Aussies Love their Nicknames

This is a repost (just because) 😉

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Andy the Great and the Incident of the Storm and the Chainsaw

Australian’s love their nicknames and it is rare to stumble upon a person without one – Shorty, Crazy, Twig, Choko, Gazza, Chuck Chunder, Chucky, Wayney Poo, Crooky Monster (that would be me) are a few of my friends.

My better half has a few nicknames and one that we joke around with is Andy the Great. His other nickname is Shirl, and in fact that is what I call him all the time. I didn’t know his name was Andrew until about 10 years after I first met him. I didn’t have a clue what his last name was – he was just Shirl, Shirl the Curl or Shirl the Dirl or Twirley.

He refuses to explain with any degree of clarity where the nickname came from. We have our suspicions that it had something to do with his Alice Cooper hair or that he once worked as a check-out ‘chick’ in Woolworths.

The nickname Andy the Great is easier to explain and involves Andy’s love of power tools and his ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound, fix anything that needs fixing and help anyone that needs helping.

Years ago before we were married we were driving through Kenmore in Brisbane (where I lived) after a huge storm. Streets were covered with debris and trees were stripped of branches and leaves. Drains resembled playgrounds for white water rafting devotees.

Andy the Great was driving his white Holden work van (he worked as a beer plumber) which he got to use 24/7 and I was the passenger. Suddenly we came upon a huge uprooted tree that had fallen from someone’s yard. It lay across the footpath and part of the road. Before I could say ‘holey dooly, what the #%$#$##, Andy the Great screeched to a halt, jumping out of the Holden and opened the rear van door. He stretched past his reticulation python and grabbed his beloved chainsaw, grunting in delight (well, that’s what I thought I heard).

Next minute he powered his diesel-guzzling friend into glorious vvvroooooomming (where’s a beat boxer when you need one 😁) and proceeded to chainsaw large sections of horizontal tree into chunks of manageable lifting-sized bits. This continued until the whole tree had been neatly returned to the footpath – a pile of assorted logs waiting for council removal. At this point a resident of the house (where the tree’s roots remained under soil) came out with mouth open, jaw dropped and expression perplexed.

‘That was quick,’ she gasped, ‘I only rang the council half an hour ago’!

‘No worries’, replied Andy the Great ‘we were just passing and I had my chainsaw in the boot – tell that to the Council workers when they finally arrive’.

With that he waved goodbye, jumped in the van and we drove off into the sunset.

Aussies Love their Nicknames

Andy the Great and the Incident of the Storm and the Chainsaw

Australian’s love their nicknames and it is rare to stumble upon a person without one – Shorty, Bluey, Twig, Chocko, Gazza, Chuck Chunder, Chucky, Wayney Poo, Crooky Monster (that would be me) are a few of my friends.

My better half has a few nicknames and one that we joke around with is Andy the Great. His other nickname is Shirl, and in fact that is what I call him all the time. I didn’t know his name was Andrew until about 10 years after I first met him. I didn’t have a clue what his last name was – he was just Shirl! Shirl the Curl or Shirl the Dirl or Twirley.

He refuses to explain with any degree of clarity where the nickname came from. We have our suspicions that it had something to do with his Alice Cooper hair or that he once worked as a check-out ‘chick’ in Woolworths.

The nickname Andy the Great is easier to explain and involves Andy’s love of power tools and his ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound, fix anything that needs fixing and help anyone that needs helping.

Years ago before we were married we were driving through Kenmore in Brisbane (where I lived) after a huge storm. Streets were covered with debris and trees were stripped of branches and leaves. Drains resembled playgrounds for white water rafting devotees.

Andy the Great was driving his white Holden work van (he worked as a beer plumber) which he got to use 24/7 and I was the passenger. Suddenly we came upon an uprooted tree that had fallen from someone’s yard and across a footpath and part of the road. Before I could say ‘holey dooley, what the #%$#!’ Andy the Great screeched to a halt, jumping out of the Holden and opened the rear van door. He stretched past his reticulation python and grabbed his beloved chainsaw, grunting in delight (well, that’s what I thought I heard).

Next minute he powered his diesel-guzzling friend into glorious vvvroooooomming (where’s a beat boxer when you need one!) and proceeded to chainsaw large sections of horizontal tree into chunks of manageable lifting-sized bits. This continued until the whole tree had been neatly returned to the footpath – a pile of assorted logs waiting for council removal. At this point a resident of the house (where the tree’s roots remained under soil) came out with mouth open, jaw dropped and expression perplexed.

‘That was quick,’ she gasped, ‘I only rang the council half an hour ago!’

‘No worries’, replied Andy the Great ‘we were just passing and I had my chainsaw in the boot – tell that to the Council workers when they finally arrive’.

With that, he waved goodbye, jumped in the van and we drove off into the sunset.

An Empty Dubrovnik

This is a  repost from 2010.  (I’ve written a poem about this trip, so I thought a repost was in order as background for my newer readers). It’s not the Easter long weekend (but we just had Labour Day long weekend – is that close enough – haha 😉 ). Things have changed since 2010 – my Mum passed away later that year (3rd October) and we’re still waiting for miracles to happen.

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An Empty Dubrovnik

It is the Easter long weekend and my thoughts are drifting to things religious. My Mum is a crazy catholic, there is no doubt about it.  She is more traditional than the Pope and right up there with Mother Theresa when it comes to devotion and dedication to God. Her rosary beads, scapula and gold crucifix on a chain never leave her person. She worries constantly about her four children who have strayed somewhat from the faith. But that’s another story.

Today I am going down memory lane to a time when I accompanied my mother to the middle of a war zone in the name of God. It was May 1995 and I was single, in my twenties and pretty much a zombie depressive with violent tendencies. My Mum decides that she must go to Bosnia-Herzegovina on a pilgrimage to the town of Međugorje. Problem was the Bosnian war was raging and hundreds of thousands of people had been killed in the conflict.

Why would anyone want to go to Bosnia during the war? Mum explains that Međugorje is a Marion site, a place of miracles similar to the holy site of Lourdes where Our Lady appeared to small children. A place where water from springs has miraculous qualities and can heal all manner of ills. Yeah right I thought, blah, blah, blah.

She must travel to this small village in Bosnia-Herzegovina to receive blessings from Our Lady who appears daily to young visionaries. “Yeah, but why do you have to go this year while the war is full on? ” I asked horrified.

She responds with “Nothing will happen to me or the people of Međugorje as God is protecting the town”.

Yep, I told you she was crazy.

Well, I just had to go with Mum to make sure she didn’t get blown up, and if she did I wanted to get blown up with her. After a very long journey, including two plane flights and a 3 hour bus trip on winding mountainous roads, we arrived at Međugorje, a small non-descript town on flat farming country surrounded by rocky snow covered mountains. The largest building in the town was a cathedral. The only sign of the conflict was the presence of NATO soldiers in the cafes, large rifles at their sides, and the odd tank roaming around town.

The pilgrimage was only for one week but that was long enough. Mum said the rosary about 5 times a day and went to mass twice a day. There was an obligatory trek up neighbouring Mt Crucifix  to worship at the foot of a giant white cement cross. I had to literally push Mum up the narrow paths to get there and I still don’t know how she did it. I must admit the views from the top of the mountain were to die for, if you’d pardon the pun. The people were all lovely and I did get caught up in the peace and energy of the place.

However, the war was never far from anyone’s thoughts. At every mass the priests would report on the casualties from the war. One day 3 priests were killed in a nearby village and a town in central Bosnia was destroyed with a reported 5,000 dead.

On our second last day a group of pilgrims, including Mum and I, traveled over the border by bus to nearby Croatia to visit one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Dubrovnik.

The day trip was an eye-opener. We passed through village after village decimated by the war. Lovely old buildings and churches blown to pieces by bombs. There was a bridge that had been totally destroyed. There was a forest near Dubrovnik where nearly every tree had been decapitated by gunfire. We saw a number of tanks travelling the same roads as our bus.

We arrived at Dubrovnik and I immediately fell in love with this ancient walled city with narrow cobbled streets on the crystal waters of the Adriatic Sea.  Dubrovnik is one of the world’s great tourist destinations but it was completely empty of tourists, apart from the crazy busload of Catholics. I felt a great sympathy for the locals whose main source of income was money from tourists.

Mum and I walked through the winding streets looking into exquisite gift shops and stopping at a restaurant for a seafood lunch. I was surprised that these places were open but the locals were desperate for trade. Dubrovnik had been this way for some time. One good thing was that the great wall surrounding the city had protected the inhabitants from bombs and sniper fire.

Two days later we returned safely to Brisbane, Australia, much to the relief of Dad. We missed a connecting flight at Bangkok because of a search by customs for drug smugglers and arrived a few hours late. Dad was in a bit of a state, convinced that something had happened to us in Bosnia.

The war in Bosnia ended a few months later.

Mum has been back to Međugorje a couple of times since than and would like to go again but is quite elderly and frail. She also feels, as mothers do, that she has to look after her son, my brother, who has acquired brain-injury, and can’t leave him for any length of time. The irony is that I think the main reason she goes to this little town of miracles is to pray for a miracle for him.

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Citrus Fiesta (artist tipota)

orange peels ssp by tipota

Citrus Fiesta (tipota)

this is a silkscreen print i did called “orange peels”

and here is my story:

citrus is not just the sweet/sour juicy pungent fruits we all know. it is a color pallette, a pattern to say the least.
to say the most i’d tell you my childhood impressions of the citrus groves along the sunshine parkway in florida, where my family would drive every year at christmas holiday when i was a child, and we’d stop at the grove stands and buy bags of navel oranges (a rarity up in the north then) and pink grapefruits. this is all along the last leg of the yearly winter trips to miami to visit my greek grandparents. i am proud of my halfgreek heritage – have you ever met any greek who isn’t? because with every daily greek meal, i mean it, lemons are required, a staple item. my relationship with lemons goes back a long way. ok.

so, the thing about the citrus groves in florida is that the scent of oranges along the highway is like a perfume. it is everywhere, the breeze carries it, the clouds rain it, the ground is saturated with it, the most intoxicating scent a child could hope to imagine, so it was like a magic world of oranges, a place where the sun was a giant lemon, a place where the sidewalks are paved with orange rinds, offered along the way on gingham checked tablecloths blowing in the tangerine breeze were baskets of oranges, clementines, limes, orange popsicles, orange juice, orange soda not to mention lemon and lime aid and grapefruit, sugared. lazy lagoons with waters of citrus nectar, tangelo juice let’s say. i walked along the rows of trees amazed at how splendid the ripe oranges were and how plentiful. delighted in being able to reach and pick one and immediately press it to my nose. but that’s just the beginning, because when i peel the orange, the scent becomes bubblescent, it’s alive, it’s jumping, it stings my eyes, it seeps into my fingers, the juice is hard to keep from dripping when i take that first bite of a freshpicked orange, and we are all in the car and the car smells so sweet of citrus it puts me to sleep like dorothy in the poppy fields. and i dont wash my hands and they get sticky with orange sugars and finally someone hands me a napkin but its too late, the orange perfume is sealed into my hands. so i fold them and put my head over them and lean toward the window and when i wake up, we are pulling into grandmother’s driveway. the joys of citrus.

and even that is still the beginning because citrus as design motif and as art has also crossed my path many times. and gabrielle told you the story about my lemon tree. my grandmother often told me about the lemon groves on her home island of Kos. she described these lemons as being three times bigger than the lemons around here and sweet-tasting. it made me think, gabe, after i learned about your lemonade tree, that her childhood memories of sweet lemons may have actually been lemonade tree lemons, or a similar, related lemon tree.

my screen print “orange peels” was one of many citrus-based art things i have done. but it kind of tells the story, the peels left after the orange is eaten, still have the same fresh bright scent. later, they make the compost smell nicer. the day i did this piece, i was sitting after breakfast wondering what i’d do with this silkscreen project i had and looked over across the table and saw the orange peels designing themselves into a cool almost abstract image, so voila’, i did this print. you will notice, that yes, there is the color pink haha in there. i couldnt resist. selma knows what i mean.

and that’s it, over and out.

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tipota is a professional artist from Cape Code, Massachusetts, USA, who blogs her very own unique style of poetry, art and original music at spaces between trees.

thanks tipota 🙂

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Chook-Induced Anxiety (CIA) – The Sequel

Pompadour and Snowy

My chooks are older and fluffier now. I still suffer from CIA but at a reduced level, probably 5 out of 10 on the ‘CIA Scale of Discomfort’. This is down from 9 out of 10, so from a clinical perspective I have improved significantly. From my perspective, it’s still a pain in the butt.

I fear the only way to eliminate my CIA is to have no chooks. But I have grown fond of my feathered hens and I won’t get rid of them. They live for about 9 years so I’ll have to cope until they have gone to that great free-range farm in the sky. God doesn’t eat caged-chicken eggs!

I have five fabulously outrageous Chinese Silky hens. They are soft, docile critters adorned with lovely pompoms. Silkies are a great bird for the novice poultry keeper and are terrific for ‘tame’ children aged 6 and over. They lay little eggs weighing 40 grams. This means you will need a little teaspoon to fit in your soft-boiled eggy. If you are a horrible person and desire to eat a Silkie you will find the meat to be entirely repulsive and dark in colour.

My chickens are Pompadour, Snowy, Vegemite, Miss Eagle and Henny-Penny. Pompadour, the most arrogant of the hens, has the finest pompom. Snowy is a pure white hen and Vegemite is the colour of yeast extract. Miss Eagle is a suspected impostor having no pompom at all. I was running out of names when I got to Henny-Penny.

These chooks live the good life. They free-range all day and put themselves to bed at dusk. Sometimes I top up their dry food with fresh greens or, if they are really lucky, worms from my worm farm. As a result, when I open the gate to the backyard they go crazy with love and run towards me. This makes it all worthwhile. At night the door is shut securely on their coop. The fluffballs sleep snuggled up against each other.

PS. I have a confession to make. Due to my CIA (totally irrational) I just can’t bring myself to eat my feathered friends’ little eggs. But that’s OK because everyone else does and when we have too many eggs we trade with the neighbours, who give us seasonal produce. Everyone’s a winner. And yes, I am told, free-range, organic eggs definitely taste better.

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Note: A repost of a story written a couple of years ago (Tessa is sick with a cold and I haven’t time to write 😉 )

 

The battle of black and colour

Everyone needs some colour in their life!

The battle of black and colour (version 1)

Black was ruthless.

This was not a friend but an enemy, absorbing all colours, pretending to protect the spectrum but leaving each shade weak and puny, hidden in the depths, breathlessly submissive.

Dormant the colours rested, exhausted but dogged and resolute, waiting for light to penetrate the dark shield.

The light came.

A dawning realisation of hope began to strengthen their form.

A radiant heat of love teased the tint into the open, for all to see.

A cascade of optimism splashed and sated this new world,

and a rainbow of colours emerged triumphant in their glowing beauty.

They basked in the attention, gaining strength in recognition, a power with which to continue the battle with black and to win,

to this day,

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The battle of black and colour (version 2)

Black was ruthless.

This was not a friend but an enemy, absorbing all colours, pretending to protect the spectrum but leaving each shade weak and puny, hidden in the depths, breathlessly submissive.

Dormant the colours rested, exhausted but dogged and resolute, waiting for light to penetrate the dark shield.

The light came.

A dawning realisation of hope began to strengthen their form.
A radiant heat of love teased the tint into the open, for all to see.
A cascade of optimism splashed and sated this new world,

and a rainbow of colours emerged triumphant in their glowing beauty,

Run for the hills – the Gabe files

Run for the hills

In 1999 I had a very vivid dream. In the dream I am standing at the base of a high-rise building. It’s the Brisbane Stock Exchange. Suddenly a large jet airliner crashes into the building. The plane emerges out of the other side and the building collapses. The devastation is immense and all that is left is a large hole in the ground. I am safe but everything around me is destroyed.

The dream had such an impact on me that I began to fear travelling in airplanes. Every time a plane went overhead my heart would beat a little faster. I got married later in 1999 and my husband and I flew to Far North Queensland for our honeymoon. I remember telling him on the plane about my dream and how I was a bit scared. We both laughed at how silly it sounded.

The day of the terrorist attacks in New York, September 11 2001, I saw a version of my dream played out on every television channel. I couldn’t believe what was happening. My psychiatrist told me that all dreams represent something that has occurred in the previous 48 hours.

I have another dream which bothers me. It’s a recurring dream that is also very vivid and I think about it often. It takes a number of forms but basically I am living near the coast or in a city with a river running through it (yes, that would be Brisbane). Suddenly there is a tsunami and the sea rises up and destroys the town. Everyone is madly running as fast as they can go, trying to outrun the waves, trying to get to higher territory. The waves do not retreat and the place is completely swamped.

I make it safely to higher ground, along with a small group of family, friends and some strangers. We travel as far away from the town as we can get, still fearful of the rising waters. We travel into the hills, to the most beautiful place in the world and we are safe. We decide to make that place our new home. Most people have not survived and we are very grateful that we did.

I had my first tsunami dream the day before the Banda Aceh tsunami of December 26 2004. It was probably just a result of over-indulging on bubbly on Christmas day but you never know.

I live in a small seaside village on the shores of Hervey Bay in Queensland. It’s a low lying place and 7,000 years ago the seas reached about 1km inland. You can still see the ‘second ridge’ – the elevation of the original beach, now covered in vegetation.

Earlier this year a cyclone hovered about 100km away from Woodgate and we could feel the winds from the edge of the low pressure system. The wind created large waves which pounded on the shore and one day the waves started to break through the ‘first ridge’, something which the locals had never seen happen. After about 10 days the cyclone eventually moved further out to sea.

One day I think we may have to ‘run for the hills’.