Sounds like wish - A quiet place.

17 June, 2012

366 unusual things: days 164-168

12th June – My monosyllabic student had to write poetry for an assignment. I started, he followed and came up with several words at a time. Then he wrote a sequel.

13th June – My son who studies physics asked me which theory was more plausible: time travel backwards or the idea that the physical world is an illusion.

14th June – Woke at 2 am and still awake at 5. (This is not the unusual thing.) I was surprised, in passing the hours, to read in a novel a recount of a long and spooky dream, then to pick up a second novel and read a recount of a long and spooky dream.

15th June – Turned on the car radio this morning to Artsound FM and heard Django Reinhardt. Turned on the car radio this evening to Classic FM and heard Django Reinhardt.

16th June – Just after midnight, the dog across the street, who chases his tail all day and has never been outside his small yard, escaped and was free. Ironically, shortly after, his mistress was put in a paddy wagon and taken to the watchhouse for the night for refusing to cooperate with the police (who had left her gate open…).

15 June, 2012

Weekly photo challenge: Close

I bet he smells sheepish.

15 June, 2012

Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Secret Place

SECRET PLACE

When I’m in France I go into churches and sit by myself and think and pray. They’re all good for this, whether a large cathedral or a small village church, because most of them are open during the week. It’s a privilege I don’t enjoy here in Australia where I live. Inside these ancient structures it’s surprisingly quiet, even if the church is situated in the heart of a city. The stone walls block out most noise and it’s very easy to focus without distraction. Because I experience this particular solitude only in France, it came to mind immediately when Ailsa proposed a ‘secret place’ for her travel photo challenge. See hers here: http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/06/15/secret-places/

The churches in French villages are particularly peaceful and very often are empty on weekdays. This photo is of l’Église Saint Mathieu, the church in the beautifully restored mediaeval village of Oingt, north-west of Lyon. I went there with a couple of friends one day in 2010 and we were the only people around, except for a few staff in the small restaurant and art gallery.

It reminded me of another day a few years before: I was a student in Lyon, and my brother died but I couldn’t get back to Australia for his funeral. Another student suggested that if I wanted to get away to somewhere peaceful for a day, I should go to the ancient village of Pérouges, also north of Lyon. I went on a Wednesday and was all alone for about two hours, walking the cobblestone streets and narrow ways, the ruelles, between buildings. But the most precious gift that day was half an hour alone in the church, l’Église Sainte-Marie-Madeleine de Pérouges, sitting in the back row of old wooden pews and looking at the stone floor of the aisle, grooved from centuries of footsteps. It was comforting to know that in the 1400s, people were worshipping and praying to God exactly as I was, looking at the same stone walls and walking down the same aisle.

14 June, 2012

366 unusual things: days 159-163

7th June – A black cat crossed my street. The late afternoon winter sun created a monster-cat shadow which got me up off my chair to see if it was being followed by a large dog. It wasn’t.

8th June – Sat at the table in a student’s home and quickly stuck to the seat in several places. Put my books on the table; they also stuck. I told my 9 year-old friend about the problem; she confessed it was maple syrup.

9th June – I’ve noticed that since I started blogging, I’ve stopped talking much.

10th June – Found out the previous owner of our new second-hand car was Lego.

11th June – On The Voice, the TV singing talent show, the coaches frequently say “I love you” to their protégés, who sometimes reply, “I love you, too”. This love is a new fashion.

13 June, 201214 September, 2018

Friendship

FRIENDSHIP

Perhaps you, my blog readers, could help me understand something about this poem that my father wrote: As you get towards the end you’ll see a line about a ‘flare’; what do you think was happening? Read the whole poem and let me know if you can enlighten me.

Sixty-nine refers to Hill 69 near Gaza, Palestine, where my father’s battalion was recovering after having defended Tobruk in Libya; at Hill 69 they did further training as well as garrison and border protection.

The photo shows the first verse in his handwriting but I’ve transcribed all the verses, which you’ll see below the image. I was inspired by the ‘Friendship’ theme of this week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge to add this poem, which, you’ll find, is about friendship in war.

The poem is signed with my father’s initials, R.E.B. I ask that it not be copied without my permission and without credit to him.

Red Kane of 69

“Something’s brewing,” said Red to his mate,
As they gazed along the line,
“It don’t get quiet for nothing,
Not here, at Sixty-nine.”
He thought of a time, two months ago,
He got a similar hunch,
And Jerrie came over in “Spitfires”,
And wiped out most of his bunch.

The “TRICK” was as old as the bloody hills,
The one they pulled that night.
In a couple of patched-up Spitfires,
They made that bloody flight;
All eyes looked in their direction,
The shout went up, “All’s Well”,
In came the bloody Spitfires,
Turning loose All Hell.

“I’ll square that deal, cobbers,” he said,
Damned near fit to howl,
“Even if it cost me me bloody life,”
“By bloody fair means or fowl;”
For he was a Dinkum Aussie,
Big and strong as a lion,
And he was a natural marksman too,
Red Kane, of Sixty-nine.

And now as he gazed across the sand,
Something to him was clear,
There was Jerry movement on tonight,
And to him came a great idea;
And so he spoke in whispers,
As he conversed with his mate,
Tonight they’d square a deal,
Regardless of their fate.

The Jerries moved with caution,
More cautious still, was Kane,
He wondered how his mate was,
If things panned out the same;
Complete in every detail now,
He lay face down, in prayer,
For five in every hundred yards,
He’d set and laid a flare.

That night, his mates were avenged,
Paid back, more than two-fold,
Paid by the help of his very own life,
For he now lay stiff and cold;
He’s gone to the great Beyond now,
A place of Perfect Design,
And greater love hath no man,
Than Red Kane of Sixty-nine.

Ronald E. Bruce, 1941
© Patricia Worth, 2012

11 June, 2012

Weekly photo challenge: Friendship

I have several photos taken in Egypt of soldiers smiling together with their arms around each other, close mates in a time of war, establishing friendships unlike any they had back home. This photo is interesting for its depiction of friends but also because of the background the photographer captured. They seem to be standing on top of a building showing off Heliopolis, developed in 1905 as a model suburb of Cairo by Baron Empain, a Belgian industrialist. One of the buildings he ordered his architects to design was the Roman Catholic Church (behind and to the left) known as the Basilica of the Virgin Mary, or l’Église Notre Dame d’Héliopolis, built in the heart of the new suburb in 1910. It’s a small copy of Hagia Sofia in Istanbul. When the baron died in 1929 he was buried in the crypt.

The mosque in the photo (behind and to the right) is described in the photo album as the ‘wailing mosque’. It does not appear in any present day web photo search, nor on Google maps. Many buildings have been demolished or altered during the last century, particularly during the 1970s, and this must have been one of them.

My father gave this photo the caption “S. Chambers”, though I don’t know which of them it is.

S. Chambers and friends, with the domes of the Roman Catholic Basilica and the suburb of Heliopolis, Cairo, in the background, 1941

9 June, 2012

Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Oceans

Readers, before I begin, I want to thank Ailsa for her challenge and her ideas here: http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/06/08/oceans/

Oceans lap the Australian coastline on three sides. To the east there’s the Pacific; to the west, the Indian Ocean; to the south, the Southern Ocean. The northern coastline is lapped by seas not vast enough to be called ocean. They’re the Timor Sea and the Arafura Sea, separating us from the islands of New Guinea and Indonesia.

In 1941 ships crossed the Indian Ocean to take Australian troops to the Middle East and back home again. The photo below shows the Aquitania leaving Sydney Harbour in 1941 before she was painted battle grey. Before being assigned as a troopship the Aquitania had been a luxury liner in the Atlantic and before that she had served in the First World War. She was the last surviving four-funnelled ocean liner. The photo was possibly taken from the Queen Mary, another liner transformed into a troop carrier. There was a convoy of converted liners in Sydney Harbour in April 1941 taking on board thousands of soldiers. The Aquitania and the Queen Mary made a number of these journeys across the Indian Ocean and back. Of course, Sydney is on the east coast of Australia and the ships were heading west, so it was a long trip just to get out of Australian waters, let alone across the Indian Ocean. My mother told me that my father went on the Queen Mary, and his service record tells me he left Sydney on 1st September 1941 and arrived in the Middle East on 25th September. About three weeks at sea. On the ocean.

6 June, 2012

366 unusual things: days 154-158

2nd June – My daughter-in-law, dressed as Madeline from the book by Ludwig Bemelmans, dropped in after work. She works in a bookshop.

3rd June – Heard a woman on the news complaining of child care centre costs, saying it costs almost as much as she earns but she keeps working, anyway, so she doesn’t lose her skills. But if she raised her own child she would gain great mothering skills.

4th June – An academic who said he doesn’t read people’s blogs responded to my arm-twisting today to read two paragraphs from one of my posts. Only two.

5th June – The dog in the tiny yard opposite my place chases his tail all day, round and round, drilling circles in the dirt (mud today).

6th June – With my head in a rack of coats in a clothes shop, I heard a customer say she needed to change a top for a bigger size because the one she bought was “a bit snug around the middle”. The shop owner said, “‘Must be all that meat”. I thought, wow, that was a bit rude! Then I turned and saw that the customer was the lady butcher from a few shops away.

3 June, 2012

Weekly photo challenge: Today

Today my husband and I went to Old Parliament House in Canberra for lunch. We then played at being politicians in the old House of Representatives and acted as journalists recording an interview with an ex-Prime Minister (one of the activities for visitors). As we left the building I took this photo of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the opposite side of the street, an unofficial and often-in-the-news embassy that has existed since 1972 on the lawns in front of Old Parliament House which, in 1972, was the only Parliament House. A new, much much larger one has since been built on the hill behind it. The tents are out of view to the left and right but in the centre is the sacred fire which burns continually. The two people to the left of the sovereignty letters are on segways which can be hired to ride around the lake, a popular weekend pastime.

Sacred fire and Sovereignty sign at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Canberra, looking towards the War Memorial and Mt Ainslie, 3rd June 2012

2 June, 2012

Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Rhythm

Ailsa proposes ‘Rhythm’ as this week’s photo topic, which is great for me! Since the WordPress weekly photo challenge is proposing ‘Today’ as a topic, I can’t draw on my father’s black and white photos from seventy years ago! But I can for Ailsa.

See her Rhythm story here: http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/06/01/rhythm/

And here’s mine, the only photo from the album in which someone is playing a musical instrument. I imagine this monkey is dancing to the beat. It was amusing enough for a few people to stop and watch and for at least one soldier to stop and photograph. My father wrote ‘Kan-Kan’ under the photo, so that must be the monkey’s name.

An Egyptian man with a dancing monkey is generally a beggar who lives on alms. He is called a fakir (so I read), an Arabic word for ‘needy man’. In Western countries, the use of animals for street entertainment is frowned upon now, though I did see some online images of dancing monkeys in India and Pakistan. I suppose it’s like busking; there’s probably some talent involved in training the monkey. But from then on it has to dance for its supper. It’s something which leaves me ambivalent: I have a real (Western) pleasure in Orientalist images, whether they be paintings or designs or photos like this one. I feel the same when listening to gypsy music like that of Django Reinhardt, which makes sense: the word gypsy comes from Egyptian. The colourful elements of Middle Eastern life are like chocolate to me; they’re rich and mysterious. Here’s to ancient peoples! We owe them much.