Old blokes and youngster women.

Did you read about the 48 year old Pommie bloke with lots of cash who was shot dead by his 24 year old ex girlfriend while he was on holiday in Spain with his new 20 year old girlfriend. Poor bastard was shot dead twice in the head and the report went that he was found face down in a pool of his own blood.

As I read it I wondered a number of things.

• where was the new girlfriend while the shooting took place
• how did the old girlfriend AKA the shooter, know where he would be at any precise time.
• did the new girlfriend know the shooter.
• did he have a will.
• who gets the cash.
• why oh why would a 48 year old keep dating girls he could quite possibly have fathered.

The 20 year old waxed lyrical about how wonderful the fella was, what a teacher! Oh groan!!

I am not saying that the bloke deserved 2 bullets in his head, that would just be a little harsh for systemic acts of stupidity. But he did deserve a good kick in the bollocks and a few sessions with a life coach so he could see the wisdom of seeking company of people born in the same decade, or so. Swapping the 24 year old for a 20 year old was a bit nuts! Maybe the shooter thought she was ultimately saving a 16 year old from a 52 year old or indeed a 12 year old from a crinkly old 56 year old.

I do wonder, apart from cash what he thought he bought to the party.

Ah this is what I wanted our holiday to be.

What a difference a day makes... yeh I could almost be singing but as the lark genes didn't make a stop here, I wouldn't want to damage Zig's ear drums.

A good night's sleep and I was up at silly o'clock and so was Zig and Dog. The play fight which ensued on Zig's bed lead rather quickly to a head on head collision that would have seen me off the field with a concussion check up if I was playing rugby, instead I got a bit of ice and hope that I might have avoided my first ever black eye.

We chomped quickly through breakfast and gave I must admit, not our best throw of the ball with Dog, so we could hit the beach. It was only just after 8 when we got there. Bloody beautiful !!!

The warning flags were up and I made Zig read the conditions report. This made him rightly wary. We paddled and swam and spent a long lovely time knocking up and then down some sandy castles. Children's imaginations always delight and we finally left with new names. I am now Great M and he is King Z.

He wondered why he had to use money to pay for morning tea if he was King and then was suitably impressed that Dog did his bidding back at the pool.

Yeh it has been a lovely day.

Time lost to Migraine AGAIN

A 3 day event!! If you have read previous blogs you might be aware of how little I like the term 'EVENT' It has turned into such a wanky all encompassing description. I reckon it should refer to something quite monumental and not often repeated, certainly not a little party or a bit of rain or some dross on the tellie. In my mind it most likely refers to something good.

So a 3 day migraine accompanied by masses of vomit and a bit of hallucination could be called an event except that it was anything but good and unfortunately it is repeated far more often than I'd like.

The last 2 big ones could possibly have been triggered by chomping away on chocolate and this last time, even as I am stuffing down hands full of after-dinner-mints, I was aware that it was not wise to do so. Maybe then the scoffing of choccies could be the indicator of shit approaching rather than the cause. Who the fuck knows. I only know it fucking hurts and by day 3 I wished I was anyone else anywhere else doing anything else.

Belly dropped Zig down and she too was a migraine zombie. We tried to find a common trigger but really we were 2 people making very little sense, except that we noticed that the ache was on the same side of our heads. Even for the lovely boy I just could not pull it together and so had to resort to tricking him about the time as I shovelled him into bed early and then dived into mine with the very vain hope of sleeping it off. I was up and down like a whore's drawers but without the joy, the expectation, or the profit. Finally I got up properly at about 5am so that I could right myself before the little fella got up. The throwing up continued through the cuppa and breakfast, but as we headed off to morning tea quite a bit later, I thought I was coming good. I couldn't eat my treatie but the coffee went down and sitting in the park in the breeze with Zig and Nik and dogs was curative.

We managed to do holiday groceries and chomp up a hot cross bun for lunch and then I snoozed through Shrek which Zig found almost as amusing as the movie.

Swims and now I am feeling almost human, tired and aching belly muscles but ok. We are having silly holiday food for dinner - toasted sangas and pudding. Maybe we should start with pudding, anything but chocolate!!

I was a walking chemist shop for 3 days, no wonder I had the horrors during the night. Nothing worked though. Nothing even took the edge off. Years ago Dr Jane gave me a script for Valium and said it might help me sleep it off, and I have never tried it, but as no painkillers worked this time I might just be reduced to really saying goodbye to time for the next 'event'.

How bloody wonderful not to have to blog about this shit again.

Artificial Intelligence

Steve took my new little girlie tablet with him to London and so I have been using the old clunker. Now it works OK but somehow it has decided that it will change the screen picture all on its own and it's using pictures of its own choosing. I don't know where they have come from and I certainly am not responsible for them, but they are creeping me out. The machine lulls me into a false sense of security with images of lakes and mountains and then I am assaulted by closeups of what I imagine are underwater fungus scum, or something. I look at these things that I can't identify and am reminded or the horror novel,'Day of the Triffids'. I was a teenager when I read this book, and my imagination was vivid enough to transfer the words on the page to a terror of plants. I think the possibility of these mutant plants taking over the world was and perhaps still is, real enough to cause worry.

So when machines start thinking for themselves, I worry about that too. First it was this old clunky machine - see I need to use a made up adjective in case it does have artificial intelligence and it gets offended and starts electrocuting me. And then when I went to flail my arms around in the pool in the somewhat vain hope that my boob might straighten up, I was forced to go 5 rounds with the pool vacuum. It was taking a little nap on the pool bench so I popped it down onto the floor so it could do some good. Flail flail flail, and bugger me if the bloody thing was not back having a siesta. I moved that thing 5 times before it gave up and started to clean up the leaves. So not only is it a smart arse stubborn machine, it's lazy and doesn't want to work on Saturdays.

I am intrigued by those automatic vacuums that run around the floors all day and suck up dog hair and I reckon that this place would be perfect - concrete and open space, but it would probably be too easy and the thing would get bored and then up to mischief. It would be cool to think that boredom might morph into preparing dinner, but in Stephen King style it would more likely mean some sort of chewing up of Dog or eating all my handbags. I would like to train it to do the ironing when it was done but that would just be being greedy.

Yeh I know this is a silly blog, but it's been a bit of an odd day, and maybe it's the aliens inside my head doing the talking.

Volunteer Work

I did my day's work at the gallery today. It's run on a co-op basis so if you have a painting exhibited, you need to work a day so that the place can stay open. It seems like a good idea and I don't mind going in.

Oh I know, you can hear it coming, BUT volunteer workers seem to be self important opinionated pains in the arse.

It's just one day a month and I will have to use it as an exercise in self control, and try very hard to avoid the woman from today. She started off giving instructions and bellowing on about how shitful the governement is and that big business was the devil. This was all before we had even turned on the lights! I allowed her to dig her political hole pretty deep and then I told her I had actually voted for these 'clowns' and that whilst there might be some problem with businesses, the biggest problem under the previous government was that there were just too many people wanting and getting something for nothing and that money was finite and that governments needed to balance the books any way possible. Anyway as you can imagine it all got a bit brittle and then I was given the job of dragging out the over sized wheelie bin for 'rubbish day'

There was another woman working there who was in the office, paying accounts, getting building works quotes, answering calls and organising new memberships and stuff. I asked her if 'we' were paying her and she said that there was some arbitrary sum paid for 3 hours a week and that was OK cos she usually worked only 2 days a week but this week it would be 3 days and so she was getting a bit pissed cos there was not enough time for her to do any painting. I stuffed and addressed some envelopes for her and really hope that it took something off her very crowded plate. She was a pleasant woman.

So I made nicey nicey with the visitors and had an OK time chatting to holiday makers from all over Australia, and was very pleased when quitting time came around and bossy boots said that she would close up and that I could go, cos she was waiting for a call about something no doubt very important.

I have to imagine that if anyone is going to buy a painting, then they will need to be schmoozed at least a little. Bossy would need to haul arse out the boss chair and actually engage people in conversation. Maybe that idea could be ratified at the next committee meeting and then cast in stone, but only if the meeting lasted longer than the rest of my life.

Anyway I imagine this place is like any other business that is run by volunteer committee, by the time egos are stroked there is fuck all time for 'proper' business decisions to be made. It definitely reminds me of school Parents and Citizens groups. If you have ever been to one of these meetings or indeed taken an executive role you know that it is not for the feint hearted. Too many and too much in one room.

It might well be yet another case of  YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.

Bloody ANTS

Where do ants come from.... This is posed as a rhetorical question, cos I know the answer. They are breeding in the walls of my kitchen and at anytime when I am not banging away in there, they are making a soldier like marching band all across the benches and into the sink and some are disappearing down the cruchie munchable. At any given time I can sneak up on about a gizzillion of the little fuckers and it doesn't matter how many I try to kill using boiling water, paper towel crushing, lethal sprays of baygon, they just seem to re-group and carry on regardless. That Pommie expression about 'Keep Calm and Carry On' could very likely have been coined by ants.

They seem to be harmless enough, but the fact that I cannot get rid of 'em makes me feel like I am living in some shitting B grade horror movie where if I stop still for too long I will be overtaken by the black swarm and taken to their leader.

I have scrubbed the granite to within an inch of its life and the is no food anywhere - well that is not unusual, even after spending an appalling fortune at woolies, there is still nothing to eat at my place. Why the hell are the little fuckers so intent on taking up residence in my kitchen.

I had hoped some months ago that this was just a seasonal thing but what season could it be. They are here in the wet and the dry and the heat and the breeze and the humidity and can survive the stink of mozzie coils which is about enough to see me off.

I have had enough. I want a Pied Piper for Ants to pop on over and whistle 'em all outta here and take 'em over to somewhere which is owned by someone who gives me the shits.

'A Pox on all their houses'

'Monument Men' and Etu Ndow

Last week a Gambian artist, Etu Ndow died. I discovered this because there were many many messages left on his Facie page from all over the world. He was just 48 and as best as I can discover, died from a heart attack. When Steve and I were in The Gambia, we were so taken with his paintings and Etu himself, that we bought his exhibition and exported it back to London. Etu was thrilled with the sale and we were happy with the price and the idea that he would continue his fine work. We thought we would sell some of the pieces but actually never got around to it and now most of them hang somewhere here in the big house. People from all over the world posted selfies in front of one of his paintings. I think he would be pleased.

So Etu's work has sort of collected an anonymous gaggle of folk who have only his work in common, and as fine as it is I rather doubt any of us would lay down ours lives to protect it.

'Monument Men', was well produced and acted and can boast an expensive cast of widely recognised actors. I suppose that is always gonna be the case when George Clooney writes and acts and directs a project. It was based on a true story of a small higgley-piggley group of blokes commissioned towards the end of WW2, to recover the artwork stolen by the Nazis. Some men died in this pursuit, and in the final wash up when asked if the works were worth the lives lost, the answer was 'yes'.



All the greats were mentioned and some pieces were specifically targeted. What I wonder is this, would the world be worse off without Leonardo's Madonna and Child sculpture, or would we be OK because we knew it had been made, and contempory pieces are still available to look at and admire. I guess the question is whether or not art pieces need to be immortal. I remember clearly, arguing the negative at Uni in an art class and being howled down.

I have not changed my mind. Etu's paintings are unlikely to survive for generations, but they bring pleasure now and an insight into Gambian life today. The fact the the materials have a definite shelf life does not detract from their value.

No I am not saying that Etu's artwork is in the same league as Picasso's or Renoir's but as I can own it and look at it and enjoy it, his paintings are of enormous value to me.