Imaginary Landscape

First, let me caution you: this is not a treatise on computer or software problems. This is my whinge about insects, critters, creepy-crawlies. It’s such a stereotype—a female who hates bugs. And I don’t know where it came from. But I can’t recall ever liking anything with more than four legs. As a child, I used to systematically engineer ways to stuff up anthills; I ran from bees and wasps; my mother cautioned me how filthy flies were. Finally, as an adult I declared that nothing with more than four legs could live under the same roof. A former husband cautioned me that crickets were good luck (but they kept me awake at night and eat clothes) or that spiders should be left alone because they eat other bugs (not fast enough). I’ll admit that I am biased against the critters, mostly because they’re ugly. I don’t feel quite the same revulsion for butterflies, dragonflies and bugs that have some attractiveness about them. But I still don’t want them crawling around my house. Case in poin...

The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, [Abraham Lincoln’s] Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1,322 words in the [US] Declaration of Independence, but [US] government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words. – from the October 24, 1994 National Review The Ratbag came home from work last night and revealed that he and his fellow Western Australian police officers had been notified of a change in procedure regarding throwing someone in jail. Oh, they are still going to put people in jail, but they will no longer call it ‘arrest’. It is now an ‘episode’. And if after the episode, the ‘person of interest’ (not ‘suspect’) tries to escape, or tries to harm himself or herself, or another officer, well, that is an ‘event’ that may result in another ‘charge’ or an investigation. All police must complete a self-paced skills upscaling on this new system. Then they must sit an assessment that will measure their understanding of the new system. They may not undertake the assessme...

On the Road Again Since this was written, we have moved from Eucla (four years ago) to Kalgoorlie and, sadly, Mr P has passed away. But I return to Eucla often for visits and have recently had a book published on the history of Eucla (since 1940). Mr P’s daughter, Rasa, now runs the roadhouse…and the West Coast Eagles had a wonderful season this year. We were driving on the Eyre Highway, somewhere on the Straight (90 miles of it, says the sign, even though they measure distance in kilometres now), and I had all sorts of mixed feelings. I wasn’t past the amazement of having just sold, given away, thrown out or abandoned most of my worldly goods and moved to the other side of the planet. I was thrilled, but I couldn’t grasp that it had actually happened. I find myself walking down the Southern Ocean’s shore or slogging up a sand dune, watching whales basking in the Bight, or a mob of kangaroos hopping across the scrub, or a flock of emus curiously eyeing my camera in the relentless wind ...

There was a time when I had trouble with the gender of my pets. People often wondered why we had chosen the particular names my pets had. Every instance has a perfectly logical explanation. It was the quantity of the misnomers, I think, rather than just one little misnaming. Let me explain. First, I worked with a friend of the family, named Tom, oddly enough, who had a farm cat that, as farm cats often do, had produced a litter of kittens. The hobby farm now had more felines than mice, so he was giving the litter away. He offered me one, and after consultation with my other half, and in spite of the fact that we had a slightly deranged golden retriever, we decided to adopt one of the kittens. We told Tom that we wanted a tom cat, however, as getting a tom fixed—or broken, as the case may be—was generally less expensive than breaking a female cat. Tom brought this little ginger cat to work one day. I don’t think he was old enough to leave his mother, or if he was the constant attention ...