The car race is

on again. This happens every year. Have I mentioned it before? I might have.
I do not like car races. I do not approve of car races. In my view they are a waste of precious fossil fuel. They are dangerous. They encourage other people to drive dangerously. Those that use "street-circuits" disrupt the traffic, local business and the lives of many people who are not interested.
I am told "it is good for the economy", that it brings in tourists who spend money etc. Yes, I have heard all the arguments thankyou - and I am not convinced.
Now there are plans to add to the problems by running some of the event "under lights". The cost of doing this will, of course, be much higher. It will use even more power too. The circuit has to be lit as bright as daylight. The spectators have to be able to see what is going on.
Running it under lights will also add to the stress of those who have the misfortune to live close to the event. We live around five kilometres away and we can still hear the noise. If the wind is blowing in the wrong/right direction it is quite loud. The noise gets stopped dead in its tracks by the hills behind us.
The state government apparently plans to run this event "for years to come". It is a "cake" event, an event designed to distract the masses and keep them happy while the government gets on with the business of (not) governing us.
We have already had the bicycle race this year - the "Tour Downunder". On Monday week we have a public holiday for "the Adelaide Cup" - a horse race. (Even Melbourne does not close down for the Melbourne Cup!) The Fringe Festival has started. The Adelaide Festival will be in full swing very shortly. Entertainment is to be had everywhere - at a price.
Are we paying too much for it?

Where do you live and

why do you live there?
I have a friend returning to New Zealand. It is where she was born and she has been homesick for it ever since she left. There have been frequent trips backwards and forwards. The earthquakes in her home city of Christchurch worry her less than the not seeing her family.
I have another friend who has not lived here for forty-one years. She has been backwards and forwards too but not frequently. Until her parents died it was an annual duty visit. After that is was always several years apart. Now, physically frail herself, she has made the decision she is "coming home". Her sister is here - although they are not close. Her friends live elsewhere.
My cousin and his partner live in London. They plan to retire here. They say it is "home" although they no longer have friends here.
I have lived in this state most of my life. I have a sister here. I also have two siblings who live in other, different, states.
I had a year in Melbourne and four years in Canberra. I also had seven years in London.  If anyone asked me where I had felt most at home it would have to be in London. Given the opportunity I believe I would go back there. It is not going to happen but I would go back despite the winters, despite all the problems, the potential dangers, the difficulties of getting around etc. London had other attractions, mostly intellectual. Friends still live there.
I know I live where I do now because of my father. He can live in his own home because I live with him. He is still easy to live with. We both know that if I did not live here he would not be able to live here either. Nevertheless I feel it is his home, not mine. I do many things his way, not mine. That is only right and proper.
I have been thinking about all this because there is yet another discussion coming up about "unmet need" and "waiting lists" for people with disabilities who are being cared for "at home" by their parents. The general belief is that people should go into "group houses in the community". These places are supposed to become their "homes". 
In reality I doubt any of these places are "home" or ever become "home". In them they will share space with people they do not know and did not choose to live with. They will have an endless stream of changing outsiders supposedly "caring" for them. There are rules and regulations made by outside authorities over every aspect of their daily lives.
There is a perception that, in a "group house" people have more control over their own lives but the time they get up in the morning, the food they eat, the type of clothing they wear and their daily activities are still dictated by others. Meaningful "consultation" is so rare that it really does not exist. These houses were supposed to help people become "part of the community". With the rarest of exceptions this does not happen. Within the population can change in ways that would not happen in the rest of the community. Residents will come and go and you do not choose your housemates. 
I wonder where "home" is for people who live like this?

Learning Russian has been

an interesting experience for a friend of mine. He works part time in the local indie bookshop. He is also a creative writing student at university. He already speaks French and has been to French Polynesia. He has just spent six weeks in Russia, in the city of Omsk.
Yesterday he was back in the bookshop and assured me he had indeed had a "marvellous" time. I have no doubt he did. He is the sort of person who makes the most of everything. Mind you he did end up being too busy enjoying the experience to keep up the blog so the rest of us were left wondering what it was like!
It is, we both agreed, the best way to learn something about a language and the people who speak it. You need to be involved.
I wonder how I would get on. My Russian is limited to about three words. It is not a language I have ever needed to know much about.
It is a bit the same with science. Science has a language, or languages, of its own. I know what might be called "Basic Science" but I do not know the specialist languages.  I used to have a low level capacity to speak "Statistics" but apart from a couple of very basic "phrases" the language has now advanced to a level where I would be lost. There is "Medicine" of course. We all speak some of that along with "Anatomy" and "Physiology". It is all a bit at the level of the traveller's phrase book - and, sometimes, about as useful.
And there are other everyday languages that I barely speak too. There is "Motor Car". My nephews speak fluent "Car". They know a specialised dialect there, "Go-Kart". My father speaks fluent "Gardening" and the more specialised "Organic-Gardening". He also speaks the arcane "Conjuring and Magic". I barely understand these things. There is "Sport". I can recognise some of the basic vocabulary but I cannot hold a conversation in "Sport".  Ah, "Music"? No. I know the almost Mediaeval version of "Music" they call "Baroque" but it is far from fluent.
There are so many other "languages" out there too. I really cannot claim to speak any of them. Yesterday though I was listening to another member of the bookshop knitting group explain to someone how to crochet.  She was patient and her instructions were clear. The person she was teaching looked up suddenly and said,  "It's like a whole new language." 
It is - and it is exciting.

"His last school had

speech therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, the orthotics team, the psychologist and all sorts of other things. There were seven kids in his class and his teacher knew what she was doing Cat! Now we have to get him to therapy after school when he is tired. Anna was working from ten until two at the library three days a week but now she has to be ready to rush into school at any time. What's more he has not made any friends and this year is looking to be even worse than last."
I wish I had not asked. A friend had read yesterday's blog post and commented on it before a meeting we both had to attend. His profoundly physically disabled son was moved from his special school to the normal school system in the last term of last year. The move has not been a success.
There are the last vestiges of a school for children with physical disabilities in this state. It is perhaps more of an assessment centre than a school itself. The aim is to place the children into "normal" educational settings as soon as possible. There is a good reason for this. It saves money.
The argument goes quite differently of course. It is all about socialisation, integration, normality, best practice, the best educational opportunities etc etc.
The reality is that some children, perhaps a good many children, are not getting the help they need. The friend who was talking to me yesterday is aware that his child needs far more help than he is getting. His son has a rare medical condition which needs constant monitoring. He needs help with all the activities of daily living. Last week his class at school went on an outing. He was left behind because it was "too hot".
Nobody wants him on their team - not because they dislike him but because he cannot participate and the other children are competitive.  He "hates" school.
His parents think he has regressed physically and is not making the educational progress of which he is capable. I do not know about physical abilities but I did a brief psychological assessment. He is above average. He should be doing better than he is but he told me that sometimes the person who is supposed to help him is doing something else. Without help he cannot get a book. His i-pad like device on which he writes is sometimes not put in front of him because "it's something little and the teacher says I don't have to do it". It would take him longer than the teacher has time for - especially with twenty-one other children in the room.
The school rule is that the other children do not help. This seems odd to me but it was explained in terms of "they might do too much and we want these children to be as independent as possible". It seems the teacher does not even have time to say, "Andy, please give Ben his book."
My guess is that, despite what is being said, Ben is unwelcome there. He is a medical responsibility the school is uncomfortable with. Yes they know what to do if something goes wrong with the oxygen line but they do not want to be responsible for that. They do not want to be responsible even though there is supposed to be an aide available for Ben. She is being used elsewhere in the school.
Ben himself told me, "They don't want me."
An eight year old should not know that.

As someone who does not have

children of my own I sometimes find endless chatter about other people's children a little irritating. Their children are, of course, perfect - apart from a few oddities such as untidiness. They are never rude. They never cause them any concerns. They are "good kids" - good kids who do as their parents want.
I am never too sure who these paragons of virtue are. We were not like that and the next generation of the clan was not like that. Their children will not be either. We all "had our moments" as they say. Despite that I think we ended up reasonably well.
The Whirlwind, the child around the corner who has no mother, has her moments too. Homework, which should have been finished on Saturday, was undone on Sunday and there was battle between her and her father. She stormed around to me - and then burst into tears because she hates upsetting her father. It was sorted out. Apologies were made. The homework was finished. She picked up some more peaches that had fallen on the ground and went home to make it up with her father. People would probably say "she's a good kid" - and she is.
But I do wonder about some of these other children. Of course you do not want to criticise your children to other people but is it fair to them to pretend they are something they are not?
Not every child is top of the class, scores the most runs at cricket or the most goals in football. The expectation they will be "the best" at something bothers me. The question always seems to be "What are you the best at?" If it is not that it is "What are you good at?"
I have friends who have a profoundly physically disabled child. She is also intellectually retarded. Nobody could suggest she was a pretty child or, now, a pretty woman. She can do nothing for herself. Her parents, now in their seventies, still have her living at home. She is still a much loved child, always immaculately dressed and well cared for. It is an increasing effort for her parents and, as always, the worry is what will happen when they really will have to pass the responsibility on to other people.
        "What on earth could you find positive to say about her?" someone asked me recently as he watched this girl being wheeled off by her father.
        "She can laugh at herself, " I told him. Her mother said that to me when her daughter was still in her early teens. It was said with a sense of real pride. This girl is aware of her limitations. I tried to help her on with a jacket one day and, for a moment, she spasmed to the point where it was going to be quite impossible. I have forgotten exactly what her mother said next but it had us both laughing. She relaxed and the jacket was slipped on quite easily.
She will never be "the best" at anything or even "good at" doing something.  Of course it matters that she can do nothing for herself  but her family have still found something she and they can have pride in. They found something she can be, a person who can laugh at herself.
It is who she is that matters, not what she is. For so many other children it seems to be "what" they are rather than "who" they are that matters to their parents.
I would rather know "who" you are than "what" you are.

Global Village is a

half hour television programme on our SBS television station in Australia. It usually consists of two short documentaries or one slightly longer one.
Apart from the news service it is almost the only television my father and I watch. Once in a while there may be another documentary which catches our attention but, more often than not, we would struggle to find time to watch it.
So, why do we watch Global Village? We know a number of people who have expressed surprise we should bother with it. One of them put it to us, "I watch television to be entertained, not educated."
My father and I watch it to be educated, not entertained.
The Whirlwind's father records the programme to watch later. He says it is a relaxing half hour while he eats a meal. He saves some of the programmes for the Whirlwind to watch. She is, for a child of her age, singularly disinterested in television. She gets impatient and says, "I want to DO something." Even when she is watching she is doing something else. Nevertheless she likes Global Village programmes.
We all know that part of the pleasure is because of the presenter, Silvio Rivier. He is also an outstandingly good narrator. He seeks out the documentaries, mostly from Europe and provides a translation. His voice is familiar. It is clear. He speaks several languages and has an extraordinary facility for getting his tongue around many others. He also has what appears to be a genuine enthusiasm for his work in his brief introductions to the segments.
      "But why do you bother to watch?" We have been asked this question more than once.
One part of the answer is simple. It gives us an opportunity to virtually experience many things we will never be able to travel and see. We will only experience the lives of a Chinese village doctor, an African shaman, a Chilean miner, a Cuban tobacco sorter, an Eskimo fisherman and many more by watching these things. We will only see religious and cultural festivals and (partly) understand their meaning by seeing them in a virtual way.
But there is something else as well. Someone I know in the northern hemisphere told me how looking out at the moon last night made her feel small and insignificant. Global Village does that too. It is a good way to feel sometimes. It is good to look out and think, "All those things and I know nothing about them."
If we can go on thinking that then surely it has to help us keep a childish capacity for wondering at the world?
Maybe that is not important for some people. It is important for me. I need it. I cannot write without it.

The reading of comics

was not banned in our house when I was a child but it was not encouraged either. I think my mother may have banned them altogether but my father could remember reading "Beano" and thought we should be allowed to read something of that sort.
He found the Eagle and Robin comics and, once or twice, the Girl. They all came from the same publisher. He did not buy them for us every week but they appeared in the house several times a year until I was ten. My brother and I devoured the adventures of Dan Dare in the Eagle and helped my younger sisters read about animals in the Robin. I cannot remember anything much about Girl because my mother disapproved of it or, at least, of me having it. My father must have given in to her over it.
On the rare occasions we visited houses with other children in them we devoured Rupert Bear and anything else which came to hand if we had the chance. We did not want to "play nicely". We wanted to read. People must have thought we were very unsociable children.
When we moved back to the country there was no question of getting a comic of any sort. The newspaper came on the train from Adelaide, a day's journey away. There were only two trains a week so my father would get the Saturday paper but get it on Tuesday. Most people did not bother to get a paper at all.
There were a small selection of comics in the local general store but we were not permitted to buy those. I remember my brother buying one once. My mother found it and made him feed it into the fire.
Then my father had to make a trip to Adelaide for some reason. I think he was going to a conference of some sort. While he was there he went into one of the two bookshops, now both closed, that sold books for schools. No doubt he had been given a small sum by the school committee to buy books for the school. He also came home with a present for us, a book.
It was "The Adventures of Tin Tin." With a wink at us he told our mother it was a "very high class comic book indeed, translated from the French". I think he enjoyed it as much as we did. My brother still has the book.
My nephews and their father are "Asterix" addicts. My father also thinks Asterix is very funny.  So do I.
Comics do get mentioned in books for children but it is rarely adults who are reading them. There is however a wonderful exception to this in Eileen Dunlop's book, "The house on the hill". In that Philip's great-aunt Jane, a feisty old woman who reads Advanced Nuclear Reactor Theory, tells him it is all his fault that their supper is not ready,
           "My fault?" said Philip, amazed, "How so?"
           "Well," said Jane, sloshing the beans hastily into a pan, and putting it on the stove, "I went upstairs at two o'clock to put in a clean towel for you , and spent most of the afternoon reading your Beanos. I don't know what happened to Eggo the Ostrich, but I'm relieved to see they still have Lord Snooty. It gives me a sense of security in a changing world. Lay the table for me, there's a good boy."
Yes, a sense of security in a changing world.