don’t like the rules then you are free to chat elsewhere’.

And so say all of us.

I point out that the views expressed above are mine in total. Anyone who reads my book, ‘Secrets, Lies & Chat’ when it is released, will see some of the comments above within that story.

2004-06-13T21:25:00.000-07:00

vena - 2000