Xmas Lunch

 Sam and I cooked Xmas lunch as the Fletcher Xmas day, for my sister and brother inlaw. My brother didn't come down from Brisbane. Mum and dad are dead, so that is the best the Fletchers can manage now a days. So different to times passed, time passes, things change. All those huge family Xmas' with all my cousins seem but a distant memory.

My sister had been the one to suggest today. She came up with a few options, we could join her inlaws on Xmas day at her place, which I wasn't so keen. Other that that, she gave the impression she didn't want to do it all again, herself, and that, perhaps, I should.

Seriously?

I said sure, not really being at all sure when I said it. But, you know, just wing it, how badly could it go wrong? She did suggest we could go out to a restaurant, but I was willing to give it a go. I mean, I have before, but those times have been few and far between.

Why not, I thought.

Sam cooked porkbelly with a plum sauce and lamb stuffed with cranberries with roast vegetables. I made a plum pudding semifreddo and a trifle for desert.

It all turned out well.

The bulldogs bounced around, always happy with visitors.

I was going to make Xmas cookies alternately icing them with red and white icing, but I didn't. Maybe next year.

 

Oh look at those colours, pink and grey. We can't do better than nature, can we, it is just a shame we don't look after it. Nature.

5.45am. There is something very satisfying about getting up at 5 something am. and standing on my balcony looking at the sun rise. It is quiet and peaceful as the new day comes into being.

And translated so many times, with so many agendas, who knows what it originally said

You know, for all the delusionists (And the spacecadete'ry who attempt to ban everything they don't deem appropriate) who are apoplectic with the fairytale spirit at this time of year.

Goode olde luck to the lot of yous

As the rest of us scratch our heads at the nonsense of it all, but get a kick out of the orgiastic buying festival that has delivered us the best of capitalism.

 

We should get rid of Xmas, it has none of the original meaning to the vast majority of people - was the original meaning invented by Coke a Cola? It is now an orgiastic present buying, and food eating extravaganza, let's face it.

To make it more relevant to the real world, we should move it to new year. We could have a public holiday on New Years Eve, give presents New Years Day and make Boxing Day January 2nd. 

End the year with the new year, come on, it makes far more sense to the modern world.

A new year, now that is something to celebrate.

Xmas, really, is just a habit we forgot to break, let's face it.

I Wish

I wish I felt like I was good at something? Or, is that something we all feel? Is that universal? Or is that just my lack of confidence?

You know, really good at something? Something at which to be expert. I guess it would need to give joy too? That is the assumption though, now isn't it, that if we were good at something, joy would naturally follow?

Joy. That's what we all want.

Happiness.

We Lost, Let's Go Home, Donald

Oh my god! It is the two of them, perfectly

 

Too Hot To Write

It's too hot today to write. It's 34 which isn't so hot in itself, but it is the first 34 degrees for the summer. So, it's tiring. I'm sweating. I can't think.

I've got a sweaty neck. I hate having a sweaty neck. It's probably bad posture, isn't it always bad posture?

I rode my bike today, twice. It was good weather for bike riding. T-shirt, shorts, the momentum of the bike through the air keeps you cool. Kind of keeps you cool. It is liberating though, just your own power to get you places.

I've got two cars which I never drive. Why the hell do I have two cars? I guess, if I don't drive them, it doesn't matter. I decided to sell one of them, just when the whole lock down thing happened, and then nobody could come and look at it. It has been such a long time since I have sold a car, you know, like advertised it. I'm not sure if I remember  how to do it?

I rode my bike to the shops. I took a recycle bag, I flung it over my shoulder. Well, I'm not sure if flung is the right term, I pushed the handle up my arm to my shoulder. What do you call that? I must go and have a basket put on the back of my bike, on the back of my mountain bike. I have a racer I use for exercise, and an old mountain bike I use to go to the shops. Someone gave it to me, a cute French boy who was going back... um... er leaving Melbourne. You can get those black baskets now a days, and if I had one like that I could do all my shopping on my bike. The burning of fossil fuels not required.

I should do my back exercises. I've had a sore back, and weird buzzing feet. I've been going to the Osteo and he thinks it could all be a pinched nerve in my lower back and he gave me back exercises to do, which, of course, I haven't done. Stupid to pay him all that money, I guess, and then not do the exercises. But that's just human nature, I guess. Especially stupid, since we know miracles are a figment of an over active imagination. 

It's late, the doors and windows are open and there is a bit of a breeze. The fan helps, of course. The fan could be the entire breeze? Maybe?

Sam is playing his Oculus Quest, he's got a new one, just got it. It is making exploding noises, he's cursing at, um, I don't know who? 

"Ah, stupid mice! There! That is what I want you to do!" 

I look at him quite unaware of me looking at him, I gaze at him for a time, kind of secretly, but not really. Just me and him. I like it being just me and him. I like gazing at him unaware.

The fan is whining in the corner. The air is thick. The night is still. The bulldogs are scattered across the floor like dead ducks, er, dogs.

It must be time for bed. I might need a shower before I go to bed, and I am strictly a shower in the morning kind of boy.

I did my back exercises.

What Are Sundays For?

We all got in the shower in the morning. It makes no difference to Buddy, Bruno is less keen. Then we walked to the park in the glorious morning sun to dry off. The sky was blue, the grass was green. The trees tall, a breeze blew gently through them.

I lay on the couch in the afternoon and watched YouTube and fell asleep with my laptop resting on my stomach. It was that kind of day, sunny and warm. The air was fresh and light, uplifting like a warm eddy, and the world felt like a wonderful place.

Sam moved my laptop from my stomach and lay on the floor next to me with Buddy and Bruno and fell asleep. It's what Sunday afternoons are for, after all.

We may have all snored, we are all snorers.

We woke up for afternoon tea when we drank tea and ate shortbread biscuits.

And that was the day. Glorious.

I think the composition of this image is almost perfect

Walking the bulldogs in the park in the morning, during these last few days of gorgeous weather. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, the jacaranda with a sensational display of purple.

 

"It makes sense," says Sam. "We're not gamers after all."

It makes you wonder if all the bad press about the NBN is deliberate to get people to sign up to more expensive plans. You know, if I was one of those people who go in for conspiracy theories.

Of course, the problem with conservative governments is that they are so dishonest and so duplicitous it makes all of this kind of thinking plausible.

Coffee Anyone?

I push the button on the coffee machine and it whirs into life.

"Christian Fletcher," comes Sam's voice from the other room.

Sure, it is my third cup and it isn't yet 9.30am.

"So, is that a no from you?"

"Slow down."

"Are you saying you don't want one."

"Seriously, you are drinking too much coffee."

"Do you want one?"

"Yes."

And there it is.

It always makes me laugh. Sam just about always says yes, no matter what he has said before.

The worlds greatest invention, coffee. Why would one deny oneself, I ask you?

That and the mute button, the two single greatest achievements of mankind. Oh yes, there are some pretty amazing medical achievements, blah, blah, blah, but get back to me when I need a new liver, or a course of chemo and we’ll discuss it then.

My single nicest dream, is to be drinking coffee out in public and being able to use the mute button on the annoying people. Oh, you know the types, the ones who bring their sticky finger kids along, or those who occupy a table alone but insist on talking on their mobile phone so all can hear, the ones who talk too loud in the group in that look-at-me-look-at-me kind of way, the inane laughers, the screamers. You know the types who are definitely seen and heard.

I was once in a coffee shop drinking a lovely morning coffee and a woman had a baby that wouldn’t stop crying, finally when our eyes met, I spoke up, “Couldn’t you take that some place else?”

Well, she didn’t half lose her shit as she gathered her belongings and vacated the establishment.

“You don’t know what it’s like…”

I’ve got a fairly good understanding over the last half an hour, I thought.

“You are terrible!”

And yet I am not the one destroying everyone’s morning.

“How dare you.”

I am pretty much saying the same thing to you.

Now if I’d had a mute button on that occasion. Heaven.

After she had slammed the café door on her way out, the silence was golden. And we were all left to contemplate life with coffee in hand sans her noisy little sprog.

Chuckle

 

I spat my coffee when I first saw this

John Lennon

I once knew a guy, Alistair, whose hero was John Lennon. 

When John Lennon was killed, from all accounts, Alistair had a nervous breakdown, he didn’t cope with his hero being shot and killed.  Imagine that? I guess Alistair wouldn't have been the first, fans being what fans are? Apparently, three Beatles fans killed themselves at the news of Lennon's death.

Apparently, Alistair ended up having a very long recovery from his breakdown.

I haven't seen Alistair for years, he was a nice guy.

But, whenever, I hear that it is the anniversary of John Lennon's death, I still think of Alistair and wonder how he is?

So that is forty years for… I googled what happened on 8^th December to get the name of the guy who shot John Lennon’s name, and I got the following,

1863 Abraham Lincoln issues his Amnesty Proclamation and plan for Reconstruction of the South

1941 US and Britain declare war on Japan, US enters World War II

1941 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers "Day of Infamy" speech to US Congress a day after the bombing of Pearl Harbour

1965 Pope Paul VI signs 2nd Vatican council

1966 US and USSR sign treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons in outer space

2004 Cuzco Declaration is signed in Cuzco, Peru, establishing the Union of South American Nations

War and religion, seriously, the two things that have caused the most destruction in the world. 

John Lennon didn’t even get a mention. Is that irony? One of the greatest peace advocates is not mentioned in favour of war and war-causing religion?

But, I did find out it is Jim Morrison’s, Sinead O'Connor’s and Niki Minaj’s birthdays.

Anyway, back to Mark David Chapman, it means he has been in jail for 40 years. Forty years, that is rather a long time for murder. Now, I am no advocate for Mark David Chapman, or murderers in general, but usually, well, in Australia, murder is 25 years. Of course, since the conservatives have been winning elections lately, with their ideology bent towards law and order, I guess we can expect a lot more of “Life Means Life.”

I guess it depends on what you want your jail system to do? Most conservatives want it to be punitive, lock them up, throw away the key. Build more jails, punish, punish, punish. And, I think as a society, we are skewing away from rehabilitation and towards punishment more and more, since law and order has become a political tool to win elections. 

From all accounts at 87 years of age Yoko Ono’s health is beginning to fail and she is now frail and apparently suffering from some undisclosed disease. From what I have read, she has been the driving force of keeping Mark David Chapman in jail.

Apparently, the singer James Taylor ran into Mark David Chapman a few hours before he shot John Lennon four times at close range on the streets of New York and Mark David Chapman was talking like a crazy person. So, is our failure to deal with mental health issues as a society the real reason John Lennon was shot and killed?

Oh, bleeding heart, the conservatives would whine in unison, no doubt.

Gay Movies on Prime

Last night, Sam, being the guardian of the remote control – of course, I can’t be trusted with it, as I would point it at the world and press furiously – as cliched as that sounds, declared there was nothing on the TV, so we watched gay movies on Amazon Prime, which has a lot of gay movies. I chose.

After a few false starts, you know where the writing was bad and the acting was atrocious, the stories inane, where the main character has a fat fag hag friend, or the lisping twink is wholly unattractive, we managed to pick a couple of movies.

I like gay movies with real story lines, not just ghetto nonsense. That’s not to say that I don’t mind nonsense occasionally, but generally they have to be funny, and poke fun at gay life. You know, gays guys can be just awful sometimes, but only I’m allowed to say that, gay men are allowed to say that, nobody else is allowed, and if they send that up, well and good. But mostly I like real story lines with real people and definitely not always dying at the end, one of my biggest problems with Brokeback Mountain.

We watched Taekwondo, about a group of pretty hot straight boys spending the weekend at one of the guy’s country houses. The host invites his prospective gay love interest with whom he does taekwondo. Not that anyone knows he is gay, although by the end of the film some definitely suspect. 

The second movie we watched was Uncle Frank, set in 1973, about a family from South Carolina. The eldest son unbeknownst to the rest of the family is gay and lives in New York with his boyfriend of ten years. He goes back to South Carolina for Xmas and family gatherings, but always alone, and always a bit of the odd man out. Then his niece comes to study at the university in New York at which he is a professor. Not long after, his bigoted father dies and they make a road trip home for the funeral, where everything is revealed.

Recently, we’ve also watch 4Moons, which I liked, the boys were adorable.

Clapham Junction was full on.

The Lost Coast was interesting.

And we watched Vicious, with Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi. I've watched it before and didn't like it, but this time I found it funny.

What happened to Dorothy Kilgallen? That's Peggy Lee, of course

Dorothy Kilgallen said To Peggy Lee on What's My Line, Feb 1960, that she couldn't stop listening to Peggy Lee's latest album, Latin ala Lee!

So, 60 years later I play the album from my laptop on iTunes wirelessly to my HomePod speakers in the inner suburbs of Melbourne, just to hear what is was that Dorothy Kilgallen couldn’t stop listening to.

I wonder what Dorothy played it on in her townhouse in Manhattan at the very beginning of the 1960s?

60 years later, it still sounds current. I kind of like it, despite never being a Peggy Lee fan.

Music crosses space and time, now doesn't it. Here it is 60 years later and nearly 20 years after Peggy Lee died at the age of 81.

And interestingly enough, the theme song to Sex in the City is on this album.

 

The canna lilies is in bloom again...

Cannas in the park when I went for my daily walk. I think I went for a walk every day this week, better than the preceding weeks, where I have slacked off.

I haven't dropped below 80 kilos, I don't know why? My weight loss seems to have stalled at 80 kilos, shrug? Still, exercise can never be a bad thing, I guess? An hour most days, that is what I am aiming for, and what I achieve most weeks.

 

Part angel, part lavender

Street Art, Abbotsford. This made me think of Peter Pan, not blond though. A cute little dark-haired Puk. Look at those eyes.

 

I just need a black motor bike and full leathers to go with this

Street Art, Fitzroy. I do contribute to it a little, as this photo had a number of windows, which I photoshopped out of the image. I’m a bit of an artist on the quiet.

Danell Leyva olympic gymnast... just saying. Look at those eyes