Having a rest from this blog

I have a new project - - Sharpies which will hopefully result in a book!

Workplace conversation about our multi million dollar software

Julie /Fa... Hi, do you know of a way I can add a permanent special instruction to
all print type R
Damian V... thinking
Julie /Fa... I am playing thinking music for you
Damian V... ta
Damian V... time is up
Damian V... Sorry...............no can do
Julie /Fa... stupid crap system

Today's professional workplace conversation

Craig McG/...Can you make those changes for me today
Julie D/... Yep, what are the numbers
Craig McG/... aren't they in your spreadsheet
Julie D/... yes,
Julie D/... I will look them up
Julie D/... shit head
Craig McG/... well it is your spreadsheet I'm rubbing your number off the toilet wall for that
Julie D/... bastard
Julie D/... how come you are asking me to do it and not making the changes yourself and stuffing up MY master data
Julie D/... AND. Get out of my spreadsheet
Craig Mc/... cos i have learnt my lesson .. I'm out
Julie D/... ta

Rose Tattoo @ Ferntree Gully Hotel

The following is posted from another site. Recently I used Facebook to find, in a stalker kind of way, a group of friends from the 1970's. We used to meet up at Iceland in Ringwood on Sunday night seeing live bands like Rose Tattoo, Hush, AC/DC, Kush, Skandal, Taste, Redhouse etc. .............

This pic is of two of my stalker finds - Don is on the right and Skeeta is on the left. Pic taken in 1977 at Iceland.


It was fantastic seeing everyone last night. I got there to find Don and his friend from Shepparton Mick playing the pokies, Mick was really happy as he had just won $2,000.

Then some more friends of Don's arrived, Shell and Steve. Steve printed off some photos for Don to give to Angry. Not long after that my phone rang and it was Deb, I turned around and we saw each other across the bar and she joined our little group that by this time was taking up the punters valuable pokie area.

A woman took a seat at a poker machine in the middle of us and Mick said she could sit on his knee. After playing for awhile she went to leave the machine and Don asked her where she was going. She said she felt like she was intruding and asked if it was a school reunion.

We told her how we found each other on Facebook and she said she hadn't had any luck finding any of her old school friends. We asked her what school she went to and she told us FTG Highschool. Don told her he went to FTG Tech. After asking his age, she mentioned a couple of names to see if they had any mutual friends.

The first person she mentioned, Don said "yea, I was in the car accident with him". The guy they were talking about was her ex husband, so she rang him and put Don on the phone to him. It was one of those Twilight Zone moments and I broke out in goosebumps.

Then my cousin-in-law Eileen and her friend Helen arrived so we moved through to the bistro.

While we were eating Skeeta and Darryl arrived and then Stef joined us for a drink. We still hadn't seen Dave and Deb was a bit concerned and rang him and organised where to meet him.

I can't even find a word to describe the energy/excitement present at the dinner table.

About 10 pm we headed to the front of the venue to see the band. It was like herding cats. I lost my friends and couldn't get in as they had my ticket, they hadn't finished their wine and they got distracted by a domestic argument in the pokie area.

Deb went in with the non smokers to find Dave. After circling the building I eventually found my ticket and then we were all inside, halfway down the venue, propping up the bar.

We caught the tail end of the previous band and then when the Tatt's started, the vibe in the room was electric, as the bass invaded our heart cavity and solar plexus.

Our band moles ran straight to the mosh pit. Someone said to me "I bet Don is at the front with the biggest stiffy".

I was sober and can't even remember the first song that they played. But I do remember clearly, every one of us Sharpie dancing at some stage during Bad Boy For Love. Dave remembered most of the Sharpie moves for those that had forgotten.

Dave was the star of our show, he spent the entire night playing air guitar, bouncing and sharpie dancing. He was licked, kissed, nipple rubbed, humped, groped (actually I think the dominatrix concerned lifted him up by the balls from behind). He had so much female attention that he was pleading to be saved and we had great delight in laughing in his face as another woman came and dirty danced with him.

A lot of people stopped to dance or shimmy with him on their way past. Even the door bitch bouncer ogled him and called him Michael Jackson.

The band seemed to finish too quickly and we all hung around the bar, reluctant to leave. Eventually Dave's door bitch asked us to leave. So once again, like herding cats, we all eventually ended up in Don's room.

Now I know the rules "What happens in FTG stays in FTG", but just to give you hint of the fun, Dave decided he had been bad and that he wanted to be spanked. He presented himself doggy style on the bed and I was happy to oblige, demonstrating the correct cupped hand maneuver for a perfect spanking.

Don "picked up two sheilas" from another motel room and invited them in. One was drinking from a long neck bourbon bottle so there were a couple of jokes about cracking woodies etc. I told them that Dave had been bad and he wanted to be spanked. I think they thought we were a bunch of swingers and they ran off.

Eventually our real lives called us and we headed home on the deserted, rainswept roads.

PS Will add comments and stories to the photos.

Midwinter

Head witch (CSF Chief scary fairy) : - Julie, are you coming to our midwinter feast?
Me: Yep, what do you want me to bring?
CSF: Put in $5 each for meat and see JoJo, she is organising what everyone is bringing.
Me: OK
Me: Hey JoJo - Saturday night, I will bring a dip or a dessert.
JoJo: Gets out her note book and pen. Ok I will put you down for a salad.
Me: No, I said dip or a dessert.
Lorna: I am doing potatoes
JoJo: Potatoes, are they scalloped?
Lorna: Yes, with cream and ....
JoJo: So I will put you down for a green salad
Me: No, Py does the green salad with the rocket and parmesan, I will bring a potato salad
JoJo: But Lorna is doing potatoes
Me: Lorna's potatoes are hot. Mine are cold.
JoJo: I will put you down for pasta salad
Others at the table: Mmmm I love pasta salad
Me: Fine. You are a food nazi
JoJo: I am not a food nazi.

Entally House

I am writing this from the historic Entally House in Hadspen Tasmania.



It is classed as one of the most historic Tasmanian colonial houses and was built around 1819 by Thomas Haydock Reibey, the eldest son of Mary and Thomas Reibey of Sydney. His mother Mary was convicted of stealing a horse and transported to Sydney for 7 years when she was 13. She is featured on our $20 note.


My sister in law works there and we have had the run of the house for the afternoon. While she was working, I was looking around on the net and found a fascinating story.

Copyright Carmel Bird 2002
www.carmelbird.com

Entally House was built on the outskirts of Launceston in 1820, and when I lived in Launceston as a child I liked to go there. It was open to the public. These were early days for the industry of early colonial Australian houses, and people were free to roam through the grounds and rooms of Entally without guides or barriers or security cameras. Like the Joss House at the museum, Entally was naively open to the touch. Modern museums now have much that can be touched, much that encourages interactivity between visitors and exhibits. It is a very different kind of interactivity from the old-fashioned kind whereby you could play the piano at Entally if you wanted to. Obviously modern tourism and education can’t allow that kind of thing, and I am not arguing one way or the other – I simply record the way things used to be, and note the way things are. At Entally some time in the nineteen fifties I engaged in a particular kind of interactivity, as I will explain.

There was a seductive air of sadness and nostalgia, and I enjoyed lingering under the huge English trees, in the stables where there were old carriages, and in the sparse little chapel. I should explain that I did all this by myself; I didn’t know anyone else who would be interested. The facade of the house was quaintly gabled, the edges of the gables simply decorated with a little frill. Although this was a rather grand estate in colonial times, the scale of the house is small; it seemed to me, even when I was a child, that the people must have been tiny. You could have Devonshire Tea in the conservatory, but there were not really many visitors.

I was fascinated (to the point of being entranced, delivered into a dream as I was in the Joss House) by the atmosphere of past lives which I could feel at Entally as I went slowly from drawing-room to kitchen to the pinched and narrow staircase which wound up to the second floor. I am sorry to say I never saw the ghost that used to appear on this staircase. My visits all took place in the daytime, and the ghost, an Indian wearing a turban, or else a Lascar with a head-scarf, comes out only at night, after a sharp drop in the temperature on the stairs. He has apparently appeared only to women, one of whom went mad as a result.

I don’t know why this ghost is there, but the explanation for his exotic nature lies in the fact that the family of Entally (incidentally descended from a convict, Mary Reibey) were ship-owners trading with the East. The ghost had somehow wandered from the commercial life of the family into their daily lives, taking up (why?) his position in the gloomy shadows of the stairs back staircase. To me, the flavour of mystery and violence and dusky slaves and adventure on the high seas, not to mention the story of the woman who went mad, was quite stimulating. I just used to hang out there, and somehow breathe it in. My memory and imagination are furnished with images of dark brown velvet curtains at the foot of the stairs, looped back with a golden cord.

I used to like going up the stairs, conscious that I was treading in the footsteps of the Lascar or the Indian, to the nursery where there were old cots and prams and dolls. Faded black and white photographs of young children in elaborate clothing, frilly bonnets and button boots, stared solemnly from silver picture frames. The floorboards shifted and clattered beneath the faded blue rug. The silence was strange; the solitude was somehow rich in possibilities. I was alone in the presence of the past, in the company of the ghosts of children. As far as I knew, the children grew up and moved on, but there was a haunting sadness in the nursery, a sense that the children in the pictures had one day set down their toys and fallen into a sleep from which they had never awoken. In those days places like Entally didn’t give you much documentation – so I was perfectly free to invent the narratives of the house from the evidence before my eyes.

I wanted to invent, and I did so, but I also wanted to find a way to interact with that narrative, to somehow enter the story. One thing you can do, in those circumstances, is take something away. This is the principal of the souvenir. But they did not, as they now do, sell souvenirs at Entally where you can buy jam and lavender and so on. And I didn’t steal anything. The other possibility is to leave something behind, such as graffiti. I didn’t do that either. I don’t know how I came up with the plan for what I did, but here it is.

One day at home I made a very very tiny rag doll, about as big as your little finger, with real hair, an old-fashioned pinafore and an embroidered face. She was called Isabella, and was meant to resemble closely a doll that might have belonged to a child who might have lived in the nineteenth century, to be perhaps mistaken for such a doll. The next time I went to Entally, I took this doll, and I lifted the blue rug, and then I lifted a loose floorboard and I placed the doll in the space, and replaced the board and the mat. The room looked the same as it had before, the rug was flat, the faded faces stared unblinking from the picture frames. I felt marvellous. Isabella was in place, an insertion into history, a false clue.

On my recent visit I saw with no surprise that progress has brought about change, has added a souvenir shop and safety ropes and probably security cameras. The narrow staircase was just as I had remembered it. The plain wooden floor of the nursery was polished now, and covered with a different rug. The cots, the prams, the dolls, the photographs were all there for me to see, but the doorway was blocked off with iron bars. I searched for Isabella among the small treasures in glass cases. She wasn’t there. Well, perhaps she has been eaten by rats. Perhaps she has simply rotted away. Or perhaps she is still there, waiting beneath the floorboard to be discovered when the time comes. All I could do was take a few photos through the bars across the doorway. No doubt another illegal act of interactivity

As you can imagine, my sister in law and I were excited. Our own mystery. We ran up the stairs, unlocked the room and snooped around. The carpet has been tacked to the floorboards so we were restricted in our access.

My sister in law tells me they are planning to move the upstairs exhibits downstairs and move the offices upstairs. This is so the elderly don't have to navigate the stairs to see the "doll's room".

I can't wait to see what they find and have emailed Carmel to tell her. I think I will need to come back to Tassie that day. Below are some comments from Carmel

30/3/2009
How amazing and exciting to receive your email.
What if your sister in law finds the doll intact!!!
It is - as I recall - about two or three inches tall.
Even if it is not intact, there might at least be traces.
I await further bulletins.

30/3/2009
As I recall - I lifted a loose floorboard and there was dusty space
there and I quickly dropped the rag doll, replaced the board, and
scurried off.
I had often been there - so I knew about the boards - there might have
been several.
As to WHERE in the room - I think it was possibly close to the centre
- a bit to the right - if that makes sense.
But it was probably been eaten by mice - don't you think?
or even thrown out in a decayed condition when the room was revamped.
The room as it is now is quite different from what it was when I was a
child.

2/4/2009
I realise I forgot to say what she should look like.
Well, sixty years ago she was between two and three inches tall.
Body (inc head and limbs) made from old white sheeting, stuffed
with a little bit of cotton wool.
Face drawn with pencil.
Hair made from black embroidery thread.
Dress from scrap of floral cotton.

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Spend your money now

Today I was in the op shop and I noticed an older eastern man carrying a framed picture of a motor bike. It was the kind of picture that men like to have on the wall and wives like to throw away.

As I walked past him he showed me the picture and told me he used to have a motor bike exactly the same. I asked him if he was going to buy it, but he misunderstood me and thought I was asking if he was going to buy another motor bike. I didn't correct him and he want on to say "no I can't buy another one. You cannot buy your youth. It is gone. It would be like wanting to ride a motorcycle on the moon. There is no point".

In his own words he told me that the motorbike represented being young, dating, freedom, no responsibilities etc. He said it was horrible getting old and being alone when your friends have died.

He said he returned to Singapore 10 years ago after being gone for 30 years. He looked up some of his old friends, about 30 of them used to ride in a group together, but they were not bikies he insisted. He said most of them had changed and it was sad.

Our conversation finished so I wished him well and went on my way. I wonder if he bought the picture.

Stranger Danger

Last night at 11.15 pm I had to go to the station to pick up my daughter. She has been working at the Australian Open. I walked up on to the platform to meet her and she told me the train was late because someone had overdosed. A young couple were walking nearby with their alco pops in their hand and the female asked my daughter what happened.

We went to the car and as we were getting in, I noticed the young couple standing on the corner looking lost. I asked them if they were ok and they asked what train line they were on, they had missed their station. I asked where they needed to go and I looked at my daughter, she nodded, so I asked the couple if they wanted a lift. They were concerned it was out of our way, but I insisted.

The four of us had a chat while driving and I think even in that short journey they managed to give my daughter some life tips regarding career, travel etc. We dropped them off and they tried to give us petrol money, I refused, but they threw it on the back seat as they shut the car door and ran across the road to their nightclub.

My daughter grabbed it and said "lets go to McDonalds mum".

She knew I was going to offer them a lift because a few weeks ago I told her I had given a lift to two teenage girls that had also ended up on the wrong train for a second time. At the time, she couldn't decide if she was mad at me or mad at the girls for getting in with a stranger.