I do not like birthdays,

or at least my birthday.
If other people want to celebrate theirs then let them. I know some people actually like them. They like the fuss, the presents, being the centre of attention at some points in the day, having people say "Happy Birthday". I do not. Birthdays make me want to hibernate. I will come back after it is all over.
In our family five out of the six of us had our birthdays in the summer. My mother was first and the rest of us followed. Add Christmas and New Year and there were just too many things to be celebrated. My birthday was almost always given very little consideration. I never got used to the idea of having one.
If I am honest I have to say that not much was ever done about celebrating anyone's birthday. My mother never "had time" for that sort of thing. We did not have parties, indeed most of the time we were not even all in the same place. My parents would have come to the city from wherever they were teaching. One parent and two children would be with one set of grandparents and one parent and two children would be with the other set of grandparents. If I was lucky I would be with my paternal grandparents and that would mean going down for an early morning swim and icecream later in the day. They would not have dared to make too much fuss. If I was unlucky I would be with my maternal grandparents.
Our summer "holidays" were taken up with trips to the dentist, buying school supplies, my father visiting the university and other essentials. One year we did go on a camping trip to Canberra - so my father could go to a conference. My parents turned the trip into one long geography and history lesson. New Year's Eve was spent in an incredibly noisy caravan park with so much drunken and unruly behaviour in one part that the police were called in and my parents did not even remember it was my birthday they were so concerned for our safety. My father remembered the following day but my mother said it was "too late" to do anything about it. I was so glad to be away from that caravan park I no longer cared.
My birthdays have gone on being a bit like that caravan park year. Because it is New Year's Eve people who do know it is my birthday make the assumption that I will be going out, living it up - DOING something. I let them think that. It is easier that way. I do not want to head out into the heat and mix with drunken revellers to "see the New Year in".
My father and I have nothing planned for today apart from trying to keep cool and hydrated.
If I am still awake at midnight then what I will do is sit and look at the sky and think how lucky I am that I have had another year. The world is a very big place and there is still a lot of it to explore.

We no longer own a car because

my father made the wise decision to cease driving. He was 85 when he made this decision. By then he had also invested in a "gopher", one of those small motorised golf-buggy type vehicles now so popular with the elderly.
He had actually been to get the medical certificate to go on driving but he had gone on his gopher. He passed the medical. He had recently had a few refresher driving lessons. He passed a new test. I was still anxious when he went out because he was too cautious...and that can cause an accident just as easily as lack of caution. I said nothing because the car meant independence for him.
"I passed my licence in," he told me when he came home, "I just don't want the responsibility any more."
Three years later I am still glad that he made that decision for himself rather than being forced into it by someone else.
My spatial perception capacities are not good. I have never learned to drive. I use pedal power to go anywhere. In very wet or very hot weather this is not pleasant. I put up with it because I must.
There are however ways of making this more pleasant. It requires organisation. It is the reason that this blog post is late this morning. I went shopping first because today is going to be unpleasantly hot.
Our local supermarket opens at seven in the morning. I was not there at seven but I was there a few minutes before eight. The ride up there was remarkably pleasant. It was still cool enough. It was very, very quiet. Most people in this district will not go back to work until Tuesday. This meant there was almost no vehicular traffic on the back streets I use. That was pleasant enough in itself. I could pedal along almost silently.
I spoke to the Devon Rex cat in the next street and the Siamese around the corner from that. The black cat was snoozing on the brick wall and did not bother to open an eye but a light flick of the tail acknowledged my presence. The humans they own were nowhere to be seen.
A woman who has a severely psychotic son was watering her geranium hedge. I stop to ask if she needed anything and she handed me two letters to post "if you will". We both know it is going to be a difficult day for her.
There were three couples out walking their dogs. I know the dogs better than the humans but the humans greeted me with "Happy New Year" anyway. There were other walkers but only one jogger. The fox that lives by the railway line gave me a dirty look and almost slid under the big olive hedge which is, I think, his home.
The shopping centre was quiet. Most of the shops were not yet open. I knew the supermarket would be. I knew the greengrocer would be by eight. I did not need to go anywhere else. Pushing a trolley around was easier than usual. There were people in there of course, some with the same idea as myself and others who always shop before going to work. There were however not nearly so many people.
The girl at the checkout told me that her sister had her baby on Christmas Day - "a boy and he's beautiful if you are allowed to say boys are beautiful".
In the greengrocer the boys putting out the day's produce told me, "Anything you want we have not put out yet just let us know Cat - oh and the biscuits were great. Thanks."
I did not make them Christmas biscuits expecting extra consideration but it was nice of them to offer.
Some staff were getting coffee before starting their day. The girl from the chain that does light meals brought breakfast over for the boys in the greengrocer as I was leaving. They have been up since 4am this morning.
I rode back carefully. It was getting busier. It was getting warmer. It was good to get home and into the relative cool of our house.
My father could have kept his licence. We could have gone shopping in the air-conditioned comfort of a car. It would have been less effort. I would also have missed out on all that.
Oh it was so quiet, it was all so quiet. The world is a different place at that hour.

"You should only write

what you know about. I keep telling you that. I mean it's a waste of time writing fiction anyway. Nobody is going to read it. You will never get anything published. Why don't you just give up and do something useful?"
Only what I know about? Yes, you do keep telling me that. Writing fiction is a waste of time? It is my time. Nobody is going to read it? I am never going to get anything published?Something useful?
I was told all this firmly, indeed very firmly, yesterday. The person telling me sat there, as she had sat there for the past hour, and said all this and then added, "I am only telling you this for your own good Cat. You really should give up on the idea. It is not going to happen. You are just wasting your time. I know you always wanted to write but you have to face facts. You are never going to get anything published. Writers don't make money. You are much too old anyway."
The person handing out all this unwelcome advice claims to be a friend. It has always been a very one-sided "friendship". I do nothing to encourage it. She turns up occasionally and wastes my time by sitting for an hour or more telling me about her children, in whom I have no interest. They are not interesting children - or not when she talks about them.
This individual has "no time to read". She is too busy making sure her children "do things" - things that she has organised. The children do not read much either.
All this does not prevent her from offering me advice. It is not the first time she has offered such advice. She is not the only person who has offered me such advice. None of these people actually write anything themselves. None of them do much reading apart from a newspaper - if that.
It is only politeness that stops me from yelling, "Get out and don't come back."
I doubt that even that would do any good however. She knows she has upset me. It is her intention. She really does believe that she is telling me this for my own good and that upsetting me is the only way she is going to get me to stop "wasting time".
"What do you mean by 'something useful'?" I ask.
"Oh, I don't know take up a hobby of some sort."
"I have hobbies...reading..."
"That's not a hobby. You only do that if you have to. It's not productive."
"So it has to be productive?"
"Yes. Your knitting might qualify - although that is pretty slow. We really will have to find you something else to do. Then you won't waste so much time."
"Oh right. Well I was up at 4:30 this morning to talk to someone on the 'net. I have made breakfast, done some housework, answered thirty-seven work related e-mails, read the next chapter of someone's doctoral thesis and sent comments back, proof-read a submission for someone else and prepared lunch while you were talking to me..."
"But..."
"And I may appear to be home all day but I do work from here. I have more than enough to occupy my time. If I want to spend my free time reading and writing then I will do that."
"No Cat, you just don't understand do you? You are wasting time. We have to get you out of the house and doing something. Never mind. I'll think of something. I must go. I have to pick the kids up from their swimming class."
She sails off without waiting for a further answer. A few minutes later my father peers cautiously around the door and asks, "Has she gone? That woman wastes so much time!"

They closed another hospital

on Christmas Eve in South Australia. It was the hospital up the hill from us. It was supposedly a "private" hospital. All that really meant was that it was not run by the state government.
It was one of those useful places where local people could go to have their babies at one end of life and where they could die at the other. In between they would do their best to help you put yourself together again.
I have been to see people there over the years. It was off the main road. It was surrounded by quiet gardens. It was not too big but big enough to have many of the facilities needed by all but the most critically ill.
But, it was losing money - as hospitals are inclined to do. It was not getting taxpayer support because of the "private" listing. The government actually wanted to see it closed. The impact on the local community will be far greater than the government admits. That does not matter. It will boost the case for building a monument to the present government on the banks of the River Torrens.
They are closing another rural hospital too. The impact on that local community and the surrounding area will be even greater. The people in that community will not have to travel thirty or forty minutes by car to see a doctor but three or four hours - or even more. Seeing a doctor will become a major undertaking.
It is all about saving money of course. The money is needed for things like the oval upgrade so that the cricket ground can be used for football matches. (I have been told I really do not understand how important that is.)
The government closed the centre for people who needed permanent or long term nursing facilities some years ago. The people who lived there were sent home or to houses "in the community" with supposedly "in community care". The reality is that those who have survived are now more isolated than before and we have more young people living in aged care facilities than ever before. Now we will have the elderly people housed in the rural hospital more hours away from family and friends. We will have the residents in the hills behind us having to make emergency journeys on minor twisting roads to another hospital some distance away.
There is no public transport between the two.
If the government really cared they would keep the rural hospital open. Yes it costs but the surrounding area grows food for people in the city to consume. That alone is reason enough to keep it open so that people will remain there and pursue the essential task.
They would keep the semi-urban hospital open too. They could transfer some of the young people out of aged care facilities into the hospital. It would be no more expensive to care for them there. They could offer them pleasant surroundings and some company their own age. That however would be admitting that something akin to "an institution" is necessary for some people. It would be politically incorrect to acknowledge this and so the young people will remain hidden. They will die before their time having experienced almost nothing of life.
The cricketers are happy enough with the way things are at the oval - although not perhaps the results of matches. We do not need the oval upgrade. It might be nice to have a new hospital on the river bank in the middle of the city but one of the most outspoken supporters of it has privately admitted that we could manage without it.
Can we manage without caring about the consequences of the closures? I am certain of one thing. It will make us a lesser community.

There was a Christmas tree

in the atrium of our shopping centre. It had tags on it suggesting gifts for people in need. There were things like "lunch" at the adjacent coffee shop, a ticket to a film at the cinema, a gift from the toiletries at the chemist, a toy from the wonderful toyshop a bit further down the mall.

The Christmas tree was also adjacent to the local bookshop but nowhere on the tree did it suggest buying a book. The volunteer sitting by the tree kept telling people that they did not recommend books.
The owner of the bookshop heard of this and 'phoned the charity in question. Why were they saying this? Well "the people we are trying to help don't read". Her response was, "Well they might if they had a book."
How true! There is an assumption that those in need of charitable assistance do not read or will not treasure a book.
My late friend Margaret was given a book as a child. It was one of the few presents she received as a child. The book was a copy of "A child's garden of verses". Margaret was not a reader. She found it physically difficult to read but she treasured that book. It was a present. It had pictures. She had memorised the poems. She had no idea who had chosen the book for her, a child with a severe disability and a ward of the state does not get given many presents by individual adults. This came from "Father Christmas" at a party - and she loved it.
Margaret was an unlikely recipient for a book - and that made it all the more important to give her one.
As she grew up and I came to know her I would give her books. I chose things I thought she could use or just enjoy. I did not give her books which required prolonged concentration or which were beyond her reading abilities. I gave her knitting books or photographic books of animals. The print had to be good and clear. Her reading ability never progressed much beyond that of a nine year old. She would still put a finger under each word. When she used a knitting pattern I would enlarge it by as much as 200% and a chart by even more than that.
Other people never considered giving her books. "Oh Margaret is not a reader."
And yet Margaret loved and treasured the books she had. One year we went from the hospital in which we lived to the nearby shopping mall and I took her into a bookshop there. She was almost overwhelmed. At her request I showed her the section which sold a few knitting books as well as where to find the animal books and, for the first time in her life, she chose two books for herself and paid for them with the book voucher she had been given.
For weeks afterwards she talked about her trip to the bookshop. Margaret still did not "read books" in the sense that she read a novel or a work of non-fiction from end to end. She did not use the hospital's library trolley.
The charity in the shopping centre would never have considered giving Margaret a book. They simply do not understand what it means to "read a book". There are many ways to read a book.

There was far too much food

as usual. The Greeks we know have a tendency to over-cater. They are very generous people. My father and I do not eat large quantities of food at one sitting. (It annoys me that I still weigh far more than I should because I do not over eat.)
This year my brother-in-law, at his father's insistence, put an entire lamb on a spit. Merely the sight of that much meat was enough to put me off. There was however very little of it by the end of the day. It had been consumed by hungry hordes of teenagers and adult Greek males. There were also prawns for a starter, little Greek sausages and chicken shashliks. I cannot tolerate shellfish of any kind and I am not very keen on large quantities of meat so I ignored most of this.
But there were also huge bowls of salad...scrumptious, luscious salad. I am happy eating lettuce, tomato, cucumber, avocado and the like - just don't put vinegar in the dressing and I am happy. My sister knows this so there was plenty of salad for me and for my father. He has similar tastes.
Later, when the lamb was not much more than a sad heap of bones, there was the usual ritual of "Father Christmas". My sister's FIL was well enough to resume his role as the venerable gentleman this year. The ritual is conducted in Greek. My father does not understand a word of Greek. In context I can manage perhaps one word in ten - and I recognise the names. It must be the one time of the year when the youngest generation get called by the Greek version of their names.
Their Greek is also limited. My nephews were sent to Greek school. They understand their grandparents up to a point. They reply in English, as do their cousins.
Every year I wonder at this Father Christmas ritual. The year my sister's FIL was not well enough to do it one of my nephews did it instead. He conducted it all in English. He played the role well, as anyone who has had acting training should do. It was fun for the participants but it was also different.
There will come a point where the ritual will not occur at all. It will die out when my sister's FIL dies. It happens because of him. There are no very small children at these events any more. Some time in the future there might be small children again but I doubt that there will be a Greek speaking Father Christmas. I hope there will still be a Father Christmas.

Happy Christmas

to those of you who celebrate it.