I believe the "fairy dust"

was a great success. My father's young visitor arrived with her grandparents in tow just as I was leaving.
"Today, I will only count marbles," she announced to me as she walked in the door, "Oh are you going out?"
"Yes, I am."
"Where are you going?"
"To a birthday party."
"I like parties. I think we will have a party here."
"That sounds like a good idea. The bears are waiting."
"They have to have something to eat."
"Oh yes. Look on the table. There's milk too and maybe cups of tea. Will that do?"
"I should think possibly."
The friend taking me to the birthday lunch arrived at that point and I left her to the joys of entertaining three "really old" people to morning tea. (I am just "old" according to her!)
The birthday lunch I went to was a 70th and it was a lovely occasion. There were just eight of us present as my friend had not wanted a fuss.
It was held at a plant nursery in the foothills on the far side of the city. The property was once the "country residence" of an early settler family. It now belongs to the great-great grandchildren. What was once country is now outer suburbia but they have retained a considerable area of land and turned it into a nursery or, more accurately, a garden which sells plants and has a small restaurant, part of the old house, attached. It is beautifully landscaped and cared for. Much of it is just like strolling through a well kept garden.
Lunch was lovely. The group was small enough for us all to be able to talk to each other. The food was simple and nicely served. The service was good. We sat under the verandah and looked at part of the garden. Later we wandered through the garden and all of us succumbed to plants of some sort. (I bought two tomato plants for my father.)
On my arrival home I discovered that three biscuits with "fairy dust" had been consumed by my father's young visitor, another plain biscuit, two strawberries (from the garden) and two "dinasour" glasses of milk. I doubt she wanted to eat any lunch. Once in a while I am also sure that does not matter. A good time was apparently had by all. The remaining biscuits with the "fairy dust" were taken home.
I brought home three small pieces of food too. The restaurant thoughtfully supplies small paper bags for that express purpose. It meant my father could taste some of the bite size morsels that made up the plates put before us.
The two events were quite different and yet very similar. I would like to think that we never grow out of occasions which require the use of "fairy dust".

There will be "fairy dust"

at our house today. My father has invited a "two and almost three" year old girl to morning tea. She is a good friend of his. They get on very well together.
My father likes small children and they like him. At any gathering if you want to know where the children are you look for my father. If you want to know where my father is you look for the children. The younger children will be watching him perform "magic" and the older children will be learning the secrets of how to perform some "magic" or other.
This is a rather special and very sad occasion. His little friend will come with her grandparents. They have been looking after her five days a week because both parents work. Now her grandmother has been diagnosed with lung cancer - and no, she never smoked but other people did right around her. There is also a "spot" on the right hip. Surgery is not an option. They are going to try chemotherapy.
The process has been delayed however. The prognosis is not good. "Granny" will almost certainly not be there even for such rites of passage as the beginning of school. They are making the most of their time together.
So, this morning they are coming for morning tea. It was unexpected and I have to go out but I have lined up the bears on the sofa (they live here for the benefit of small children) and I have iced some otherwise healthy biscuits with a little icing and pink and white "fairy dust". It is somewhere at the bottom of my list of food choices but, on this occasion, it is the proper thing to have - along with milk in the plastic glass with the dinasours on it that the young friend happens to particularly like.
No doubt the bears will be fed and require a bath from me when I return but an enjoyable time will no doubt be had by all.
I think our young friend is going to be just old enough to remember doing this. I hope so. If she is she might do it for her grandchildren too. Will there still be fairy dust around then? I hope so.

I was criticised

yesterday. There is nothing new in that. I am often criticised. No doubt I deserve it. This time it was about clothes.
I am not too bothered about clothes. I work from home. There is no need to "dress up". I like to be clean. I like to be tidy. I think that is sufficient.
I do not own a skirt (apart from my kilt) but I do own a sari (worn once to the wedding of a Hindu friend - at her family's request). I do not own a dress. I do not need these things.
If I do need something like this I can do something about it. I can go to the local charity shop or, for something a little better, I can go to the shop which recycles designer clothing.
I have found new clothing, complete with shop tags in the charity shop. I have a shirt from the designer clothing shop. (It was on a rack outside the shop and caught my eye as I pedalled past.) The shirt was being sold for $5 because it was "last year's". It had been worn once and the woman who had bought it had decided she did not like it. She told me that herself. A neighbour changed the buttons to something less glitzy and I have been wearing it for six years. She put the old buttons on to something that her daughter wanted. Both of us are better off.
My favourite pedalling jacket cost me the excessive sum of $2. It is denim. It buttons on the "wrong side". It is comfortable. It is sturdy. It had been worn but not overly worn. The owner had no doubt grown out of it. I grew into it very comfortably.
I might be the eldest but I almost never had new clothes. Clothing was passed around back then. As a small child my winter coats came from a family with two girls older than me. They wore them. I wore it. It went back to their third daughter and was then returned to my two younger sisters. If there was any wear left in it my mother would pass it on.
The single exception was the coat my mother made me when she was learning Dressmaking III and the material for that was cut from an old coat which had belonged to an adult.
The person who criticised me is appalled at the idea of buying clothes in charity shops. The idea of wearing something that someone else has worn shocks her. She was an only child and never had "hand-me downs". I should not, she told me, buy from charity shops. I did not know who had worn the clothes before me.
No, I do not know who has worn the clothes before me. I just wash them thoroughly before I use them. There are things I would not buy - such as underwear - but the charity shop does not sell those things.
Having cast another critical eye over my clothing the person who was criticising said, "Well, if you won't take advice from me you should talk to "X". She always looks smart."
Rather than argue I agreed that "X" always looks smart and I might talk to her sometime. When she had gone I smiled to myself. "X" does look smart when she is out. At home she dresses much the same way as I do. "X" also shops at the charity shop.

Wearing a bicycle helmet

while riding is law where I live. It is not a bad idea. I am certainly not opposed to it. You are very vulnerable on a bicycle or a tricycle. My father wears one when he rides his gopher.
I know at least one person who would have sustained much more serious injuries if he had not been wearing his helmet. Stories also surface in the media from time to time.
I have long since given up worrying about what my hair looks like. I keep it clean. I keep it tied back and I accept it will get flattened under the helmet. Safety and obeying the law come first.
There is also another problem with bicycle/tricycle/gopher riding. You are exposed to the elements. Walkers can take an umbrella to shield them from sun and rain. We cannot.
So there are two competing pieces in this morning's paper. One says "ride a bicycle" and the other says "cover up, use sunscreen, do not expose your skin to too much sunlight". Right. Both things are good advice.
I always cover up. I wear trousers. I wear tops with long sleeves. I should probably wear summer mittens as well as winter mittens. I wear my helmet
The helmet is the problem. When I bought the helmet it was possible to buy a helmet cover. The helmet cover had a peak and a flap. The peak helped to shade the face. The flap protected the back of the neck.
Exposed to the elements these helmet covers wore out, indeed disintegrated. The last time I went to buy one I was told they did not make them any more. My helmet is old-fashioned. It has gone out of style. How, I asked, were cyclists supposed to protect themselves from the elements? They shrugged. Even the people at the Cancer Council shrugged. I found this extraordinary.
I made my own helmet cover. I knitted it from two balls of cotton out of the bargain bin in an untidy shop some distance away. It was an experiment. It is far from perfect but it has a peak and a flap. It caused a lot of comment when I first used it. It is now getting faded and worn looking.
That the competing articles should appear in today's paper is of interest. Yesterday a complete stranger was standing by my tricycle when I returned with the milk. There is nothing unusual about this. They usually want to know where the tricycle came from. This person was different. Where, she asked, had I bought the helmet cover. I had to explain I had made it. Oh. Could she knit I asked? No - but she could crochet. It will work just as well.
But, this should not be necessary. It is all very well being creative and producing something I need or she needs but many other people need the same thing. I am truly puzzled as to why nobody has taken to manufacturing helmet covers - or helmets with peaks and flaps.

There is a piece by Alexander Downer

in this morning's paper. He is a former Foreign Minister, now a visiting lecturer in politics at the University of Adelaide. He still does some foreign negotiating as well. He is an intelligent man with a wide range of experience and a remarkable capacity to be even-handed in an argument.
He is bemoaning the fact that the University of Adelaide is not in this year's "top 200" around the world. It is not, he says, good enough. I agree.
There are three universities in South Australia. The University of Adelaide is the oldest of these. There is Flinders' University, set up in the sixties, and the University of South Australia (UniSA) which is an amalgamation of various other tertiary institutions.
I have not been to any of them. I did my teacher training at one of the other institutions long before it became part of UniSA. Flinders' University was the "new" university back then. It was considered to be a hotbed of 60's left-wing radicalism.
When it came to the point where I realised I needed to know more, much more, I also realised that the University of Adelaide did not teach what I needed to know and Flinders' University taught even less. Note that I say what I needed to know, not just what I wanted to know.
South Australia is a small state. The universities are, relatively, small. There is a limit to what they can teach. I know that. Local and political interests demand that certain things be taught so we have courses in oenology and Pitjantjatara as well as the standard law, medicine and engineering. Overseas students are attracted with degrees in accounting and business and economics as well as the sciences.
It is all fine if you think you need to know these things. Standards will, inevitably, vary between universities and between departments. Standards will not be as high as they are where there is more competition for places. It does not mean you cannot get a good grounding in the knowledge you need.
What it does mean however is that you might not be educated. You might not learn the things you need to know as well as the things you want to know. You might not learn the little things that will get the university you attend into the top 200 or - better still - the top 100. The universities need to work on that.
One of the university staff sent a student to talk to me last week. She is getting ready to do her final exams. The question is whether she stays here and does some postgraduate work in an area which does not really interest her or whether she goes elsewhere and does what she is passionate about. Funding for the latter is, as always, a problem. I told her not to give up on the idea of the latter. We need more students like her, alive with enthusiasm for learning and not merely doing it because external interests have decided it needs to be done. The universities need to work on that too.

A friend of mine died

on Thursday. She went peacefully in her sleep at the age of 103.
It is not an occasion for sadness. While mentally alert she was physically frail and had given strict instructions she was not to be revived if there was a medical episode.
She told me some weeks ago that she was "one of the lucky ones". I knew what she meant. She was surrounded by people, younger than her, who did not have the same level of mental alertness. They spend their days according to a timetable set by other people. They doze in chairs. Conversation is an effort, if they can manage it at all. Some of them are able to feed themselves but others need to be fed.
The nursing home she was in does the best it can. It provides some entertainment. There is "community singing" (accompanied by tapes). They have Christmas parties, a Melbourne Cup lunch, films, a craft group, cards and games. Those who are able to go out will sometimes go on a bus just for a ride and a change of scenery. The garden is nicely kept and most people spend some time in it when the weather is warm and dry.
But, the place smells of over-cooked vegetables and disinfectant. It is almost inevitable. The buildings are old - and currently being replaced by new buildings on the adjacent land. It is not somewhere most people would ever contemplate spending the last days of their lives. None of us want to think about something like that.
My cousin 'phoned last night. My uncle has been taken to hospital again. They have apparently revived him twice in the last week. My cousin has questioned this. The nursing home he is in claimed not to have any record of my uncle's wishes. They are legally required to keep him alive. We know they were advised when he first went there. He was still sufficiently alert to advise them of that himself. It is in his hospital notes at the three different hospitals he has been in. All these places have revived him, once doing so despite a very clear note at the head of his bed asking that he not be revived.
Now they want to do a range of tests and my cousin feels he is being considered cold and uncaring for questioning the need for these. He talked this over with my father and me last night. We all feel that my uncle should be given the care which will make him comfortable, not care that will unduly prolong his life. He no longer knows people. He is frightened and physically uncomfortable. My cousin is again invoking the Medical Power of Attorney and asking them not to do anything which will prolong his father's life. Will they listen? As I also have Medical Power of Attorney I will advise them the same way. I know it is what my uncle wants. He told me so himself when he granted me the power. It is not a responsibility I took on lightly. It is not a decision I have made lightly.
How much easier it would be to go peacefully in your sleep at the age of 103 having been mentally alert until the end. My uncle is not "one of the lucky ones".

The Nobel Peace Prize

often courts controversy. The most recent award will no doubt be scrutinised and criticised as well.
If you have not already heard who the winners are they are Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tanwakkul Karman.
Who? Oh yes, this will send a few journalists rushing to type the names into a search engine and then do some more research.
Sirleaf is the current President of Liberia. I can see a few more rushes to the search engines to find out where Liberia is - and what the capital is. (Alternatively you can ask me and I will tell you that Liberia is in Africa. The capital is Monrovia. It may not leave you much the wiser but now you know.)
Gbowee is a social worker turned activist and Karman is a journalist-activist - the latter comes from Yemen. (Yemen? It is a country in what might be described as the Middle East. It is also one of the poorest. The capital is Sana'a.)
All three women have taken risks - and done much for the women of their respective countries as they try to bring about peace and stability.
Readers of my witterings may actually be aware of all this but I am certain the world at large will have far less idea. Women do not often win the Nobel Peace Prize. The latest announcement makes it fifteen women in 115 years.
A look at the list of winners of the Nobel Peace Prize is instructive. Many of the figures are, naturally, well known. The choices sometimes seem strange. More than one American President and other public figure has been awarded the prize when many would say they were simply doing their job. There are others who have been given the prize and the choice has been criticised as "political". The Chinese government was certainly upset by the choice of Liu Xiaobo in 2010 and the Dalai Lama in 1989. The Burmese authorities saw the 1991 award to Aung Sun Suu Kyi as a threat to their existence. I am not sure that even the Indian government was that pleased by the award to Mother Teresa in 1979.
I sometimes wonder what Alfred Nobel would have made of some of the choices. What did he really want? Would he always approve? No, I am sure he would not. There will always be some worthy person who does not even get a nomination. There are unworthy persons who do get nominations. It is all very political even while it can do great good.
Winning the Nobel Peace Prize might actually be more of an outside honour than an inside honour. It brings with it more responsibility. The 1984 winner, Desmond Tutu, is still speaking out - and rightly so. Those truly worthy of the award know that they must now spend the rest of their lives working for the cause of peace. It is a heavy burden to bear if you really deserve the prize.
Peace is something which must be constantly worked at and watched over.