The adventures of Dad

My Dad operates completely differently from anybody else I know.

I like to think that my whole family is a bit out there but I’m pretty sure they haven’t cornered the market on lunacy, idiosyncrasies, OCD-like tendencies and anti-social behaviour, especially after observing our federal government in action in recent times. My Dad has his own spot in the universe, however, and I like to call it the World of Dad.

On the World of Dad you get to interact with yourself most of the time because Dad isn’t listening to anything you say. He’s just waiting for your mouth to stop moving because he’s just thought of something absolutely vital that must be projected as soon as you stop to take a breather. It usually has nothing to do with the subject at hand as he’s already moved on.

Dad likes to talk about food. Food he has eaten, food he is going to eat and food he would like to eat plus the merit of all of the clubs he has been to taste the aforementioned food. I know what he has had for lunch and dinner most days and I definitely know what he will be having at the club next Wednesday at 12.30pm.

Dad also loves to buy stuff. I try to get to his place before the junk mail arrives, as the last time I missed it he ended up ordering two beds from a newly advertising supplier, one a double and the other a king single that he just had to have. As he lives alone I can only assume he will be testing out each bed periodically based on mood, declination of the morning sun and the sometimes-annoying neighbour behind him who likes to whistle at 2am when the mood suits.

His latest bed, the king single he ordered, only arrived a couple of days ago and he was keen to get me down there to have a look at it as well as to sort out the mountain of paperwork he had piling up in the ‘filing corner’ of his bedroom.

I pressed down on the doona to check the bed’s comfort level. You never know, he might get sick of it eventually and I could be the proud owner of an almost-new, expensive king single for our guest room.

“Gee, Dad, this bed is as hard as a board.”

“Yes,” he said, “It’s really uncomfortable and doesn’t look at all like it did in the showroom when I saw it.”

As it felt suspiciously flat I lifted up the doona and the sheet and looked at the mattress. Dad nearly had a conniption. “I hope you’re going to make that again!” he barked.

I looked at Dad and back at the “mattress” … or rather, the bottom of the mattress. Dad had been sleeping on the base bottom as he had turned the mattress upside down and it wasn’t a two-sided mattress. The pillowtop he was raving about a few days before he got it was sitting snuggly against the bottom base of the bed.

“It’s upside down, Dad.”

“No, it’s not!”

“Yes, it is, Dad. Let me turn it over.”

“No.”

We could have continued on like this for another ten minutes so I flipped the mattress over just to show him what he was missing out on. He sat on the mattress and bounced up and down on it with a silly grin on his face. “That’ll be better to sleep on then, won’t it. Don’t tell your mother about this.”

You bet your ass I will. Mum needs all the ammunition she can get.

Dog dayz

Ruby, one of my much-loved Bichons, has been sailing pretty close to the metaphorical wind as far as illness and accidents are concerned this year. So far she has racked up nine visits to the vet with another two months still to go. I’m keeping a tight hold on my wallet just in case she gets another unexplained infection or tries to jump onto a bed that is three times higher than her fat little body can take her.

It hasn’t all been minor stuff that has required a quick visit and a couple of tablets. Oh no. It’s been major knee surgery after my son decided to put her on a bed when he was told not to and she decided that it would be a fine idea to take a flying leap to go and bark at nothing at the front door. Another unexplained poisoning of sorts resulted in the entire underside from her chest to her tail being covered by black and blue bruising. Both of these occasions culminated in days at the vet hospital and thousands of dollars going into the vet’s new-car fund. Other visits were an assortment of ailments from bladder infections to a cough and a collapsing trachea. We haven’t even gotten to the annual end-of-year vaccination and worming yet.

Understandably she has developed a paranoia whenever she has to go in the car anywhere just in case she ends up at that awful place where they poke things in her nether regions and make her eat inferior-quality food on sleepovers. She was so glad to get out of there last time that she dragged me all the way to the car without a sniff or a doggy pit stop at the local signpost.

Her brother, Angus, who I take along for questionable moral support is equally if not more anxious than Ruby even though nothing is ever happening to him. He howls as soon as we walk into the vet’s office and doesn’t stop until he has hightailed it out of there, is in the car and is at least ten minutes down the road.

At least he hasn’t cost us as much as his sister this year. Touch wood.

The politics of journalism

I generally don’t write a lot about our politics on these pages.  I’m not a political writer but then again I don’t pretend to be – unlike some of the so-called biased and overrated ‘journalists’ gadding about under the impression that fiction is always greater than the real thing if it is going to gather an impressive audience.

There are not a lot of good political writers left anymore. The few who are tend to be drowned out by the new-breed right-leaning champions of the wealthy, powerful and influential.  From what I have seen lately, this new abhorrent, peasant-hating crop have swung so far to the right they now have a permanent droop.  The few good journalists we have left are often too scared to write a decent, honest piece lest they become the next sacrificial lamb with the more-than-dubious credentials in reporting and are never allowed to work anywhere anytime in the foreseeable future.

Larger news corporations have undoubtedly managed to acquire more than their fair share of the say in what is pumped out to the masses and it is usually whatever is in the best interests of the larger news corporations and all of their vested interests.  Vested interests generally include the most amicable political grouping in line with their intended long-term goals.  Hence our current dilemma.

Our political system is in disarray and our politicians unworthy of the job they have been elected to do.  But you will hear nothing of the sort from the media.  Apparently they are doing a great job and the poor, the disabled, the unemployed, the sick, the ordinary worker and taxpayer will just have to suck it up because they are doing it for the good of us all.  Our right-wing politicians are untouchable while the left fall by the wayside and are crucified.

The majority of the media in this country are therefore compromised and will negate any inroads that tend to swing the pendulum towards a more undesirable outcome for the larger news corporations.  We are seeing a failing democracy under the guise that big business is the only way forward and will eventually be of benefit to all – but at this present moment in time, as one percent of the world’s population controls approximately ninety percent of the world’s wealth I fail to see how the ‘benefit to all’ is eventually going to ‘trickle down’.

It is time to change the rules of the game.

Holiday Heaven

My husband recently decided he needed a holiday while he was home.  As he spends weeks away at sea I would have thought that just being home again was enough of a holiday but I went with it and looked at a few spots that might suit us – or rather a few spots that might suit my photography, as I was keen to add a few more sunrise and sunset beach shots to my already extensive experimentation.  You can never have enough beach shots, right?

My husband grumbled but as he was close to everything he needed, food, bed, bathroom and an occasional beer he was happy to comply – until I handed him a list of shots that I wanted to get on his ‘relaxing’ holiday.  I’m reasonably adventurous but I’m not stupid and hanging around somewhere to prepare for shots that for the most part are shot in near darkness is asking for trouble in certain situations so he was to be my ‘wing man’ and protector for however long it took me to get that ‘perfect’ scene.

As I’m more of a night owl than a morning sparrow it was his mission to wake me up before dawn and drive me to my predetermined destination for my sunrise shoot.  I was pretty disappointed that there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky as opposed to the previous day’s complete torrential washout but I worked with what I had and managed to get some half-decent orange hues and some silhouettes – besides, I was pushing my luck getting him to participate in yet another sunrise-stalking protection operation anytime in the near future.

For my sunset shot he just sat in the car and watched me from a distance as I snapped happily away.  I was surrounded by a bevy of shutterbugs, surfers and grommets.  As far as he was concerned, my safety in numbers and his comfy car seat trumped getting sand blasted in freezing mid-winter conditions on a bunch of cold, hard rocks.

On our last day I had booked a helicopter flight to get some great aerial shots of the coastline.  He’d been in helicopters plenty of times for his job so I wasn’t overly concerned during the drive to the helipad but at his shudder and reference to unreliable ‘kerosene canaries’ when he spotted it, I was on full alert for an ocean ditching, life jacket inflation and holding a very expensive camera out of the water at all costs.

Needless to say we made it back safely with some great shots – which is another story worthy of its own post.  I’m pretty sure my husband was extremely relieved to also make it back to his leather recliner and his flat-screen television for some much needed shuteye for the remainder of his stay at home.