Where does it come from?

When our shopping centre was partly destroyed by fire and then rebuilt Woolworth's altered their supermarket as well. This happend in two stages. First they acquired all the small shops on one side and, leaving things much as they were before, opened it up so that you could see the outside world. The stock was much the same and in much the same position.
A little later they acquired even more space and major changes occurred. The lay out became entirely different. The lighting, which had been reasonable, grew dimmer. The checkout lanes face towards the rest of the shopping centre but are designed in such a way that they do not look out onto anything except the wall of a shop and a Chinese massage 'parlour'.
The floor area has increased but, strangely, the number of lines appear to have decreased. They have also changed. Now the stock is becoming more and more "WOW" or Woolworth's Own Brand. Understandable? Yes. Desirable? Probably not.
I no longer shop there if I can avoid it. I was never particularly fond of the place but the WOW brand annoys me. It is almost all imported. Is that really necessary? Much of it is imported from Asia, and more specifically China.
I hope I am not a Sino-phobic but importing food from China seems unnecessary. We even import oranges, onions and potatoes and other greengroceries from China although we also grow them in South Australia and elsewhere. We bring in tinned goods, jam and other consumables as well. They are all things that we can manufacture here.
The balance of trade demands it? I doubt this in respect of food. It is a miniscule part of the Chinese economy. If we ceased importing tomorrow it would make no discernible difference to them. They would just sell it on their local markets and for much the same price as the local growers get now.
It is cheaper? I doubt that too. I have noticed only a few cents difference in the shelf price of most goods and the quality is not the same. There is also the issue of the carbon footprint required to get the goods here.
So why do we do it? It would seem that multi-national companies like Woolworths and Coles hold most of the market shares. They can do pretty much as they please. They can ensure shortages and the consequences which go with shortages. They are taking advantage of a law which allows them to claim that something is 'made in Australia' when all they have done is add water and packaged it. We need a change in the law. It is unlikely to happen.
I shop mostly in the opposition. It is South Australian owned and run. They buy local wherever possible. They do have a house brand but there is much less of it and the labelling on it tends to be better. You know where you are with them. The shop is lighter. The stock is more diverse. The place is almost always busy but the staff are friendly.
One of the staff in there yesterday looked at a packet for someone who was asking where it was made. It was labelled, "Made in Australia from local and imported ingredients". When she read it out the elderly man said, "Sounds as if it is made the way we are made."

I think it is very difficult to write about

cats in books. Someone brought up the topic of animals in books yesterday or, I should say more accurately, the subject of horses in books and then dogs. Cats came lower on the list.
I never wanted to ride a horse, let alone own one. I did not read 'pony' books. Dare I say that Black Beauty was not one of my favourite books, that I did not eagerly await the next Ruby Ferguson to discover what was happening to Jill and her friends?
Then there were the dogs who were rescued by children or who rescued children and the dogs who were naughty or the dogs who (like horses) won ribbons.
There were horses and dogs and, occasionally, talking cats. Some of them were improbably human.
The odd thing though was that the lovers of pony books did not know about the cats. They did not know about Mickle in Joan Aiken's "The Kingdom and the Cave" who has his own personal 'mechanical stroker'. They did not know about Caliph in Margot Benary's the Ark who plays a miniscule and yet very important role in telling us so much about the other characters. They did not know about Benvenuto in Diana Wynne Jones highly imaginative "The Magicians of Caprona". Benvenuto thinks and communicates to Tonino in pictures, not words. Paolo has failed to understand that. It is important. It makes Benvenuto a cat hero and not a person-as-cat hero. There is Zachariah in Elizabeth Goudge's "The little white horse" who also draws pictures to deliver messages...again more cat than person-as-cat and right for the semi-fantasy world that has been created.
Nicola Morgan has just published another book with a cat in a central role. Spike has a chapter to himself and I have read that. He is a cat-cat, not a person-as-cat. His role is both limited and expanded by that.
It is difficult to do. Cats are probably more difficult to write about than anything else. Horses and dogs have a different sort of relationship with humans. They can be taught to obey. They will learn to do a range of actions or "tricks". They will perform. Cats please themselves. Even if it seems they have been 'taught' something there is no guarantee they will perform even for a reward. In the best writing they will behave exactly the same way.

It seems we are not going to get an ETS

or Emissions Trading Scheme or a CPRS or Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme either. This does not particularly bother me.
Of course our Revered Leader was quick to blame the Leader of the Opposition for the failure of the ETS. It was, he declared, the failure of the Opposition to support the scheme which caused it to fail in the Senate. The Revered Leader carefully did not mention that the Greens did not support the proposal either.
Australia's contribution to atmospheric and other pollution is considerable per head of population but small in global terms. An ETS or CPRS would make no impact on the problem. It would also cost more than it would recover. I am not sure we can afford to do it.
What we could afford to do would be something much simpler and yet much more difficult. We could set an example to the rest in the way we live.
Early settlers used to build houses with wide verandahs. It is a good idea. It keeps houses cooler in summer and saves on the airconditioning we now believe we need. Now we know how to build houses in such a way that we can have those verandahs and still benefit from the sun in winter. We do not do it. Instead we want bigger houses with no eaves. We rely on airconditioning to keep use cool or warm. There is no need to own woollen clothing or a winter coat. We step from airconditioned housing to an airconditioned car.
Oh yes, we use or abuse car travel too. It is simpler and faster to get in a car and head for the shops. There is no time for anything else and that sort of pollution still has not been addressed by the government. Our economy is car dependent.
But...but....but what if we built houses with eaves and wore another layer of clothing in winter? What if we used public transport to get to work or school and rode a bicycle at least some of the time.
I can remember reading a short article several years ago about the success of a campaign in the United States. All it did was something quite simple. It encouraged people to turn out the light when they left a room. Electricity consumption dropped to a point where the power companies were saying, "People need to use more power." That was all it took.
I wonder then if we are not starting at the wrong end. If everyone used a little less energy then the impact might be greater. Is it really what the government wants though? I doubt it. It would not be as dramatic. It might have a negative economic impact because we would not be using as much power or buying as many new cars. Our houses could not be quite so big. We would not appear to be quite so wealthy.
Most of all - it would not win an election. We want the problem to be solved elsewhere and not by our own efforts.

It was not a quiet day

after all, although it should have been.
We had a knock at the front door - more of a bang, bang, bang really. I should have realised that there was something wrong then. No, it was not an emergency and nobody was hurt.
There was an elderly woman standing there with a small dog of indeterminate breed. It kept winding itself around her legs and snapping at me.
What did she want? She began a long winded story about 'the man from Neighbourhood Watch'. I eventually sorted out that she was talking about the Area Coordinator. Right.
Now I know who she was talking about. What was she talking about? I have no idea. It was a muddle of something to do with someone who rides a red gopher. My father has a gold gopher. No hers is not gold but silver and this one is red. Yes, but why are you telling me this? It is because someone rides a red gopher and the Area Coordinator and well this person who rides the gopher but it cannot be your father and the police took away my car and I do not ride my gopher because I have hurt my arm and...
Twenty minutes later she decided it was time to go and I gently shut the front door. She quite possibly should not be wandering the streets even with a dog to look after her. She is clearly on the verge of not being able to care for herself. One of her neighbours has said as much to me.
It was at the point that my father wandered in and demanded to know what she wanted. He has left me to handle her alone and now he wants to know? I explain I do not really know even now. He rushes for the 'phone and rings the Area Coordinator. Yes, he has casually mentioned that my father rides a gopher. He does not think this woman should be riding hers and she lacks confidence and is almost certainly in the early stages of Alzheimer's.
My father is impulsive. He will always try to help if he thinks he can. He will 'phone this woman, go and see her. Why? Well she probably should not be riding a gopher. I explain to him that she is not riding her gopher because she has 'hurt her arm' and I believe that in reality she knows somewhere in her confused state that she should not be riding a gopher.
No, that is not good enough. He will have to see her. He has, after all 'promised' the Area Coordinator.
I try to explain that it would be wiser not to encourage this woman. I know where she lives. She has good neighbours in the units either side of her. They will watch out for her. If he encourages her by taking an interest she will be backwards and forwards as long as she can find her way here. I will be the one who will answer the door and endure the snapping little dog. It makes not the slightest bit of difference. He has 'promised' the Area Coordinator that he will talk to her and I will know 'just how to handle her if she turns up again'.
Is it possible to be too kind?

I am wondering if some dogs speak Greek

or, I should say, understand Greek. Probably. Greek dogs and Cypriot dogs from the Greek-Cypriot side must understand Greek. They do, after all, get spoken to in Greek.
I met two new dogs yesterday. They are beagles. One is sixteen and considers himself above understanding anything except those commands which are to his benefit. This is terribly sensible of him. Why do anything you do not want to do in old age?
The other is about sixteen months old. She is anxious to please - and knows which side her bones are to be found on. She also likes to escape for the occasional mad dash down the road. It is a little disconcerting for the humans she lives with. The humans in question have only had her for a little under six weeks but they were puzzled by her behaviour because, although she appeared to have settled in well with them, she was not the usually obedient dog they had been led to believe she would be.
"Where did she come from?"
"Friends of our son. They had to move unexpectedly. They could not keep her."
I was left not much the wiser but well licked by the dog.
It was a little later in the conversation that I became aware of the fact that these people were Greek. Ah. I have about six words of Greek but they are sometimes useful. One of them is the Greek word for "come". I picked that up from my sister's Greek mother-in-law. She used to say it to my nephews when they were small.
I try it on the dog - who immediately trots over to me from about two metres away. I reward her with a pat and she settles down by my feet. I hate to disappoint her. All I can say after this are things like "Good morning.", "How are you?" and "Thankyou." They are all quite useful in their place (although my pronunciation is appalling) but they are not much help when having a conversation with a dog. What is more she must learn English. Nobody here speaks Greek.
Well, perhaps the dog does.

It is Anzac Day

and, as it often does, it rained for Dawn services.
Anzac Day did not mean a lot to me as a child in the early part of my school life. We had the annual ritual of the story of "Simpson and his donkey" and a service in the school yard. That was followed by a "half-holiday" granted by the School Council. We just saw it as a story and a bit of time out of school.
In the mid-60's my father was appointed to a large school which was part of a "soldier-settlement" - farms allocated to returned service men who did not have other jobs to go to. It was one of those "good ideas" that turn out to be a disaster. The location was an island. The soil was poor. The water supply was inadequate. There were not enough support services. The men were physically and mentally unfit to farm and most of them had no background in farming. We had been there less than a week when I answered the 'phone to the sound of a frightened child desperate for help because his father was chasing his mother across the 'home paddock' with a red hot poker thinking she was the enemy.
Anzac Day really meant something there. Everyone turned out for the Dawn service whatever the weather. It was the first time in my life I saw grown men cry openly. The impact on me and my brother - in our teens - was immense.
Vietnam came a few years later and my brother, supported by the rest of us, put in his papers as a conscientious objector to that engagement. I rather suspect we are still on Asio's list of suspect citizens. We had a brick through the front window of our home at the time and visits from nameless officials. At my teacher training college I was 'invited' to a meeting with the principal and one of the nameless officials where it was suggested that my getting a job of any sort might depend on persuading my brother not to be one of the three lead motorcyclists in the demonstration that saw thousands of people rally against that war. I told them what I had witnessed a few short years before and walked out of the room. It would not have surprised me if I had been asked to leave but I was not. Did it affect my future career? Probably - but I can live with my conscience.
My father and my brother say they would defend their families and those who cannot defend themselves in the face of violence. My brother and my sister have brought their children up to believe the same thing. You do not do violence.
This morning in the faint light I thought of all that again. By the end of the service it is always lighter than it was at the beginning. It is the only way to think of these things.

Annaliese is leaving her

maisonette across the street from us. She has been there almost twenty years.
Annaliese is German. She is eighty-two. She came to Australia almost fifty years ago. Annaliese and her late husband escaped from the East and went to a remote settlement on the Adelaide to Perth railway line. He worked for the railways and she acted as the local nurse. There were no children - the Nazis saw to that. Her husband died younger than he should have.
Annaliese moved in here with her friend Martin. Martin was five years younger. It was an arrangement of convenience for both of them, nothing more. They led largely separate lives, Annaliese with her church and Martin with his theosophy group. Their beliefs could not have been more different. When Martin became ill Annaliese nursed him until almost the very end. Perhaps it gave her life some added purpose. His death distressed her deeply.
When he had gone she travelled to and from Germany several times. The fall of the Berlin wall allowed her to see her only surviving relative and some old school friends before they died.
In the past couple of years she has fallen several times. Bones have been broken. We have watched her growing frailer. Some months ago she came to me and asked for help with the papers she needed to complete to enter an aged care complex. We made a time and then sat at her little dining table to fill them out.
Annaliese has excellent, if heavily accented, English. That day however she looked up and asked me something in German, not once but three times. After the third time she had done this she was very quiet. She just sat there for some time. I waited. Then she shook her head and said in German,
"Home is there and home is here. You understand?"
Yes Annaliese, I understand. We will come and visit you.