Today, 9th April, my mother died in Harrogate. With both her daughters there and the most wonderful nursing care you could imagine.
She was 90 and in good health until very recently so didn’t suffer a long and painful illness.
When I return to Australia, I’ll post some pictures of her (so you can see what I’ll look likee when I’m 90!)
A couple of days ago, a letter-writer was complaining in the Sydney Morning Herald about the Government sending planes to evacuate Australian citizens from Egypt. This writer was incredibly concerned that some of these Australians appeared to be of Middle-Eastern appearance and only people who are “100% Australian” should be rescued.
Loved the response today from another letter-writer. “I hadn’t realised that there were many Aboriginal Australians in Egypt”.
It’s become a regular event in Sydney’s knitting calendar – sitting and knitting in the Domain for about 10 hours and enjoying a free Opera performed by Opera Australia.
There was a good crowd of us yesterday, desperately trying not to get sunburnt. We were even interviewed for Channel 7 TV – they didn’t broadcast the interview but there was a quick photo. I did wonder at one point if we’d stumbled into the Annual Day Out of the National Incontinence Society as a constant stream of people climbed over us to get in and out of the grass area. Have they never been to the theatre? Don’t they understand you’re supposed to stay in your seat while the performance is on?
I’ve seen such great operas at these events and was a tad disappointed this year. The sound quality was pretty poor (and the sound is more important than the visual when it’s a semi-concert performance and the stage is a fairly small dot in the distance). Some of the performances were lack-lustre to say the least. And the French! That’s the only foreign language I have more than a passing acquaintance with and for the first 10 minutes I wasn’t sure if that’s what they were speaking. It totally confused Amanda, one of our group, whose mother-tongue is French. She had no idea what language they were using but it wasn’t anything she recognised.
BUT Teddy Taho Rhodes was as usual wonderful (and gorgeous into the bargain), Julian Gavin did eventually come good in the second half (quite dreadful in the first) and Rinat Shaham – what can I say? -
incredible performance. Apparently this is the 27th production of Carmen she’s done and I can see why. Everything about her just reeks of Carmen.
Next year, Opera Australia, get your sound system sorted and take a leaf out of the English National Opera in London who perform all Operas in English. And we’ll be back (with our knitting, of course)
Do you know how many people were killed on the roads in Australia last Saturday? Or the Thursday before? Or on the same dates last year?
No? Well, don’t worry. Neither do I or most Australian residents, I would imagine. And I’ve no idea whether there are more or fewer accidents on week days than on weekends.
So why do the local media insist on giving us daily figures when it’s a Public Holiday, as in “X number of people died on the roads on Australia Day”? Is this figure more than usual for a Wednesday? Is is greater or less than normal for an Australia Day?
I don’t mean to belittle these tragedies – one person dying in a traffic accident is one too many. But when I’m given these figures, I don’t know whether I’m supposed to rejoice that our driving skills are improving or mourn the fact that too many of us are lousy drivers or drunk.
So note to the ABC, the Sydney Morning Herald and the rest of your ilk – when you’re giving us accident figures, may we have them in context, please?
I can be a bit slow sometimes (!) and have only just discovered that WordPress allows me to send posts to my blog direct from my email program. So I’m just testing to make sure it works.
And the good news is that my camera is fixed so I should be posting (albeit pretty unprofessional and crappy) photos to my blog this week. I HAVE been knitting. I just haven’t shown anyone.
ETA: It worked! That will be really useful when I’m travelling or when I just want to post a quick note.
I’ve spent a great deal of time since my accident communicating with an insurance company. And I’ve dealt with a helpful and polite representative there, who I shall call Anne Smith.
The Occupational Therapist at the hospital also had to contact her but informed me that Anne would not give her last name “for privacy reasons”. She’d given it to David, so I passed it on.
All correspondence I’ve had from Ms Smith since then has been rather strange. She no longer calls herself Anne Smith. She’s now Anne Fexc3 (I kid you not)!
My privacy of course has completely flown out of the window – I’ve given them very personal information which only just falls short of the complete details of my sex life.
I therefore don’t really feel inclined to respect the privacy issues of Ms Fexc3 – she’ll always be Ms Smith to me.
This will be short – I’m propped up in bed trying to type on the tiniest keyboard.
For those not aware, 10 days ago I fell over, broke my hip in two places and have been in hospital ever since.
Complete disaster EXCEPT if you want to tell me that you’ve better friends or family than I have, I would have no hesitation in calling you a liar!
When I’m a little more capable, I’ll tell you all about the extraordinary kindness I’ve received from friends, relatives, acquaintances and complete strangers.
Thank you, all of you.
Pressure of work after a month’s holiday PLUS a downgrade of my internet connection to dial-up while we change ISP’s has kept me away from my blog.
I promise (threaten?) I’ll return with a vengeance when both problems are sorted.
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a bit of personal information that I’ve never shared with you all before. My mother tells me that a recent episode of Doc Martin not yet shown in Oz (it’s a British drama also shown on Aussie television) touched on the subject of a disorder from which I suffer.
I’ve never heard mention of it before and I don’t normally go around talking about it for fear that people will think I’m mad (including some doctors I’ve spoken to).
Yes, I suffer from Exploding Head Syndrome. And yet, it’s a real disorder. The neurologist knew immediately what was wrong with me (as apparently did Doc Martin when faced with the same symptoms).
And before you laugh, do consider what the effect on someone (ie ME) is to feel and hear that you’ve been shot in the head as you drift off to sleep. There are peiods of weeks when nothing happens, then it comes back regularly and I dread going to bed. But apparently nobody really knows what causes it, no harm is done to me and my head is still sitting on top of my shoulders.
My first weekend in England, I drove down to Bristol to see Sue and Dudley, very old friends of David’s (ie he’s known them a long time. They’re NOT very old). And whose parents live just close by? Emily’s of course.
So I persuaded Emily and Claire to make a parental visit while I was there. Funnily enough, Claire wasn’t mad keen on visiting Get Knitted but Emily and I had a great time. Sue also kindly invited E & C, together with E’s parents, over for dinner.
Sue’s a retired doctor, Emily’s mother’s a retired doctor, E & C are doctors. And a lovelier groups of medics you couldn’t hope to meet.
Emily misses you all I think. With a new job and a new house requiring lots of work, she hasn’t had much time to make lots of friends yet. And now she actually has to go out and work for a living is rather missing spending her days drifting from knitting group to knitting group, with the odd lunch thrown in.
It was great to see you both. I’m hoping that on my next visit I’ll be able to take up your offer of a bed in your new home.
In my previous post about WWKIP Day and Expertise Events (the organisers of the Sydney Quilt and Craft Fair), I wrongly assumed that David, the Manager of the Bayside Lounge, had been asked by Expertise Events to call them should any teaching take place at our event. Apparently, this was incorrect. I have been informed by Expertise and I accept their advice that Expertise played no part in what occurred and apologise for any distress or embarrassment which this may have caused to Expertise and the Craft and Quilt Fair.
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