There was no back door

at the first place Middle Cat and I went to investigate yesterday.

Now this may not sound a very serious drawback but consider this. It was a "ground floor" unit which means you enter it from ground level. In order to do so at that addresss you need to go down a step from the street, down another step and then up another. There may have been ways around that but it is not ideal because there is another problem - getting the laundry basket to the clothesline.

Middle Cat and I prowled in to look despite the steps at the front because we were unaware of the problem until we were inside. The living area was very nice, enough room for bookshelves along one wall. At the far end there was enough room for a small dining table and four chairs. It was looking as if it might, with reservations about those steps, be possible. 

We looked in the kitchen. It had recently been renovated. It might have been very nice but the cupboards were all black. The bench top was black too. Why would you put black into a kitchen? 

Bathroom/laundry was the same sort of dark theme. The bedroom window looked directly on to a car parking space. No, not the space for the unit.  It is the space for the owner of the unit above. He could be coming and going at any time. The present owner "just pulls the blind down." Really?

Middle Cat and I stood there looking around. I cannot afford to be too fussy about where I live. I know that but there was something wrong. What?

"There's no back door," Middle Cat said at last, "How do you get to the clothesline?"

A woman looking at the unit with her daughter heard her and looked around, "You're right. That's odd." 

The four of us looked around and worked it out. To use the clothesline (there were two clotheslines to be shared between six units) you had to take your washing through the living area and out the front door. You then had to negotiate the steps, go through first one car park area and then another in order to get to the "garden". 

Middle Cat went to investigate further. I just stood there wondering what else was wrong. The place was at the uppermost end of the range I can afford but someone will buy it. 

We went on. We prowled past a unit where there are four car parking spaces directly against the bedroom wall. The rubbish bins are next to the window itself. The other residents apparently want to go "all solar" but we coud not find out much about that. Perhaps I could go to bed with ear plugs and use a nose peg at all times? How much more would "all solar" cost?

On still further. Middle Cat slowed the car as we approached. She pulled over and stopped a little further up the street. Ahead of us was an old "housing trust" complex. It is in a shocking state. Much of it looks abandoned. It is fit only to be demolished. There are broken windows and one had no door at all.

Outside there were five men sitting and drinking...and it was not tea or coffee. Beyond them there were more tiny units in the same condition and then the smaller block we had come to look at. 

"I don't think it is worth waiting for the open," Middle Cat said, "Even without the problems down there. The agent said this place needs work."

We looked at the peeling paint, the rusted gutter and downpipe, the weeds and I just heaved a sigh. We did not go in.

On the way back to our local area. We passed another set of units with a sale sign. "Sold!" Yes, very nice. I remembered looking at them on line. The unit up for sale was sold without even an open. 

Perhaps I could buy a tent and move to a caravan park...but they only let you stay for a short time.

 

An "arranged marriage"

can work, of course it can. There have been arranged marriages throughout history. Some have been successful, even very successful. Others have proved disastrous, even resulting in death.

There is an article in this morning's paper saying that someone has finally been convicted of forcing a young woman to marry against her will. There is now legislation which is intended to prevent that but it will almost certainy go on happening.

When I was still at school, an all girls state high school at the time, one of the girls left to get married. No, she was not pregnant. She simply came from a Greek family where marriage was considered to be the "right" thing for a girl and for the man to be chosen for her. I met her again some years later. She had two children and seemed content enough.  Perhaps it did work for her. She had no ambition to work outside the home, indeed would not have had any skills to do so. For T... looking after her husband, her husband's grandparents (who spoke no English) and other relatives was sufficient. 

I have sometimes wondered whether she still feels that way. It would be interesting to meet her again and find out. I know too that most of the other Greek girls attending the school and some of the other girls from migran backgrounds were expecting to do much the same. They might get office positions, often with a family member or friend but they expected to marry, have children and be a wife and mother before anything else.

What I don't know of is any of those girls being forced to marry against their will. Some of them may have felt under some pressure but there did not appear to be a level of compulsion that they could not handle. I may be wrong.

I know I am not wrong about the girl from the very strict religious sect who approached me in the library. Her "can my father make me marry someone?" still leaves me feeling deep disturbed. The courage it must have taken to approach me as no more than "S...'s friend" is something I will always admire. While the Greek girls from my school days might have endured problems, even serious problems, with family relations for a short while they would not have lost everything. 

When she "ran away" the girl who spoke to me left everything behind. In this case I do mean everything. She left her family with nothing more than the clothes she was wearing. She has had absolutely no contact since that time. 

Recently I saw the neighbour who helped her when she made her move.  M... told me, "She still struggles. I think she will always struggle."

I think she will too. Her family have completely cut her off. She no longer exists for them. Her two sisters have gone on to marry according to their father's wishes. There are four brothers and three are married. S...'s mother told me about this in the fruit and veg area of the supermarket. She was looking around nervously as she spoke to me because conversation with outsiders is not encouraged. 

I asked about the youngest boy and her expression changed. "They lost him," she tells me. I know better than to ask any more. It is extraordinary that she has told me that much. No, he has not died but he too is dead to them. I wonder how many other children have left their families, how much longer their parents can continue to retain such tight control. How much longer can their church wield such power over them? 

I doubt those marriages are anything like the wonderful marriage my paternal grandparents had. No, that marriage was not "perfect" but it was exceptional and their very obvious happiness was often commented on. Grandma essentially "ran away". Her father strongly disapproved of Grandpa. Great-grandpa had other ideas about the marriages of his daughters. Despite that Grandma retained contact with her family. Her brother "gave her away" at the wedding. Years later, along with her sister, she cared for her parents in their extreme old age.  

Perhaps those parents growing older now could consider that and how much it might mean to have children who cared enough to care.  

"Boy today but he was

a girl yesterday," a mother told me yesterday with a sigh. She was watching her three year old swinging on a piece of playground equipment. I had just rescued a ball thrown into the road by another child.

I must have looked as confused as I felt because she went on, "You know this gender thing. You have to ask them whether they are boys or girls now. They started it at his childcare place last year. I think it's wrong but they say we have to do it."

I suspect this mother is confused about the actual policy but the real question has to be whether it should be a policy at all. Do three year old children really understand the concept of "gender" and, more especially, whether they are "boy" or "girl", "male" or "female" or something else? 

It was so simple when I was a kitten. You were a "boy" or a "girl". It was not something anyone questioned. It was just a fact. Before you went to school you were told this. Nobody questioned it. Adults could tell bcause, most of the time, girls wore clothing intended for girls and boys wore clothing intended for boys. Girls might have their hair in plaits and boys might have one of the very new and daring "crew cut" cuts. You could see differences. 

Did we play differently? Perhaps. We were often given what were considered to be gender appropriate presents. It did not prevent us from being given other toys. I had my adored train set. My "big friend", a girl of about six or seven, had a set of tools. Her father was a "linesman" employed by the power company. Other children had other toys. Some toys were passed down and shared around as we "grew out of them". I don't think we thought of our play things as being only suited to boys or girls. They might be put to a different purpose but we did not restrict their use to the supposedly appropriate gender. 

I have no idea when I understood there was a difference between "boy" and "girl" but it was certainly something I would have known when my brother was born. I would have been two years old. Did I really understand at the time? I doubt it. I simply knew there was a difference between us. Asking me whether I was a boy or a girl would not even have been an appropriate question.

I do not see it as an appropriate question now. I do not believe a four year old really understands what it means to be a "girl" or a "boy". It is highly unlikely they have such a deep understanding of the issue they feel an overwhelming desire to be something other than what they are.

I know people with strong views on the issue will see this differently. They may even want to say I am wrong. Although there are tools like "Gender Identity Questionnaires" there are no psychological tools for testing actual "gender". Even GIQs have not been extensively used, tested, validated or generally been rigorously researched. It seems all this is still highly subjective.

In the hands of an adult, particulary a skilled adult, a child can easily be influenced by leading questions. Asking a child "are you a boy or a girl?" is to sew doubt in a child's mind and I cannot help asking, "Is this really appropriate?" 

 

"He started it!"

It is "school holidays" here. We have the usual cohort of grandparents providing a free child minding service. They are dealing with the arguments, fights, sulks and poor behaviour of "bored" children. The local cinema complex is showing some films deemed "suitable" for younger chilren. 

And the older children, those in their early teens, are trying to escape from supervision. I can hardly blame them but please, behave!

A favourite activity around here is to load your "mountain" bike on to the train and head into the hills behind us. There you can "muck about" on the tracks in the park and, when it is time to leave, you can do the hair raising trip down the winding road to the plains again. 

The boys, and this is almost entirely a male activity, have assured me more than once that this is "fun". I am sure it is. Boys have not changed their behaviour much (if at all) since I did the research into their on road behaviour. I am well aware, perhaps better aware than their parents, of the dangers in what they are doing. They perform crazy manouvres in the park. It is a wonder there are not more accidents there, more sprains and broken bones. Follow that up with a ride that may well be downhill most of the way but is done at speeds which may actually break the speed limit some of the way. Yes, it can be done. It's exhilarating.  

Middle Cat, being Middle Cat and needing to show she was just as good as the boys, did it once. She did it without parental permission and lived to tell the tale. This may have been because Mum did not find out until much later.

In school holidays and at weekends there are now so many boys doing this the train service puts on a "bike" carriage. The boys are supposed to use that one. Most of them do. I have the privilege of sneaking into the first carriage rather than the second one. Yesterday one of the boys humped his bike into the first carriage. He was looking furious. He glared at me and the other passengers, validated his ticket and parked his bike next to my trike.

I told him where I was getting off because I suspected, rightly, I would need to get off long before he did. He looked at me. I smiled. It was difficult because he was not looking too friendly. Then his expression changed. We swapped places so I would be able to exit easily. I told him how Middle Cat had done the ride from the top at about his age. She had beaten a string of boys doing their best to keep up with her. He stared at me and I thought he probably would not believe me but he whipped out his phone and I heard him asking, "Hey Granddad remember telling me about the girl who beat you down the hill? Yeah, the one you still see sometimes. What was her name, can you remember?"

Yes, it was Middle Cat. She still sees his grandfather around the district from time to time. The "boys" back then are old enough to be grandparents now, grandparents of teenage boys who still like to do the same thing. The boy and I chatted quite amicably until I reached my station. He helped me get the trike off under the watchful eye of a rarely seen "transit officer". 

"I was going to kick you off for fighting," the transit officer told him, "But I'll leave you there for that."

The boy muttered an apology and I heard the words, "He started it." Yes, his grandfather started it. It is crazy and dangerous but it is "fun" and he started it for yet another generation. 

Could you please stop protesting?

For the last twelve months there has been a weekly "protest" held in various places around the country. Those organising and running it are doing so in protest at "Israeli aggression" and the "Israeli invasion of Palestine". 

I am not going to comment on the rights and wrongs of those actions except to say the "protests" started the day after the October 7th attacks and before there was any retalitory action. That verifiable fact has been conveniently forgotten by many of those reporting these "protests". To remind us of it would mean changing the narrative and risking the wrath of some powerful "community" leaders. Nobody is going to do it. 

I may be wrong but I would take an educated guess that a majority of those present at these events know very little (and sometimes nothing at all) about the issue they claim to feel so passionately about. It is likely the same is true of many participants in other rallies and protests. 

My guess is based on a workshop I ran on "how to protest and achieve change". I ran this pre-internet when people did not have the same resources but they did have some and this group should, at very least, been reading materials I knew they had been given, At the start of the workshop I asked people to fill ot a check sheet asking them to fill in the names of their electorate, their state and federal MPs, the Premier, the Prime Minister and a number of other people who might be relevant if you wanted to achieve change. I asked people to identify sources of information and assistance and the role that various government departments and services played. 

Nobody had to show anyone else their answers and that was just as well because the scores were even lower than I expected. There were over forty people in the group and only one of them could have been said to be really well informed. It was his job to be informed about such things and even he publicly admitted that he "didn't get everything". Many of those present were struggling to answer the questions at all. They simply thought they "knew" the answers - until they discovered they did not.

Now we have the internet and, despite all the "information" out there I wonder how informed people really are. It is not even sufficient to know someone's name. You need to know what that person does, what their actual role is, what they can and cannot do. You need to know how to approach them and how to word a request for action.

Many years ago I looked after the office of a local MP for a few weeks. It was his secretary, a good friend, who asked me to fill in on an emergency basis. My role was, supposedly, to answer the phone and take messages, greet people who dropped in and take down their details so the secretary could get back to them.

Of course it ended up being more than that. The MP would come in at night after I had left and there would be a list of demands waiting for me in the morning. They would often be of the nature "letter to X about Y saying...."

I had only drafted two or three such letters (and even neatly typed them up) when he appeared one morning and started to sign things before going on to another meeting. There was a roar from his office, "Cat! In here now!"

I went in wondering what I had done wrong. He flung a letter back at me. "Tell them to do it, don't ask! It's why I am the Minister. You're being too polite." I crept back and changed one sentence...and I also managed to learn a lesson. He was not an easy man for whom to work but he knew his job. I needed to know mine too.

If you want to "protest" then you need to know things. You need to know a lot of things. You need to be really informed not simply believe something is right or wrong. If you want change or want to achieve something then you need to put in the necessary work. It might also mean weaning yourself off the weekend adrenalin fix brought about by going to that protest march. Yes, that's hard isn't it?

If you want to live in this country

then please do not expect me to wear the clothing you expect women in your country of origin to wear. Also, please do not expect me to support your views on the conflicts in the Middle East, your religion, your views about women failing to marry and woment working outside the home. 

If I entered your home here I would remove my footwear but I would do so becaus it is your home here, your personal space. I would be your guest. Outside that space you are either a resident of this country or you are a guest. As a resident of this country you are expected to abide by the customs of this country. As a guest you are asked to be polite and accepting of those customs. 

You are free to practice your religion here. You are not free to expect me to do the same. I have my own beliefs but I will not attempt to convert you to those beliefs. 

Not all women in your country of origin marry and some of them do manage to have careers outside the home. This is how I came to learn about the nephew you are demanding I help. 

Yes, yesterday I was introduced to someone who is here on a visa of some sort. He was looking for help for a child in his extended family. I was told "nephew" but the relationship seems to be something else. 

I did not take to this man. He wanted me to cover my head and not wear "men's clothing". I could not speak to his wife because she must remain at home and he could not make a time on any Friday or Saturday or at certain times of the day during the rest of the week. 

I will help because it is my job to help but I want to do it on my terms.  You may be able to walk the streets and I might guess you are possibly from somewhere in the Middle East and quite likely from a conflict zone.  It is when your wife must follow you, dressed head to toe in back with her head bowed and her face covered I know it is even more likely. I accept this may be the way things are in your country of origin. I do not have to approve of it.

I can accept it is how women are treated in your country but I do not have to like it. I do not have to do as you say here. If you want my help then it will be on my terms. If you want to live in this country then you will need to accept that. It does not make me "racist" or "intolerant".