Parents are complaining about

a "transgender thirteen year old child" winning the running, high jump, javelin and discus events at a school sports day. They are saying it was "not fair".  The issue has been reported in our state newspaper and it will no doubt bring about a lot of discussion. Nothing has been said about how the other students competing against this one feel. Nothing has been said about how the student feels either. 

I am wondering how the student relates to the other students in the school. What sort of relationship do they have? Do they have friends? Is there some good medical reason for a thirteen year old to be "transgender"? How do they cope with what must be a very, very challenging situation? 

I have no idea of course. I do not know the student, their family, their friends or anything else about them. 

At thirteen I was not an "easy" child. There were multiple reasons for that but some of them were simply to do with what all children go through as they transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. It is a difficult time. 

My brother, not in the least a "sporty" child was being made to feel a failure because he simply did not want to throw a cricket ball or kick a footy. We lived in an area where these things were considered an essential part of life. It is what you did. He now feigns an interest for the sake of his grandchildren but that is all. When he was forced to participate he was playing with boys. The idea that a girl might be part of the team did not occur to them. The word "transgender" would have meant nothing.

Middle Cat played every sport she could find. She was on the state teams for two of them. She has coached teams and trained teams. She knows the rules and regulations and more. She grew up in a time when girls played sport with girls and boys played with boys apart from a brief time on the school football team in a remote area.  There were not enough boys to make up the minimum requirement for a team and she insisted she could do it. Yes, she could do it but only because almost all the boys were younger and smaller than she was. She was not competing on an "equal" basis and nobody pretended that she was.

There will be students at the school mentioned who are feeling disappointed, very disappointed. Whatever they might be told and whatever they might say they will feel disappointed. The students who came second will "know" they might have come first if the transgender child who could run faster, throw further and jump higher had not gone in front of them. They will wonder what they are being taught about not just gender issues but about so much as well.

I do not know what the answer is. I suppose it depends on how people feel about the "transgender" issue. It would be interesting to hear the honest opinions of all the students concerned.

  

The "hard rubbish collection" is

a thing of the past. For the uninitiated this was a once a year event run by each local council area. It allowed you to put out things you wanted to get rid of and leave them on the verge or the area between the footpaths and the road. 

For a week the area would be littered with all sorts of "rubbish". It was amazing how much of it would disappear. People would put out everything from old fridges and  microwaves to boxes of newspapers, from broken toys to bits of timber, from boxes filled with games to old golf clubs and much, much more. These things would disappear.  People would lay claim to things that other people no longer wanted or needed.

It no longer happens. Councils stopped doing it. It is said they stopped doing it for reasons of safety. Yes, there were some safety issues involved. The council told us they would allow a collection we could book. It can be done once a year. The amount you are permitted to put out is small. In our area it is a cubic metre.  The weight has to be such that it can be lifted by one man.

When we packing up the last house we took the risk and did put good quality things out for collection. Fortunately the council inspectors did not find out. People took away good timber we could not use. They took away some very large plastic boxes with lids. Those were in excellent condition but they were too big for this place. We put out the refrigerator that was too big to go here that we had not been able to give away on Facebook. (I have a smaller one now, courtesy my BIL's employer who no longer needed it.) It disappeared in the space of an hour even though it would not have even been picked up by the council.

There were people who depended on these collection times. They would come looking for furniture, for firewood, for things they could repair and sell. They searched for toys they could use for their own children and a bike they could ride to their place of work. 

All that has gone apart from those who, like us, occasionally sneak things out for others to use. The arguments about safety may seem valid. Who was responsible if things went wrong, if an item harmed someone? There was never any mention in the media of this occurring. There were positive stories.

I met two boys who "rescued" a mattress. They wanted to take it on a train back to where they were squatting in a house several train stops away. The first train would not take them but the driver was sympathetic. "Wait," he told them, "I'll arrange something." He did and a later and much less used train took them and, although  it was an "express" not supposed to stop at their station it made a special stop. There was the mattress to sleep on. It was one of the things that eventually led those two boys to now run their own business in another state. I wonder what the councillors would make of that now. 

For all the issues involved I think those collections should be reconsidered. They encouraged recycling, reusing, repairing and more. That might do more for the environment than we think.   

Our postal service needs to

return to its core business - actually delivering the mail. 

Yes, it could also be said that people need to write more letters. This is not going to happen if the mail is not being delivered in a timely fashion at a reasonable price. It is also not going to happen if business insists on using email and text messages. 

Yesterday I had a text message and an email both telling me the same thing. I needed to respond. I tried looking up the relevant website. There was the big headquarters address but not the address I was looking for so I had to send an email. They need to send me a physical object, a piece of paper. They will need to use the postal service.

As a child I remember, while we lived in the city, the mail was delivered eleven times a week. It came twice a day Monday to Friday and once on Saturday mornings. The postmen (to the best of my knowledge there were no women) rode bicycles and blew a whistle if there was anything dropped into the letterbox all suburban houses were required to have on their front fence.

My paternal grandfather also had mail delivered to his place of business in this way. If there were parcels they were delivered by red vans that went around every working day.

People wrote letters to one another, often by hand. Even some business correspondence  was written by hand. It had to be legible! My paternal great-grandmother wrote to all her eleven surviving children on a regular basis unless she actually saw them at least once a week. My mother wrote to each of us children on a regular basis all the time we were away from home - and we were expected to be equally regular correspondents in return. Brother Cat has kept many of her letters. I tried to but came home to discover she had thrown most of them out. 

Brother Cat also worked as a postman one Christmas period. It was considered an excellent short term job for male university students.

I was offered a job as a "postal delivery person" but it came with the proviso that you had to be able "maintain and repair" the delivery vehicle and you had to be physically able to do the job.  It was not a serious offer, just one being made to everyone looking for work.

Now postmen get around in little electric buggies rather like golf-carts. They deliver the mail once on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays one week and Tuesdays and Thursdays on the other week. There are no Saturday deliveries at all. Parcels still get delivered in vans but sometimes have to be collected from a Post Office. The Post Offices are less in number and most do not open on Saturdays.

Mail takes much longer to reach us now. Those alternate day deliveries are part of the problem but, even taking that into account, there seem to be other delays. It can take more than a week for a letter to go from one side of the city to the other even if you pay for "express" post. Why? Sorting is largely done by machine.

It is one of those things which makes me wonder if we really are "better off" under the recent changes...and I do wish people would read and respond to emails the way they used to read and respond to letters.  

How many new clothes do you buy

in a year? Apparently Downunderites buy an average of fifty-five. In the UK the number is apparently around thirty-three. 

That is what I have been told but I find it hard to believe. Who has the money to buy that many clothes? Is it why some people claim to be poor? Why do three hundred thousand tonnes of clothing end up in landfill in this country every year?

Yes, I threw out some clothing last year. I threw out some underwear that was, in anyone's book, no longer within its use by date. I also passed on a t-shirt. My BIL now uses it as "rag" in his workshop. That was it. One pair of jeans went into a rag recycle bin because they had worn through at the knees and had paint splashes. I am too old a cat for that "worn" look when it reaches that point.

I tend to wear my clothes until they can no longer be worn with any honour or decency. I do not have a wardrobe full of unworn clothing. Even my BIL muttered something about this when we were moving things from one place to another.

Of course I did not need a wardrobe of "work clothes". Working from home meant I just had to look clean most of the time. I do not own a dress. I did not need one. 

We finally gave away the Senior Cat's tweed jacket. It was almost seventy years old. Someone else is actually using it now. I think he would be pleased by that.

So what on earth are other people doing? Why are they "dumping" so much? What are they buying?

The clothes must be cheap I suppose. They will come from chain stores or on-line places and are made in China or Vietnam or India or some other country with cheap labour. The materials they are made from are often artificial and do not wear well. We know all that but people continue to buy them. They are "fashionable".

A friend who likes to make her own clothes was bemoaning how hard it was to get "good cotton fabric" recently. The really good fabric can be very, very expensive. Even I know that. Expensive it might be but she still wears classic clothing she made many years ago. It has not proved to be that expensive over all and it looks good.

Of course it is likely that most of us, including me, cannot do anything like that but a lucky few can.

And sometimes we can be lucky. I was passing a "factory outlet" store one day when a shirt caught my eye. It was a "sample" that had apparently gone no further into production. Perhaps it was just a bit too "classic"? I do not know. I will never know. It was my size and, if I was even more careful for the next few weeks, I could just afford it and the second sample in the different colour. I bought both of them.

They were, dear reader, made from Liberty fabric. That was thirty-seven years ago. I can still wear them and I see no reason to send them to land fill because they are little faded.

The Conclave to appoint a new Pope

is underway. Many of us will wonder what is going on behind those locked doors. I do not envy the men concerned.

Yes, they are simply men. They are simply ordinary human beings like the rest of us, perhaps a little more able or intelligent than some but still people who need to eat and sleep like the rest of us.

It is said that Pope Francis stood in the breakfast queue the morning after his election and asked, "What have you done to me?" It is said he had already sent the two Swiss guards outside his door off to have their own breakfast.  

Those two things marked a change from the start. He could have had his own staff, including his own chef. It is said he continued to try and keep his life, and that of those around him, as simple as possible. We will probably never know how much of it is true. 

I do know the stories of him going out into Rome at night and just mixing with "ordinary" people are likely to be true. A friend of mine saw him out on the streets one night. The local Romans were not mobbing him. He was simply talking with some young people. They were all laughing. Had he told a joke? It is possible.

There is no question that the person chosen to be the next Pope will have a position of influence. That ability to influence may be less than many people believe. There are all the politics of any big organisation involved and, in the Vatican, these are undoubtedly something which prevents change as much as causes it.

I have been thinking of all things of course. There was the election of a President in another country, America, which had caused a tsunami of shock waves around the world. The election in this country was heavily influenced by that result. It means we are now likely to have not just another three years but six or more of the same inept policies. Whether the Opposition would have been much better is something we will never know. Most of us are simply trying to be grateful that we do not live in America and wondering how we are going to get ourselves out of the mess which their President is causing us. Their President will be gone at their next Presidential election.

The new Pope will, unless he chooses to resign as Pope Benedict did, be there for life. Pope Francis must have longed to resign but he apparently believed he had a duty to remain on duty. Perhaps that is the best way to have it if someone is still mentally competent. Those who do not want the power bestowed on them may be those who best required to wield it. 

 

We make films in this country

and although I am not someone who sees many films I do know the industry is an important one. As a family we have been involved in them in various ways.  The Senior Cat appears very briefly in one as does Middle Cat.  I once appeared in a documentary which is probably buried in the bowels of the state's film archives. (I hope it remains buried.)

Middle Cat's sons however appear in earnest in serious films which ended up in theatres. They both did well and managed to learn a lot from their experiences but did not want to pursue careers in theatre. They had time out of school but had to not merely keep their schoolwork up but show they were maintaining their positions at or near the top of the class. They had lines to learn - not merely memorise. They lived in remote locations and put up with all the adults around them getting short tempered. They had to repeat their scenes more than once and often because adults did not get something right. Being a child actor can be much more difficult but how many of us recognise that when we see a child on screen?

I know something about how films are produced and the truly enormous work than can go into making them. There are things I have picked up from the experiences of my nephews, from hearing the Senior Cat talk with people in the industry, from my brief acquaintance with people at National Playwright's Conferences and more. I have been instrumental in finding items to be used on sets. Finding the right locations and dealing with weather related issues are just part of the work involved but very important parts. (These two things are big considerations which make this country popular with the film industry.)

Filming can disrupt a local community for days or even weeks. Some time ago we found this out here when a very small scene for something was filmed in a location not far from where I live. It took several days to film something that will probably be less than a minute on screen. The preparation for it was obviously immense and involved all sorts of permissions.

Just as the publishing industry has been hit by the ease with which books can be copied and put up for everyone to read the film industry is the same. Trying to stop this completely is rather like trying to stop a road train travelling downhill without brakes. 

It is a wonder then that anyone would try to sabotage the brakes but this is what it seems the President of the United States has done. Imposing a 100 % tariff on them is going to hurt Hollywood more than it hurts us.  

Can you remember what you ate

 as a child?

I was asked that question yesterday. The person who asked it is Italian by birth. She has been here for many years but still tends to cook the sort of food she would perhaps have cooked in Italy fifty or more years ago.

I thought about it and told her that I could. I am a bit hazy about my very early childhood but I do remember porridge and vegetables from the garden. I remember the currant buns the baker made especially for the small children of the place we lived in. They seemed big to us but they were actually about a quarter the size of those he sold to older children and adults. If you did not go to school then you knew that on one morning a week you could go pedalling on your "dinky" down to the bakery and he would hand out buns to the seven or so of us who lived in the town.  We were considered spoilt. Perhaps we were but we certainly knew to say "thank you".

When we moved to the city the Senior Cat built up another garden. He had to. We depended on it for food. Grandpa had one too. How they found time to garden is a mystery given one was studying for his university degree and the other was running his tailoring business.

There was a lot of pumpkin in our diet. They were easy to grow and kept well. In summer we had a lot of tomatoes. Mum would bottle them in a "Vacola" outfit and we would have them right through winter. We ate quite a lot of fish. Grandpa knew the fishermen and would get it directly from them. Meat appeared on Sundays and, with any luck, the rest of the roast joint would appear in our sandwiches on Mondays. Eggs came from the hens Grandpa kept or that Nana would bring if they had any to spare. We had whatever fruit was in the garden or, occasionally, oranges Grandpa would bring back from his customers in the hills behind us. Bananas were an occasional "treat" too. They had to be bought.

Very occasionally we would have ice cream as a very special treat. There was only one flavour available - vanilla. There were also "ice blocks". They came in red, orange, green and a virulent blue. On the rare occasions we were permitted to have them Mum used to insist on us having the orange or green sort.

When we moved to the remote bush we had more meat and no fish. There was a forequarter of mutton one week and a hind quarter the next. Like everyone else in the town we depended on a local farmer to kill a couple of sheep and deliver the meat. It was usually tough and the whole process would have a food inspector panicking.  The farmer killed a steer once and everyone had tough beef for a couple of weeks. With it we would have a lot of pumpkin, potatoes and peas that came in packets and had to be reconstituted. Occasionally Mum would make pastry and we would have pasties but that rarely happened. She would mince the meat herself - or my brother would do it under her supervision. I would be set to do something like scrubbing the potatoes. Fruit came in tins unless we went to the shop in the "big" town some thirty-five miles away. You could buy apples there - and very expensive bananas and oranges. Apples were a treat.

It was not until we moved to the then tiny dairying town that we had real milk again. Until then we had gone back to powdered milk which had to be reconstituted each morning using a whisk. It tasted awful but that was the water. Rainwater was only used for drinking and we dared not waste a drop.

 The milk in the dairying town came straight from the cow. Mum would heat it on the stove top because it was not pasteurised. We drank a lot of milk. It was my brother's job to get a gallon can of it each morning from the dairy.  He would ladle it out himself and leave the money on the shelf.

When we moved again we had to go back to the limitations of tinned fruit and of course mutton and pumpkin.

Somehow we survived all this and were actually pretty healthy even if we did spend our pocket money on tubes of Life Saver peppermints and "conversation" squares. 

I knew about "spaghetti" and "baked beans" from tins. I did not know about pasta or curry or stir-fry. Broccoli was unknown to me. Rice came as either rice pudding baked in the oven or steamed rice served up with "mince and tatties". I suspect the rice was intended to fill us up. Grandma just gave us mince and tatties. 

But unlike many other children we had a Yugoslav neighbour for a while. She liked to cook and we children would sometimes get strange sweet cakes or biscuits. Mum never seemed to mind this. It helped to feed us and she could always give another English lesson in return. It gave me an interest in the food of other cultures.

Now I cook quite differently but I still eat a lot of vegetables.  Middle Cat cooks a great deal of food inspired by her Greek-Cypriot MIL. I suspect Brother Cat does a considerable amount of stir-fry. It is fast and save on the number of utensils used. (His partner prefers to clean the car.)

But yes, I remember when chicken was a Christmas Day treat. I remember the cake on Sunday and the weet-bix with Vegemite after school. I remember seemingly endless "stews" made from whatever Mum could find to put together.  We ate it all.

And, at the annual School Fete day we had toffee apples and marshmallow in ice-cream cones and peanut brittle. It was all pretty good stuff.