"When did you retire?"

is a question which may not be asked quite so often in the future.  The idea of continuing to work beyond the "usual" retirement age - now sixty-seven - was apparently being explored on a television program last night. 

I did not watch the program. I was working. I have not "retired". 

That said, I do not do the excessively long hours I once did. I am more willing than I once was to hand on work to younger people. 

"But you have time to do it!" I am told. Perhaps I do, although I have less time than many people realise. Time is not the issue. The issue is making sure that people younger than I am are ready and able to take over. 

I worked hard all through the Covid pandemic. There were not nearly so many people going out into the crisis and disaster zones for the sort of purpose which might need a communication device. There was an opportunity to train up other people, encourage them to take over where I was leaving off. In a way Covid did me a service.

But I saw the advertisements for the program aired last night. There was someone in their nineties "still working". Someone else said they could not afford to retire or they would be homeless. Someone else said liked working so much he saw no need to retire. 

I was taught Leaving (approximately old style "O" level) mathematics by a man who was seventy-seven at the time. This was in a church boarding school. He was not the only older member of staff and, like at least one other, he should not have been there. He was not a good teacher. If it had not been for a mathematically brilliant student the rest of us would have been lost. I am forever grateful to that boy. He was aware of how poor the teaching was and he would give anyone who wanted it another quick but much better explanation in five or ten minutes at lunch time.  I knitted him a football beanie in return because he gave the rest of us so much help.

The Senior Cat "retired" in name only. He went on teaching until two days before his death. He did it differently though. Instead of restoring order to problem schools he taught individual pupils. One of them stopped me only yesterday and said, "I wish your father was still around. I'd so like to him I've been promoted." It would have delighted the Senior Cat. His idea of retirement was to take it a little more slowly and enjoy the challenge of helping someone who found learning difficult.

I wonder about other people though. A real estate agent Middle Cat and I both know has just retired at eighty. Her house selling record was extraordinary but the firm she worked for was taken over by another company. They do things differently and she was not comfortable with the idea of a "hot desk". When we met in the supermarket she told me, "I suppose I am old fashioned but I liked the idea of knowing I had my own space organised the way I like it." 

Perhaps then this is one of those things which will cause people to retire. The nature of work will change. It will change to a degree where older people no longer feel comfortable with the way things are done. I have long since adapted to computer based work - but can I adapt to AI?

Like the Senior Cat though I have other things I want to do. I want to write other things. I want to make things. I want to go on helping some of the much younger students with their essays - and give the occasional able but unmotivated student some encouragement. There is a huge gap in my life left by the Whirlwind but there is another young one who needs support...and the Senior Cat would encourage it. 

I hear people say they will do "this" or "that" in retirement. Sometimes I wonder whether they will do anything at all. Is it why they sit for hours over a "coffee" in the local shopping centre? Is it why they "go for a walk" but it is really just a bored stroll around the block? Do they have hobbies or are they really spending hours watching sport and scrolling on their screens?

Today I have a friend coming. She will turn ninety at the end of the month - and looks ten years younger. She takes a lively interest in the world. If I suggested she was "retired" she would smile and say something like, "Not really. I just don't get paid the way I once did." 

  

Identifying a body is not

a pleasant thing to do. It was something Middle Cat had to do yesterday. As a retired physiotherapist and because it was someone we both knew rather than a family member it was less disturbing than it might have been. Still, despite all the problems he represented, we both felt saddened by the death of this person. 

S...was morbidly obese. His death at the age of sixty-four will not surprise anyone. Middle Cat and I are actually surprised he did not go at least ten years ago.

My association with his family stretches back to my time in teacher training college. I knew his sister there. She was one of those students "everyone" knows. Her lovely Greek name would have been enough but she also had (and still has) a lively personality to go with it.

I met her father later, one of the many "old" Greek men in the district. He was the sort of man I greeted in Greek, not English. He spoke English but a sort of politeness dictated I use the Greek "kalimera" in the mornings. 

And then, still later, I met S...  Middle Cat sent him over one day because I was having computer problems. 

"S... should be able to fix it. He's very, very good at fixing that sort of thing. I will just one warn you though, he's very overweight." That was an understatement. How Middle Cat managed to get him to visit us is something of a mystery. He avoided strangers. He shopped at the very beginning or the very end of the day. There had to be as few people around as possible. The rest of the time, apart from visits to the doctor or his "computer mate", he hibernated at home. He did on line courses to keep up his Centrelink payments but the reality was that nobody would consider employing him. He was on and off "sickness" benefits and alternated them with "unemployment" and occasional "disability" benefits.  He would do a bit of remote work from time to time...and he would come to visit me and the Senior Cat. 

We all tried to get him to diet but nothing worked. He had no will power at all. His eating habits were wild and unpredictable. His sleeping patterns were equally unpredictable. Knowing I would be up (and almost certainly working) he would phone me at six in the morning. He would eat breakfast with us. I would restrict him to just two slices of homemade bread.  He would accept this, do whatever he had come to do or wait for me to read the seemingly endless forms he had to fill in.  Those things done he would hoist himself in to his beat up old car and go again until the next time. In between he would phone me with questions about things which were worrying him.  Yes, he was distinctly odd. 

Last year and the year before he spent time in hospital but it did nothing for his weight. He phoned me from there one day as the afternoon tea trolley was going around and complained there were no biscuits and no bananas. Once home again he was back to old eating habits.

His clothing had to be made for him. His sister, who lives in another country, would order it for him. 

The house was, and still is, full of things he would order on line. I am not tidy but Middle Cat says are homes look sterile compared with his. You had to negotiate your way through. 

Yesterday my BIL was on his way out when he saw the police cars there and an ambulance just arriving. Knowing the other neighbour who has done so much to help was not home Middle Cat went over to say she was one of the people S... used. She was asked to identify the body lying on the floor. Hopefully it was a quick death but there has to be an autopsy. At least his sister did not see him like that. 

I thought back to the last time we talked. He had, as always, phoned me at a very early hour. I had told him what he needed to do and left it at that. Now of course I wish I had spent a little longer listening to him. He was a lonely man, a very lonely man.  

There was another death on the party strip

on Saturday night. It was not the first and it will not be the last.

The "party strip" I am referring to is a street in the CBD which is famous - or infamous - for the "night clubs" along it. It also has the alcohol, drugs, sexual abuse and violence which go along with those things. 

It is all magnified by the fact there is not just one of these night clubs - there are at least least six - but there are also other "late night cocktail bars" and "live music" venues there and just off the same street. A policeman of my acquaintance tells me that policing it all is a nightmare. It is not a popular shift.

Several years ago we were out for some family occasion on a Saturday night. Brother Cat was driving through the city to get us home. It was after eleven in the evening, probably closer to midnight. My brother has had years of experience driving in one of the biggest cities in the world. He has dealt with all sorts of traffic conditions. There was no choice but to pass the end of the party strip. He was waiting at the red lights and we were watching many of the young people, most of them in their teens and some in their early twenties. They were "all over the place". There is no other way to describe it. They had apparently left the strip. More than one of them was severely intoxicated. At least one of them was on a drug induced high. 

Some of them had waited for the light to change in their favour. Others were simply weaving in and out of the traffic. The traffic had slowed dramatically - to accommodate these pedestrians. The light changed in our favour. Brother Cat moved forward cautiously and then braked sharply. He came within perhaps twenty centimetres of hitting someone who ran out without looking left or right. There was a mouthful of abuse from the person my brother almost hit. My brother swore but swore quietly. We moved on and several blocks away when it was safe to pull over for a moment my brother stopped and said, "That was too close. Haven't they got anything better to do on a Saturday night?"

I thought back to Saturday nights when we were that age. I was mostly trying to catch up on study because the day would have been spent at a residential school for the deaf.  What did my brother do?  He spent more time out but it was almost always spent with a small group of friends. They would gather at someone's home with their guitars and, occasionally, a set of drums. If they had the money they would go to see the latest film. To drink alcohol you were supposed to be twenty-one and, for most, it was too expensive to even consider getting it illegally. A few of them smoked but most of them could not afford it. There was the occasional "dance" or "disco" but most of the people we knew did not attend them. No, they were not "wowsers"  as the non-goers were sometimes called. They simply had other things to do.

I know nothing about the incident on Saturday night. The lad who was hit may have been sober and doing nothing wrong. Was his attention simply distracted? Was the driver of the car sober? Was he distracted? What about the driver of the second car? 

We have to leave all that to the police and the statements given to them by those unfortunate to witness the incident. It would have been the sort of thing police going on duty would dread happening. 

I just wish the lad in question was getting out his guitar and playing with a group of mates next Saturday night.   

Hamas will not disarm

in Gaza. They have no intention of doing so. Anyone who really believes this is a fool. 

Hamas is a military style terrorist group. Their stated purpose is the annihilation of the state of Israel. Nothing less will do. 

I have been listening to what is being said in the media. I have heard some of those involved in the "negotiations" talking about the "progress" being made. 

I am also reading the sub-text and it does not make happy reading. How many people read "Hamas" and "disarm" and went no further? 

This is of course exactly what some of those speaking about the issues and some of those reporting their words want people to do. Oh yes, there are "warnings" about the "complexity" and the "long road ahead" and "the other side agreeing" and much more.  

It is all a bit like fighting all the little spot fires around a major wild fire and not fighting the fire itself. To fight a major fire you need major resources, resources which are not forthcoming as yet, if ever.

The "pro-Palestinian" groups which like to claim how much death and destruction has been done by the opposing army are not being honest with themselves or with the rest of us. Let's be clear about something very rarely mentioned. Hamas has been siphoning off resources for many years. The Hamas leadership has been controlling not just the flow of aid into Gaza but the way in which it has been used. Food is a weapon used to control people. Access to education is a weapon used to indoctrinate the young. If you believe the stories in the media it is the opposing army which has destroyed the access to water, to medical services, to employment and just about everything else. Nothing is said about the way Hamas has ripped out the pipes to make weapons. Nothing is said about the way in which the consequent lack of clean water has caused so much illness. Nobody mentions how Hamas controls the markets that the lucky few buy their food from and, inside Gaza, you do not mention the way in which Hamas controls how external aid which enters is so rigidly controlled by them. There is nothing said about the "labour" used to dig the complex network of tunnels or what happens to the "labourers" when they cease to be useful.

I will not say anything else except this...do not believe what you are presently being told. There is no "agreement to disarm".  When this "agreement" fails who will be held responsible? 

Saying harmful things about

other people is as old as our ability to speak. Things said cannot be taken back. They can hurt and they can do harm. It is why we have laws about defamation. It is why truth is supposed to be a defence against defamation. It is also why there are standards imposed on all of us, particularly anyone making a public comment about anyone else.

The past few weeks have had me pondering this. Learning that one victim of a particularly vile but supposedly "comic" skit on television is now taking the perpetrators to court pleases me. Yes, this person can afford to do it. Taking perpetrators to court can be a very expensive business. 

I would be even more pleased if the entire issue is not settled by "mediation" but a court case and the perpetrators lose. The perpetrators in this instance are paid by the tax payer and there is increasing disquiet even among their supporters that, this time, they have gone too far. 

Those of you who live in Downunder will know what I am talking about but I am not going to repeat the vile remarks which were made about a very wealthy woman.  They were completely and totally inappropriate and the "apology" given was not an apology at all. As I write the material is still available on line. It was not funny. Contrary to the statements made I do not believe it was meant to be funny. 

This case is just as harmful in its own way as the three "discrimination" cases currently in the media. The first I knew about was the one which was brought after a person who "identifies as female" was denied entry to a "women only" space. The second is the one where another person who "identifies as female" was referred to by their biological sex and claimed damages for "hurt". The third case involves a person who "identifies as female" being denied access to a group which is only for female pole dancers. 

The first case is now the subject of "leave to appeal" to the High Court. The appeal in the second case failed and is being reviewed. The third is in the more early stages of what could be another protracted battle. 

Not one of these cases should ever have been brought before the courts. The legislation intended to protect women should have protected them. It does not. 

Let me be clear here. This is not about the rights or otherwise of  transgender people. It is about the right of the majority of those impacted to safe places. I have absolutely no problems with people who, as adults, choose to dress and act in ways which vary from the sex they were assigned to at birth. That is their choice. I do have a problem when they demand access to all spaces which vary from the sex they were assigned at birth. 

There is growing evidence that not everyone who is identifying as the opposite sex is doing so with good intentions. That the cases above lead naturally to men being able to access shelters intended for women and into prisons intended for women is alarming. That it means that people with a distinct physical advantage can cause not just physical but psychological harm on the sports field is genuine cause for concern. When it means that women who have been abused and are seeking help have no safe place to turn to then all the work done to provide those places has gone for nothing. 

There is a "men's coffee and chat" group run by one of the local churches. Not all the men who attend are church goers. I am told it is a place where the sort of discussion rarely available to men is available. It is a "safe" place for them.  It is somewhere they feel supported.  I do not know any woman who would believe it was appropriate to attend it. I would not even consider trying to push my way in. Why should it be any different for a women's group?

Restricting access does not always mean that discrimination is occurring.  There are places all of us cannot enter at times. This can be on safety grounds, religious grounds, security grounds or other grounds. There are other things we do not allow on age and safety grounds. Is there any reason to suppose that, despite these things, all spaces must be open to someone who chooses to identify in a manner at variance with some physical reality? So far the law is saying there is reason to grant someone the right to enter these spaces but it might be that this is the detriment of us all.  It may end up doing even more harm to those who identify "differently" as well. Do we really want that? 

 

   

Health insurance is something

"not negotiable" in this family. I struggle to pay mine but know it is essential to have it. The Senior Cat certainly used it. Middle Cat would not be alive without it. Brother Cat would likely have had a below knee amputation this year if private health insurance had not paid for him to be in hospital and the infection dealt with in a timely manner. 

I am told it is "queue jumping because you can pay for it" and that I should "just save the money and wait (my) turn" if I ever need something done. But is it really that simple?

The Senior Cat used his to his advantage several times during his later years. On at least one of those occasions it saved the taxpayer over a hundred thousand dollars. His health fund paid the bill for the surgery and the subsequent short stay at a rehabilitation facility. The latter was only necessary because we had to make sure the bathroom was fully accessible when he came  home.  Without health insurance he would have been waiting in agony and possibly never have come home but gone into care.

Middle Cat had major back surgery. This was necessary so that her spine did not impact her lungs and her ability to breathe. There were complications. She spent months in hospital. Health insurance paid for all of it. Without it she would not even have been able to have the initial surgery. 

I have had knee surgery. It was not major but it needed to be done. I am also well aware that if I need any extra help or assistance that it will not be something which can wait. I am not being impatient or selfish when I say this. It will be because doing what needs to be done will be designed to keep me as independent as possible for as long as possible. Being independent and living in my own place will actually save the government the expense of having me miserably located in a sub-standard nursing home in some far distant corner of the state. 

The same sort of incidents must be able to be told thousands upon thousands of times over. Anyone who has worked has also paid the "Medicare levy" into the public system. Private health is the extra on top of that. Previous governments have been returning a little of that to people over sixty-five. The present government, looking for any means of "saving" money has decided this is no longer to happen. The result? There are sufficient numbers of older people dropping their health insurance at the age when they will most likely need it. It will not really be saving the government any money of course. In reality it is likely to increase the demand for many services. These are services which might otherwise be avoided by people whose issues had been dealt with in a more timely fashion. 

 I know this has been explained to those responsible for making the decision. I know because I know one of the people who did the explaining. The government is not listening of course. The plan sounds like a good one. It is the "we are making it more equitable" argument being used again.  It is not more equitable. Life does not work like that. 

Buying a new microwave

should be a relatively simple task should it not? 

I need a new one. The fan has failed on the old one. It is not worth getting it repaired. It is likely the part would not be available. The cost would be more than a new microwave. 

I do not like this. I do not like the "throwaway" attitude of it all. I remember the toaster my paternal grandparents had. The spring had gone in the door and my grandfather "repaired" it by propping it shut with a block of wood. It worked. Eventually the Senior Cat found a new spring for it and fitted it on and the toaster went on toasting and burning the toast because it was not "automatic" the way it is now. Grandpa would forget to watch.

But, the microwave? My grandparents never had one but Middle Cat was given one by her parents in-law when she married. That was over forty years ago. The magnetron in it failed within a couple of weeks but it was replaced. The microwave still works. It is not quite as efficient as it once was but it does work. So, why does mine not work after less than two years?

We investigated. Replacing the fan was not an option. I spent a lot of time on-line investigating. Middle Cat investigated. My BIL investigated. Middle Cat and I went shopping yesterday.

We went shopping...and came up with another problem. Nobody had mentioned this. It would not matter for most people but I could not open the door of most of them without far too much effort for it to be safe. The "push button" sort of panel appears to be a thing of the past. The idea of having to "pull" the door open is simply not safe where I need to put the unit. 

Middle Cat and I looked at one another. We looked at other brands we did not like. They were too big or had a very poor reputation. I stood there in the middle of the huge shop and wanted to let out a yowl of frustration. 

I must have looked upset because a passing employee finally stopped and asked if they could help. We explained the problem. She smiled knowingly and told us very nicely that it was not just me. She showed us one that was hidden away. It was the brand I wanted. It was a size bigger but I can accommodate that. It had the right sort of door. "They still have a few in stock. It is an older model. They make the doors differently now but they might need to rethink."

Yes, they will need to rethink. For me the issue is basic disability induced clumsiness but there are a great many much older people who would have difficulty with new doors. I am wondering how it managed to get past those designing doors. 

Middle Cat will get a text message when my new microwave comes in. In the meantime... it's a good excuse to go and see my refugee friend who runs the tiny coffee shop in the shopping centre. She knows exactly how I like my hot chocolate.