Here is before and after, young and old, father and son, sporty and Norm, fat boy with food, buff boy going places.

Sunday

And now it's Sunday morning again and another week rolls around.

I've been busy typing up my old hand written journals, so I haven't written anything for my blog, but I have still been taking photos, so let's go with a photo blog for the last week.

We walked into the CBD, with Brun and picked up click and collect.

There were lots of people in the city with dogs. I guess, since we can't go into shops, at present, it is the dog's time for a walk. I don't think I have seen so many dogs in the city before.

The city streets are still nearly deserted because of lock down. I think it is kind of nice, though, a slow and quiet city nice to walk around. It has that serene feeling, like everyone has left and now there are just a few. Echos along the footpaths. Being able to see as far as you chose. Nobody jostling you and the pedestrian lights, hardly a car insight.

I like clever Street Art, it is good for you. If it makes you laugh, or if it makes you smile, if it makes you say Orr, even if it makes you cry, it is good for the soul.

 

Paul McCartney says what?

Last year I pulled out all the multi coloured geraniums in my garden and replaced them with red ones. I'm pleased now with them all flowering. I love that colour scheme, green foliage and red flowers.

Harriet

We have a girl at work who is named Harriet. Seriously, Harriet. I know old fashioned names have made a come back, and some of them work really well, Amy, Emma, Charlotte, Daisy, Lily, even Alice, but Harriet? Seriously? It is a terrible name.

No one is going to revive it, just like Mildred, Ethel, or Gertrude, they are not coming back.

Harriet - the only way Harriet is cool is if you are a jump jet, then it's not quite the same spelling.

Harriet?

It conjures up some single female who never married, who lives with her widowed mother, or alone in a bedsit with a cat, who dresses in clothes buttoned up to her throat, who is deluded by the god con BS because she has nothing else in her life. (like most other people with religion, filling their empty lives with something, you might as well declare Hans Christian Andersen as god)

But I digress...

The Harriet at work has straight lifeless red hair, parted down the middle of her head and brushed behind both ears. Glasses on a hooked nose, a pointy chin, and pearls and twinsets around, and buttoned up to, her neck. And flat shoes and tweed skirts just a fraction too long to be anything but dowdy, big arse.

Do you think people grow into their names?

I nearly laughed, laughed undetectably to myself, when I met her. The absolute embodiment of a cliche.

Harriet Dousley, spinster. That's what her business card should read.

You wouldn't say that about a man.

I would.

You wouldn't call a man a spinster.

I might.

You wouldn't talk about a man's appearance.

I do.

You are being sexist.

Is it sexist to talk about a person's appearance just because they are a woman? I don't know. I could just have easily said the same thing about a man, as a woman. But women are so often judged on their appearance and men aren't. Truthfully, I have never met this woman, I have only stumbled across her name and then image on our work directory. It was her name that made me look at her. I thought Harriet? Harriet? You don't often see a Harriet, now do you? And I was expecting a 67 year old secretary, a moment off retirement, not a twenty something lawyer. I was surprised that someone so young would have such an old name. It was what her name conjured up in my mind, more so than anything else.

But, seriously, Harriet? It is a form of child abuse.

 

A beautiful Lancia I see when I walk the dogs

Flick Of The Wrist

 I've hurt my wrist. (Yeah, okay, make all the humorous comments now) I'm not really sure how I did it. I'm not really sure when I did it.

I was watering my ZZ plants, taking them out side to give them a thorough water, and my wrist just kind of failed on me when I went to pick up one of the big pots. I lost all strength in my right hand, and there was a sharp pain up the outside edge when I tried to put weight on it. There was pain when I forgot and tried to put weight on it again.

It was really painful, shooting pain, and a general weakness.

And when I forgot, my wrist was playing up and used it again, there was even more pain. Continuing pain. Damn it.

My phone rang, I was sitting on the floor around my over sized coffee table eating dinner, I push myself up to get my phone, forgetting about my strained wrist, it gives way under me, and I nearly land face first in my dinner. 😜

It was David, we both laughed at me potentially wearing my dinner as a face mask.

I hate it when things aren't working properly. I don't know how people cope with anything more permanent.

Flowers

Flowers on a wall. I had to restore some of the image

 

Day Off

They call me up to fix a problem on my day off. Grrrr. My boss, Boris, called me while I was eating lunch.

"Sorry to call you on your day off." Then don't, was my first thought.

"We need the (blah blah) fixed urgently," said Boris. "It has to be today."

Oh, I thought. I shouldn't have answered that.

"Okay. Sure. I can do that." What else could I say?

"I'll get all the details together and call you back."

I don't think Boris knew how to do it?

I should have thought quicker and said I was in St Kilda visiting a friend. Yeah, sure, I guess that is against the covid rules, but it was my boss and not the police.

It took me two hours to sort it out. I don't, actually, mind, but as I said earlier, it is not a two way street, it won't make any difference to my pay rise, or bonuses coming up, because I am not one of the execs.

The corporate world only looks after those at the top of the corporate food chain.

A random act of kindness causes an endless ripple

Being Gay

Blue-haired old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next."

They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

Chuckle.

Performance Reviews

The Performance reviews are up and the self assessment is ready to be completed. We've got until Oct 15th.

Performance reviews are pathetic, they are a sign of an HR team stuck in the past. They are simply one more thing to justify HRs existence.

I know from past jobs that mostly assessments and payrises are done way before the last of the performance reviews are submitted, because workers and managers are too slow at completing what they have to do for anything to be dependent on PDRs.

I never worry about performance reviews too much, because in the current climate set by successive conservative governments, it is only the very senior people who get substantial pay rises and bonuses. Twenty years of Liberal Party rule and it is only the rich, those in positions of power that the corporate world cares about. Sad but true. It is only the very high up in the corporate world who get pandered to.

But, if you look on the bright side, it releases the rest of us from caring.

So, what do I care about performance reviews. I banged mine out in 5 minutes, essentially copying last years, there, done. 

It is a waste of time.

Buddy, Brun and I were sitting on a shop window waiting for Sam while he shopped. I was messing around with my phone.

Distracted

Distracted with typing up my old 20 year old hand written journals.

Regular transmission will recommence shortly

Brendo, Lochie & Char

 

Lachlan, or Lochie as everyone called him, and Brendan, or Brendo, as everyone called him, were best mates at school and they stayed best mates at uni.

They both met Charlotte in O week and the three became friends.

Lochie went out with Charlotte first year. Lochie's calm together demeanour appealed to her.

However, as the year progressed, Brendo's strong capable qualities appealed to her and she and Brendo started having something behind Lochie's back, I guess.

But then Brendo introduce Charlotte to pot, and together stoned they felt guilty, so they confessed.

So the three of them got stoned and decided that they all really liked each other and the three of them progressed together from there.

 

Laneway art. The sun shining just so. The rain having just fallen. 

The rain & the sun, makes it all glow with a shiny patina.

Lovely.

I Found An Old Journal

I found an old journal yesterday when I was looking for something else, what that was I forget now.

Wow! An old hand written journal. I remember, this is the one I used to carry with me in my satchel, for writing on the move. At work, and such places, before I took Sam's Mac Air.

I get to add to my journals, who'd have thought. I always find that kind of a thrill. I guess you have to write a journal, and perhaps be a virgo, to feel the same way. (There are so many times in my life that I wished I wrote my journal when I didn't, that it is always exciting to fill in more blank pages)

Well, I know what I'll be doing on my days off, keying it in.

Well, it is writing... of sorts, even if it isn't anything new, and that nobody will probably ever read it. Still, it's not such a waste of time as vintage male nudes, at least. It's heading in the right direction, surely. Yeah, it is.

Following these guys was not a chore, they were fine, strapping boys
Solider on with Codral, soldier on (sniffing out the crotch of their undies would clear your nostrils beautifully)

I went for a walk before I got on to my newly found journal writing. 

There were busloads of police in the park, don't know why. There must have been something going on, I guess. I was going to ask, but when it came down to it, it wasn't worth the effort of turning off my head phones.

These three coppers at the back, were... yes officer, anything you want officer. 😀

I Woke Up To Rain

I woke up to rain. Is it too cliched to say the world was crying? (Probably at all the lies our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison has been telling) Any hint of summer we had been feeling completely gone.

I woke up to rain. Is it too cliched to say the world was crying? (Probably at all the lies our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison has been telling) Any hint of summer we had been feeling completely gone.

I felt a shiver as I stood in the kitchen gazing out to the garden. Brrrr.

"Well, that is a shame," I said out loud. I was just beginning to enjoy the sun. Still, with global warming, how much should we look forward to summer now a days. There is probably safety in winter.

I switched on the coffee machine.

The colour was washed out of the world. It was all a bit grey looking out my windows. Quiet, still and grey. The sun was behind its winter diffuser, making it soft almost behind a Vaseline filter.

Look on the bright side, it was nice walking in the park in the cooler weather later in the morning. Less people out and about too, the fatties don’t come out unless the sun is shining. (Although, the annoying chicks who yabber into their phones walking right behind you do, as I also found out. Pet hate!)

The threat of the anti-everything protesters (oh why don’t I just say it, the racists) must have diminished considerably as there was only the old grey, close to retirement cops patrolling the park. The ones who give you a nod and a wink. The strapping young coppers with the beautiful eyes are nowhere to be seen.

Tuesday, Hump Day

Ah, fuck it Tuesday. What can I say? It is my Wednesday, but with only one other day on either side. One more day before I run away and hide. 

Got to love it.

What is it they say about hump day? It is the toughest day of the week. Perpetually stuck in the middle with nowhere to go. The middle child, of the days. It makes you cry? Contemplate suicide. Isn’t that what they say? (of course, ‘they’ say a lot of things) The day you are going to break down, or throw a rope over a beam. So, it would seem.

Not for me, with just one day either side.

It's been a long time since I have cried. I can’t remember why? I quite like crying though, it's cleansing, I’m not shy. Let the tears slide, down my rose pink cheeks.

Or someone's died? (Oh, passed, sorry to anyone who was offended) Remember, hand twinkles in the air, some people are triggered by clapping, if you believe that)

Are we breeding them soft?

There is a big difference between modifying the language to help eradicate sexism and racism and homophobia and transphobia and bigotry, and pandering to everyone else.

Sometimes I think those in the majority see allowances and modifications made for minorities to help them have an easier life, influencing them to want special treatment too. But it is not special treatment if you are being discriminated against. It is special treatment if you are not being discriminated against. It is a difficult point for some people to grasp.

Only Black Lives Matter, because all lives already do, but black lives are thought of as lesser, by many people. That is the point.

Tuesday? Who'd have thought.

Here's to Charlie Watts and Sarah Dash, to great lives lived well.

I've got all my work done by 2pm. Sam is cooking me lunch, prawns and noodles. Time for an extended break. Gotta luv that. Have I told you I love working from home?