My pianola moves house

Warning:  this post contains confronting scenes of the manhandling of a pianola.

My pianola on the move

Pianolas are passed from one generation to the other - not necessarily because they are family heirlooms, but because the bottom fell out of the pianola market 50 years ago.

Back then, pianolas were the kareoke machines of the pre-electricity age, when people would stand around them and sing the words rolling by on the pianola roll.

[NOTE:  Like kareoke machines, pianolas or player pianos, were designed for people with no musical skills.  You could play them with your feet.  You inserted a music roll (a continuous sheet of paper rolled on to a spool) into the spool box, hooked the free end of the music sheet to the take-up spool, and started pumping with your feet.  The roll would unwind across a reading mechanism (called the tracker bar) and the music score, programmed onto the paper with a bunch of holes, would play.]

You pumped the pedals, and the pianola pumped out music, no hands.

It also gave you a damn good workout, and looked a lot classier than an exercise bike in the lounge room.

So I bought one.  Market research revealed that pianolas ceased production before one of the last wars, leaving only a second hand market.  You can find them in piano shops, reconditioned and ready to go, or in private homes, often in genteel decline and not so ready to go.

How to buy a second hand pianola

The market for pianolas thrives under P in the classified FOR SALE ads in the local newspaper.  Mine was for sale in a house nearby, at a price within my budget, so I gave it a test run.

The house was the bottom of a battle axe driveway.  The pianola was in the rumpus room in the lower level of the house.  It had that battered partied look, as pianolas do.

I play a roll or two, inspected its innards by lifting the top lid and peering down at the bellows which are its engine.  The owner threw in a full set of pianola rolls and the specialised sloped stool.

I paid a deposit, the rest to be paid when the pianola changed hands.

How to move a second hand pianola

Pianolas do not travel well.  Their little wheels are merely cosmetic because their stout wooden exteriors conceal a steel frame and massive mechanisms from the Sydney Harbour Bridge school of engineering.

One pianola weighs about the same as three conventional pianos.

It also could not negotiate spiral staircases, which was the internal entrance to its current residence.

How to move a second hand pianola by barge

The vendor informed me that the pianola could only leave the same way it had arrived: by barge.  The river lapped at the end of the back path, and a small wooden jetty offered itself as a mooring.

You can find barges listed in the telephone book.  The local barge person was not surprised at a pianola as cargo, so I tried not to be surprised at his fee, which was $100 per hour.

On top of that I had to engage pianola moving people who charged a flat $200.  They would liaise with the barge people so they could be picked up from the nearest loading dock where they would park their truck.

Always move your second hand pianola at high tide

Then there were the intangibles such as time and tide.  At low tide, when the river retreated and left behind a mud flat, the barge would have no access to the jetty.

The tide chart was consulted and we settled on a day with a high tide at 7am, and usually when there was little wind.  Calm waters were vital, as pianolas are not good sailors.

On the day I arrived at the house at 6.45am.  The river was mirror flat.  I was standing at the back door when the barge chugged along the river and tied up to the jetty.  On board were two barge people and two pianola movers.  Their truck waited at the nearest loading dock, about 10 minutes away as the boat goes.

The movers were, by necessity, large men - roughly two metres by two metres.  By contrast, the pianola looked dainty.

They shepherded it, on its silly wheels, to the back door.  Then they lay it on its side, mounted it onto a flat trolley and ushered it along the path to the jetty.

They made it look so easy, I wondered if I was getting my $200 worth.

Wheeling it along the footpath was the easy bit

The pianola then rumbled onto the jetty - trod the boards so to speak.  The wooden planks bowed under the combined weight of pianola and two pianola handles, and suddenly there was frailty in the air.

The planks of the jetty groaned

The planks groaned and the men moved with more urgency.  At the same time, the barge driver pulled the ropes tight, straining to hold the edge of the barge flush with the jetty.

The moment of truth: shifting the pianola from jetty to barge

Then the moment of truth.  The movers were actually sweating (at last, value for money), as they manouevred the pianola level with the barge which was floating half a metre below the level of the jetty.

There was a distinct sound of splintering from the jetty.

They steered the pianola sideways to the barge, and with much deep muttering - having revved themselves up to full power - they lowered it from jetty to barge.

As it hung weightily in mid-air, two sets of muscles quivered as they restrained the pianola in a frozen downward plunge.

Heave!

The river lapped mischievously around the barge.

I was holding the cheque for the balance of payment in my hand and it occurred to me: who, at this point owned the pianola?

One miscalculation, and the pianola would slide into the river and sink out of sight, to be planted into the finest of black mud, where it could only be played at low tide.

I tucked the cheque into my pocket.

But all went well.  The barge received the pianola with flat-bottomed stabilty and the jetty planks let out of creak of relief.

The pianola balancing between jetty and barge

Now much lower in the water, the barge sank even further when the two movers also boarded.

Under the weight of the pianola, the barge settles lower into the water. 

They roped the pianola into place.  The engine sputtered into life and off it went, chugging along the river in the early morning light, as pianolas do.

The pianola chugs along the river in the morning light

My childhood backyard as seen by an artist

Denis Meagher's painting of my childhood backyard

The idea for this painting was a trompe l'oeile, that is, a painting designed to deceive the eye.  It would depict a window, and outside the window would be a view receding into the distance.

Denis Meagher, the artist, proposed to paint it for my kitchen door so that I could see it from the kitchen bench and feel I was looking out at a scene.

The subject of this trompe l'oeile was to be a view of the backyard from my mother's kitchen door.  I did not have a photo of the backyard - my parents and their house were long gone - so I had to describe it to Denis.  

So the brief for my trompe l'oeile was... a concrete path leading to the back fence.  My mother's garden of poppies.  Chooks. A few tough shrubs.  A lawn.  A clothes line.  Tiger the tabby cat.

That's when I discovered the yawning gap between the picture in my head and and the words that describe it.  I knew I could not convey what I remembered of that backyard, so we ended up with two separate mental images, mine and Denis'. 

We were talking about the same thing, but we only had words in common.  

As you can see, Denis took artistic licence with my backyard - and I loved it.  He signed it and dated it 1993, and it hangs on my wall today as one of my favourite paintings.  

So, it is my childhood backyard in name only.  Yes, he had all the ingredients: chooks, clothes line, Tiger, poppies...but not as I knew them.

The chooks were never allowed into the garden.  They had a dusty run down by the back fence, and as a little girl, I was terrified of them.  I never went near them.  

The clothes line was not a Hills Hoist, as depicted by Denis.  It was two lines strung between two poles.  The poles had a strut of wood at the top, giving them a T-shape, and the strut had a line on each end.  And there was a clothes prop to raise the lines when wet clothes weighed them down.

And then there were the poppies.

My mother was no gardener, and her garden yielded few poppies, and not the giddy profusion you see in Denis' painting. 

My pedal car.  Mum's flower garden in background. (apologies for quality of pic)

I had a pedal car, and I would ride it along the path and pick mum's flowers and present them to her.  She was less than delighted, and I do not remember if she ever planted poppies again.

Tiger our tabby.  The thongs belong to Denis.  He inhabited my painting.

As for the flowering shrubs in Denis' painting.  They too were fanciful.
My father tried hard to create a botanic wonderland, but the house was near the coast and the soil was little more than sand.  He struck gold with oleanders and once he knew he was on a good thing he stuck to it.  He repeated them around the garden so much that I learned to hate them.

In later years, I was not surprised to learn that their leaves were poisonous:  they had that sort of attitude.  In fact I was rather taken by a short story about a woman who chopped up oleander leaves and baked them in a cake for her husband.  He died.

Denis' painting also spares us the sight of the outdoor toilet, which was tucked out of sight behind the house.  It had a pan toilet and it was collected once a week by some brave soul who came early in the morning, hoping not to find any one in there.  They would carry away the full one, and leave an empty one behind.

It smelled bad.  To counteract that, a lattice wall overgrown with a thick green vine shielded the door.  Its flowers were orange honey suckles that tried to outperfume the toilet.  These flowers would ooze a thin honey from the centre tube and we would tear them off and suck out the sweetness.  I am living proof that they were not poisonous.

I had a brother.  He was four years younger than me so I could take no notice of him.  I was wise to the ways of the world by the time he came along and he was so dumb, he could not even walk.  But he learned to.  And then, one day, he kidnapped my teddy bear.

I did not tell Denis this.  The memory was too painful.  My brother - I guess he was about two years old at the time - stole my beloved teddy bear and dipped him into the handsomely full toilet pan and painted the result onto the walls.  He was well into the job when he was sprung by my mother.

There was a hullaballoo that he did not understand.  Dumb kid.  I was at school at the time so I was spared the sight of my teddy bear in deep shit.

Mum flushed my teddy bear out, boiled him in the copper and hung him by his ears to dry on the clothes line.  And that's where I found him when I came home from school.




 

Denis among the poppies

Frog Hollow: local frogs set up house

Meet Chuck, the brown (in this case, blue) tree frog.  He is head tenant in this tall blue long-neck vase that stands on our upstairs balcony. 

The vase has a bell-shaped base, and has collected rainwater about 3cm deep, so he can take a dip whenever he feels a little dry.

Frog Hollow neighbourhood

Frog hollow

 Here is the lay-out of Frog Hollow.  Chuck lives in the front vase.  The tallest vase behind appears to be vacant.

Luxury hi rise accommodation for frogs

These blue vases are, no doubt, luxury hi rise accommodation for local frogs.  They can enjoy the private bathing amenities while a narrow funnel protects them from predators, such as birds and cats.  Some catering, provided by mosquito lavae in the resident pond, is also a drawcard. 

Not-so-luxurious accommodation 

For frogs on a lower economic status, the metal watering can - as seen on the left-hand side of the photo - does offer short term accommodation.  The spout is a nice snuggle fit, with a window at one end and a pool at the other.

Problems do arise if the watering can is actually used for watering the pot plants, and the frog is poured out with the flow.

A considerate householder will refill the watering can and turn away, allowing the frog to steal into the spout without being seen.

Chuck's next door neighbour

The rear vase (not the tallest) also has a tiny tenant.  Here he is, looking blue and alert.

As yet, he has no name, and suggestions will be welcome. 

Chuck's next door neighbour (he needs a name)

Chuck meets Cindy


Yesterday morning, I looked in on Chuck, and found that a friend had moved in with him.  Her name is Cindy.  Here is a picture of the happy couple.

Chuck and Cindy

Squishy, I know.  But what do I understand about a frog's need for personal space?


Chuck and Cindy split up

Today - 24 hours after I witnessed their union - I looked in on Chuck and Cindy, and found Chuck was alone.  Only he met my eye as I peered down the funnel.

I guess they have split up, but what do I know about frog relationships?

Perhaps a one night stand is as long term as it gets for frogs.

Mind you, Chuck looked quite fat...



TO BE CONTINUED

Tom waits for Godot

Tom volunteers to help me defrost the freezer. He is my 17 year old son, and has homework to avoid.  His essay about the play Waiting for Godot* is due tomorrow.  He claims a little housework will clear his brain and help him to think.

Perhaps, I speculate, he hopes to find Godot in the freezer, but he ignores any sarcasm in the air.

The freezer is the trough type, with a lid that lifts with a whining of hinges.  Tom is large and cheerful and genuinely interested in the solid frame of ice that has formed a ridge around the top of the freezer.

'How often do you defrost the freezer?' he asks, as we dislodge frozen meat and ravioli and shake off the splinters of ice.

'When we run out of ice cream,' I reply, dodging the real answer.

The drifts of ice around the freezer wall can probably be carbon dated back to his conception, while the use-by dates on the small frozen dinners expired five years ago.  I ditch them.

When the freezer is empty, Tom leans down into the trough, and gathers up the loose peanuts.

Several years ago, I had discovered that you can freeze peanuts.  Not only do they stay fresh, but they are delicious when eaten frozen.

However, they come in cellophane bags and these do not respond so positively to sub zero temperatures.  After a time not yet scientifically measured - but I'd estimate 10 minutes - the cellophane splits and the nuts spill and congregate in a naked state at the bottom of the freezer, along with a slush of ice and elderly bread crumbs and broken frozen pizza.  I ditch them.

Tom and I stack the frozen pies, ravioli, bread and pizza into a freezer basket, hoping that togetherness will stop them from thawing immediately.  It is becoming clear that they will thaw much more readily than the ice around the top of the freezer.

Being a hot mid-summer day, we agree that it would be foolish to wait for the ice to melt, and that it must be chipped off by a strong man.

Tom - he assures me - that that strong man.  Anything rather than write an essay on Waiting for Godot.

I supply him with the job-specific implement: a stout plastic spade which had been supplied with the freezer.  It disappoints him.  He had had his eye on the carving knife so he could attack the ice with a virility in keeping with his puberty.

I explain that a knife would lacerate the freezer walls.  He does not see that as an obstacle but something a mother would invent to spoil his fun.

At first, the plastic spade does not seem meet its job description, but time is on its side.  The ice succumbs under the pressure of Tom's heavy breathing and heat-wave temperatures and it falls, with perfectly satisfying thuds, to the freezer floor.

The lumps of ice are shaped like seed glaciers, and we dump them into a large plastic container and while I wash the freezer walls, Tom takes his treasure to the kitchen sink.

Being a child of mild Australia climate, he is starved of snow and ice and other sub-zero playthings.  He empties it into the kitchen sink and as it softens, he coaxes it into a limp snowman shape.  Then he subjects it to a flow of tap water which sears an instant hole.

He discovers that the running water will melt single pieces into instant shapes that hold their form only if whipped away from the water at the moment of conception.

He becomes a master craftsman, the creator of all things ice: he finds a face with a jagged grin, a camel, a half star.

Then it melts, no longer ice but its unfrozen form, only to wash away, until nothing is left but a pile of soggy peanuts trying to escape down the plug hole.

Not knowing that this is indeed the theme of his essay, Tom goes back to his desk - and waits for Godot.

*Waiting for Godot is a play about two men who sit under a tree and wait for Godot.  Its theme is the passing of time, the tedium of waiting, the futility of living and the finality of being washed down the plug hole.  Furthermore, Godot stands them up.

A suburban fairy tale: the bank robber's lunch

It all started when our local post office-cum-bank agency was robbed.  

A man wearing a balaclava came into the agency and pointed a gun at Mr Limberger, the proprietor.  He took $4,000 in cash, $100 in postage stamps and Mr Limberger's lunch.

A few weeks later, it happened again, and the same things were stolen - money, stamps and lunch.

After that, Mr Limberger built three windows with wooden bars across the counter.  It looked official but not very bullet-proof.

Our post office was actually a mixed business where we could bank our money, buy stamps, newspapers, house paint, bicycle parts and sweets.  

It was the only shop on our little suburban peninsulah except for the butcher next door.  And he was never robbed, probably because he always held a long sharp knife.

But the bars did not stop the robber.  He came again and took the cash box with Mr Limberger's lunch inside it.  

Unfortunately, the key to the community hall was also in the cash box.  This was the cause of some stress because the shop's only toilet was inside the hall.

Which is why Mr Limberger climbed through the side window of the hall.  He was half way through when the policeman grabbed him by the ankles.

Mr Limberger explained the situation but the policeman insisted they go to the police station.

While Mr Limberger was filling out the police forms someone broke into the shop.  This burglar did not bother with money or stamps.  He just took Mr Limberger's lunch.

This was the last straw.  Mr Limberger took action.  He installed a glass fronted refrigerated counter in the front of the shop, then he bought 17 types of cheeses, six different breads and buns, quiches, salamis, pickles and spreads.  

At noon, he put on an apron and made lunches like the ones which had been stolen.

He was an instant success.  Everyone bought his lunches.  

He made so much money, he built his own toilet behind the shop.

And he was never robbed again.

From Russia with love

Front cover of Russian magazine: inside is my article

Early in my career, I wrote an article about how I, a freelance writer, went about trying to sell articles  to magazines.

A publication called The Australian Author picked it up, and then it was reprinted in the Russian magazine pictured above.

And that's how I went public, both in Australia and later in Russia, on the folly of putting your writing about.

Here's how my article read in Russian.

Page one with my byline in Russian

page two (upper area) of my article

You can see that these pages of close print have an academic authority, and I think you should be impressed.  No need to read on.  Just skip to the end and leave an admiring comment.

  

TRANSLATION OF MY STORY ABOUT SELLING ARTICLES: Russian into Australian 

For those who are not fluent in Russian, and insist on knowing what I, an unknown freelance writer, could possibly say that might interest a serious Russian readership, please read on.
(NB: All comments in brackets are my speculation on how Russian readers might react.)



I opened the article with a witty (take my word for it) spiel about how I develop a story and ready it for publication (NB: this story is pre-email).

Then I continue...


The articles I really like are sent out to magazines.  They are my babies.  It hurts to send them out to the big critical world, but I am firm with them, and they leave with a stamped return envelope.

Cleo, Women's Weekly and Woman's Day are usually insultingly swift, and invariably return my articles within seven days.  I cannot help but feel they have not read them.

(NB: at this point, Russian readers could be out of the loop, as they did not, at that time, have such indulgent magazines.)

Other magazines keep the articles longer, and this gives reason to hope.  No doubt, I feel, they are considering them, chuckling over them, writing out the cheque.  But no.  They are just at the bottom of a high heap of other hopeful articles, waiting for some overworked editor to cast them a cursory glance.

My first and only fiction was a well-travelled story.  It first went to Cleo, then Cosmopolitan, National Times, then languished for three months with Nation Review. 

I considered that they had had ample time to read it, so I phoned Nation Review.  After much searching and shuffling of paper, it received 'conditional acceptance' from the Features Editor.  

This would have been cause for celebration, except 'conditional acceptance' meant it would be published when there was space available.  The Features Editor reckoned on around three years.

(As Russian plays are often based on the surreal, Russian readers are now on the same page.)

He recommended I try and sell it elsewhere, and he requested more of my writing. I complied, and sent him two articles.  

After another three months' silence, I phoned him, and asked about the articles.  He shuffled more papers and, in a bored tone, said that he received many such 'essays' and no, he did not think he would use them.  And he never bothered to send them back.

(The Russians are now in my corner.)

Anyway, Forum bought the story.   Paid me $50.  Published it without changing a word, with my name spelt right in big letters.

One step forward.  Two steps back.  An environmental magazine wrote to accept three of my articles.  Then followed another to say no, they had not accepted the articles, but were 'holding them' and I was free to sell them elsewhere.

(Shades of the Revolution!)

Then a new magazine came on the market called Working Woman.  I sent them an article.  The editor accepted it for a magazine in her Practical Planning Series and would I write a follow-up article.  Would I!

I did, and earned $125 for the two articles.  I contributed four articles to Working Woman and they were held pending the next issue.  But the magazine folded.  Pilot sales in America were insufficient to warrant any success in Australia.  So my four unpublished waifs came home.

(Thus proving to my Russian readers that Australia is just another shambling democracy.)

Another new magazine came out, under the wing of Forum, called New Times.  I felt it might consider my style, so I sent an article to them.  But, after three issues, sales were insufficient and it too ceased publication.

I now suspect that my articles have a fatal effect on magazines.  I plan to smuggle some into the offices of Women's Weekly, Cleo and Woman's Day - to hide them where they can exercise their lethal influence.

I always say, if you can't join 'em, beat 'em!

(No comment.)

With thanks to The Australia Author, quarterly journal of the Australian Society of Authors, 1978

Reject slips from my past

One of the hazards of being a writer are the reject slips. 

Here's an example:

A reject slip: not even the original, but a carbon copy.

I did not start out collecting reject slips.  I started out intending to be published.
I would send an unsolicited article - all neatly typed - to magazine editors and they would get the help to send it right back.  It would include one of these little notes.


I collected reject slips for many years

It was a kind of ping pong game with envelopes - back and forth - with the postman as neutral observer.


My first acceptance letter

Then, one day, Woman's Day editors did not send the article back.  Instead, they sent an unfamiliar sight: a small envelope with an acceptance slip inside.
It was party time, and the postman even ventured a smile. 
We both calmed down when the magazine only used one paragraph of my story.
Nevertheless, I felt that I could, as a published writer, be able to count on a career in journalism.


I did not sell another word for the next two years

And not for want of trying.

Check out the original signature. I'm thinking of selling this one on ebay.

And so it went on.
After an article was returned, I would read it through and somehow see it afresh.  I'd rewrite it and submit it to another magazine.  Some articles would be rewritten 10-15 times, and then sent on their way.  It became a routine.
Why I stuck with it, I don't know.  I had no axe to grind, no angst, no deprived childhood...


My background as a writer 

I was born to middle income parents - an accountant and a secretary - and brought up in a beach suburb that was famous for having the second longest railway station in NSW.
My childhood was forgettable: I was not battered, orphaned or starved.
My mother recalls that I was a happy child until my little brother dropped my very favourite teddy bear into the lavatory pan.  My mother retrieved it, boiled it in the copper for several hours, then pegged it by its ears on the clothes line.
Possibly this was the trauma that later drove me to write.
I grew up and followed my mother's footsteps, becoming a shorthand/typist, then wife, then mother of two children.


The Writing Class

I was pregnant with my second child when I joined a writing class which met every Tuesday night. We all had to take turns to read what we had written during the week, and when I read my piece out, the class laughed.  Not because it was bad, but because they found it funny.  That was when I discovered that I was writing humour.  I had not seen it like that.  To this day, no one has twigged that I am in deadly earnest.
That writing class also taught me about writing.  Not how to write.  Just things about it.
To my surprise, I discovered that everyone did not write in the same style as I did.  Somehow, I had expected that we would: instead they each had their own distinctive - and instinctive - style and viewpoint.  As such, we broadened each other's horizons.


Life as a Learner Writer

At the same time, I was sending my unsolicited articles to magazines.  I was a learner writer.  It was my apprenticeship.  To learn to write, I had to write, and rewrite, then send it into the market place to test it.  If it came back, I had not got it right yet.
In those years, I was, without realising it, learning to write.


My Second sale

Then I sold my second article.  I had sent it out nine times, rewritten it nine times and somehow the mood changed. Editors did not return it with a printed reject slip.  Yes, they returned it, but with letters.  Nice letters, saying 'sorry'. This, I knew, was encouragement.
Finally, someone bought it.  Paid $60 for it, and I think I bought a coffee table with it.
Thus encouraged, I sent that same editor more articles, and she bought some, returned others.
I took note of what she returned, and I was learning another thing about writing: what the market wanted.
It applied then.  It applies now.  I have to guess what an editor will want.
And writing comic articles was even trickier, because there were no rules.  What one editor liked, another found silly.


The regular gig

Around this time, I was offered a regular column in the (now defunct) Australian Home Journal.

And that's when I finally twigged that I wrote a 'column' style which was why my articles were difficult to sell: they were casual, they were opinionated.

I wrote that column for four years...

I had to come up with one idea a month, a saleable idea, a funny one, written to a deadline.  Australian Home Journal ran it on the inside back page, often with a cartoon.  Here's what it looked like...

During that four years, the editors changed three times, and each one reviewed my column, no doubt intending to chop it.  They didn't.  Not sure why.
But by then I knew that I wrote, not so much for a magazine, but for an editor.

TO BE CONTINUED...

A little ball of mercury

I washed the thermometer yesterday, the one you use to measure body temperature.
I had just used it to take Tom's (my nine-year-old son) temperature.  I was sure he was coming down with something because he didn't get excited at the prospect of a game of cricket when his friend called by.

This was not normal.  You only had to say the word, and he'd stop whatever he was doing and mock a quick swing of the pretend bat that he always kept handy, to send the pretend ball over the pretend fence for six.

Anyway, he didn't have a temperature - only a bout of weariness, which he overcame by playing cricket all afternoon with his friend.

Meanwhile, the thermometer lay on the kitchen bench, waiting to be processed.  It was one of many items:  the comb, music theory homework, note from cub group, insect spray . . . I couldn't put it back in its container until I had cleaned it.  I usually soak it in disinfectant, but that was in the bathroom, at the other end of the house, and the thermometer was in the kitchen.  So, I decided to rinse it in hot water . . . that would kill the germs.

I expect it did, but it also broke the thermometer.  The end snapped off.  I was about to throw it out when Tom asked: 'Is there any mercury left in it?'  There was, and he emptied it onto the kitchen bench.

It huddled in a round silver ball, reflecting the room around it.  Tom pushed  it, and it skated away, then stopped.  He stabbed the middle of the ball, and it divided into two balls.  He pushed one towards the other, and they collided,  gobbled each other up, and became a single silver globule.

Tom stabbed the ball again, this time more violently, and it scattered into six tiny silver balls.  He lined them up, and bowled them at the others, one by one.  They gobbled each other up - 'Like Pacman!' - he shrieked in delight, and stabbed the globule again.

Lovingly, he imprisoned his mercury ball in a small bottle, and left it - where else? - on the kitchen bench.  Safely under my eye, he was confident his little mercury ball would not run away while he was out.

And there it sits, a round silver eye, following my every movement.  Sometimes I give it a little run around the side of the bottle, and sometimes I shake it, and it falls to pieces, just like I would if you shook me.  The little silver balls lie on the bottom of the bottle, waiting . . . the tension is unbearable . . . to be reunited.

It's too cruel.  I can't leave them in pieces like that.  I jiggle the bottle, and they tumble together again.

Your future is in your hands

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It would be nice to see into the future . . . know the future of your futures or which horse will win the next race.  It would be nice, but you wouldn't want to spoil the surprise, would you?

But, if you can't stand the suspense, you could always delve into the future with a little help from palmistry or numerology.  These two branches of the occult are based on the concrete, on things you can see quite clearly, hands and numbers.  There is nothing mysterious about them, except why they tell the future.

Palmistry for dummies

The study of palmistry is easy.  You need neither second sight nor a gold lame turban, although they may help.  You learn palmistry the same way you learn French - buy a book about it and memorise it. 

Once you can recite the theory, you can put it into practice by reading the nearest palm, and of course, the handiest is your own.

Step one - read your own palm

 Reading your own palm is like reading a vital document.  Literally, you hold your fate in your hands.  This is not light reading, and only good news is welcome.  Bad news is a portent of doom - and best ignored. 

Palmisty does not deal in everyday matters.

 Palmistry tends to generalise.  For example, one of the lines on your hand is the headline, and the longer it is, the brainier you are.  It won't even hint at what could be about to happen to you, but it will give you some idea how you will react. . .  if your fingers are long with knotty joints, you will think about it very very carefully;  if your fingers are short and smooth, you will detonate.

Nor does palmistry give times, dates, places of the future...

but it does leave a trail of landmarks from your past.  It hints at what you might do next, but it isn't compulsory. 

 The truth? 

What you read in your hand is not your fate.  It is a finely crafted etching of your character - pointing out what you might do if you are given enough rope.

Numerology for dummies

On the other hand, if you are good with figures, numerology may be more your line.  If you were born on the eighth day of the eighth month in the eighty eighth year of the twentieth century (8/8/88), you can savour its harmony.  Indeed, many people decided to be married on that day.  

Were you born on 8/8/88?

The two circles of the eights, I'm told, signified perfect unity. Anyone born on that day could look forward to a significant event.  However, in occult language, 'significant' is not always a happy word.  'Significant' could mean  anything from winning Masterchef to crossing a fault line during an earthquake.

Choose your own future

Having said that, numerology lets you glimpse the future while improving your maths.  Furthermore, you will have a choice of futures, depending on which numerology book you read.  And, believe me, there are many.

More about the number 8

 One book may focus on the day you were born.  Let's continue with the number eight.  If you were born on an eight day (eight and any number which adds up to eight ie 17, 26) then you are under the influence of all things eight.  Your book will tell you that eight people are born in the shadow of Saturn and they are often misunderstood and lonely.  It then goes on to tell you to avoid all things eight.  Don't live in an eight house.  Don't get married on an eight day.  In fact, stay in bed on an eight day!

If you don't like 8, try 6

 If being an eight person doesn't appeal to you, try another numerology book which uses every number of your birthday.  If it is 8/6/1945, then you add them together and the answer is 33.  To reduce this to a single digit (numerology was invented before there were more numbers than fingers), you add the three and three together and - voila! - you are now a 'six' person.  Six is a fine hard working, honest number.

If you don't like 6, try another numerology book

On the other hand, there is a school of thought which says that six is the number of the Devil, and besides, what fun is there being fine, hard working and honest? 

Try another numerology book which includes your name too.  Every letter is given a number, and again, you add them together.  If the answer doesn't open up enough avenues, simply add your middle names, house number, licence number, credit card numbers, phone numbers.  Stop fiddling the books when you find a number which predicts incredible financial success, then go ahead and do it.

An ode to tobacco

Where there's smoke....

I have never smoked.  However, mum did.  She smoked as a way of diet control: she had a cigarette instead of a snack, or dessert.  

When she gave it up, she went through a withdrawal that was painful to witness, and I tried to give shape to that pain in the following article called 'No Smoking'. 

It was published as a newspaper column in 1990, and brought down the wrath of the Tobacco Institute: their letter (more a diatribe, really) to the newspaper is reproduced below my article.  

The Tobacco Institute's response prompted others to express opposing views.  These letters are also included.  

NO SMOKING

Tobacco is a dirty weed; I like it.

It satisfies no normal need; I like it.

It makes you thin, it makes you lean,

It takes the hair right off your bean;

It's the worst darn stuff I've ever seen,

I like it.

Graham Hemminger.

Smokers know they are addicted to cigarettes.  It just doesn't feel like an addiction until they try and stop.

Then they notice.  All they can think about is a cigarette.  Any cigarette; well, half a cigarette; that butt in the ashtray will do or just a tiny puff…and after that, they'll give them up.

Smokers also know that succumbing to an addiction does not advance humans as a species on the evolutionary scale.  They know (mercifully not by sight), that their lungs are dripping with black slag.  Every day, they are reminded that each cigarette is a nail in their coffin. 

So the segregation begins.  Smokers stink of nicotine which they cannot smell themselves because, as non-smokers point out, tobacco dulls the senses.  They have two or more orange fingers and the occasional orange tooth.  Smokers who started young are stunted - even the tall ones, who would have been taller.

Because of a personal insecurity which is either a consequence or a cause of smoking, they always have cigarettes upon their person.  If that supply runs out, they always know who else has a cigarette they can borrow. 

And, always there is the problem of disposing of those major pollutants - butts, ash and smoke.  Cigarettes meet an untidy end in empty beer cans, the dregs of coffee or in the toilet bowl, where they won't flush away.  The smoke permeates the drapes and carpet, and leaves the air smelling second hand.

Fresh cigarette ash, as tiny red coals, burns holes in furniture, clothes and people.  The cold ash sprinkles into drinks, desserts or onto the cream carpet.  So the segregation continues.

Smoking is now an anti-social act.  The world is becoming a smoke-free zone and cigarettes are no longer allowed in work places, theatres, restaurants or anywhere near a non-smoker.  However, smokers can light up in trains and planes - as long as they step outside.

Smoking is discouraged while others eat, but some cheat and smoke during dessert, preferring the cigarette to the sweet.  They cling to their sole remaining right to smoke with coffee, cup after cup after cup.

While smokers are being edged out of society, the cigarette is being taxed out of their income, and is gradually pricing some smokers clear out of their addiction.

But, not the hardened smokers, even if they have to roll their own.  They smoke on - in moments of boredom, of stress, of calm.  They hold the cigarette scissored between the first two fingers and, whenever they remember, they put it in their mouths and breathe it in.

If both hands are engaged, they clench the cigarette between the teeth.  The smoke wafts into the eyes, producing the famous smokers' squint.  And, until the filter sogs and sags, they can still talk with their lips together, although they may not pronounce their vowels as roundly as they would like.

No one really knows why smokers must smoke.  Non-smoking theorists suggest smokers were deprived of their dummies when they were babies and this, combined with a defect in their personalities, creates a compulsion to suck something.  Smokers answer that a cigarette is merely a mechanical device that stops them eating and drinking too much, or climbing the walls with tension, at the same time keeping the economy fluid and besides, everybody should mind their own business.

But it is everybody's business because cigarette smoke, as a pretty cloud, floats unerringly to the nearest non-smoker, whose lungs are innocent of smoke.  Nature, in her wisdom, abhors a vacuum.

Some smokers smoke in bed and, if they go to sleep with the cigarette in their mouths, it falls onto their nylon nighties and burns them up.  Sometimes they survive.

Some smokers see another smoker have a massive heart attack, and this terrifies them into giving up smoking.  If this terror is stronger than the desire to smoke, the separation from cigarettes will be permanent.

Nevertheless, those first weeks of withdrawal are an agony, not only for ex-smokers, but for all who speak to them, walk by them, sit beside them, look at them, live with them or do anything which might suggest cigarettes, such as burning the toast.

Time pacifies them, and they become non-smokers, but always they are divided by two emotions: a yearning for their dear dead friend, the cigarette; and pride that they mastered their killer, the cigarette.

But, in moments of doubt, they wonder if they have really be snatched from the jaws of death.  All around them they see smokers still in the grip of the addiction that kills and maims.  Why don't they all, without exception, die of heart or lung failure at 36 years of age?  Why do some smokers live long, full, rich healthy lives?  Is there any justice?

END


Letters to the Editor (two days later)...

SMOKER BASHING SMACKS OF INTOLERANCE
SIR, Your columnist's intolerant approach to the smoker and smoking is an unfortunate example of the current fashionable popularity given to criticism of the lifestyle and behaviour of our fellow man.

It is disappointing that the author, from her position as a press columnist should feel entitled to set about to so determinedly malign a custom which has been accepted for decades, is not illegal and which has been chosen as a preferred behaviour by some four million Australian adults.

Your columnist says, "No one really knows why people smoke".  We may as well question why the individual chooses to follow ANY particular behaviour, but William Thackeray's words "I vow and believe that the cigar has been one of the greatest creature comforts of my life - a kind companion, a gentle stimulant and an amiable anodyne, a cementer of friendship" may perhaps provide some learned enlightenment behind the smoker's perception of his custom.

However, more than any of the broad assumptions, inaccuracies and exaggerations in her column, it is your columnist's pronouncement that "smoking is now an anti-social act" which serves as a worrying demonstration of a growing intolerance in the community - an intolerance of the right of the individual to pursue his or her chosen lifestyle.

This is not to suggest that your columnist or anyone else must necessarily approve of the chosen lifestyle of another individual, however this single-minded display of an attitude which promotes the open criticism  and denigration of another individual's preferences - in this case the decision to smoke - should be of concern to all in our community who value the principle and recognition of the freedom of the individual.

Put simply, the propagation of attitudes such as those expressed in this column should have no place in a tolerant society.  

Perhaps your columnist and those who would support her intolerant view of the preferences of others should be reminded of US professor James Buchanan's warning that "any attempt to impose one person's preferences on the behaviour of another must be predicted to set off reciprocal attempts to have one's own behaviour constrainted in a like fashion".
RICHARD J. MULCAHY, Chief Executive Officer, Tobacco Institute of Australia, Sydney.


Letters to the Editor (four days later)...

A CREATURE COMFORT ...
SIR, The Tobacco Institute's chief executive, Richard J. Mulcahy, must be desperate to quote Thackeray to provide enlightenment (sic) on how addicts perceive smoking.

Of course, while Thackeray, a social satirist, was paying tribute to the cigar as a "creature comfort", his era was not exactly edifying.

Children were being pushed down mines and up chimneys; women were dying at childbirth because surgeons failed to wash their hands; and people were taking arsenic as a cure for syphilis.

And Thackeray's contemporary, Samuel Coleridge, was addicted to opium, which he claimed helped him write his poetry.

But it proved to be an albatross: he never achieved his full potential, mainly because Coleridge admitted being constantly doped out of his mind.

Incidentally, Mr Mulcahy, opium was legal at the time.  And, yes, tolerated by society.
 (Dr) PETER SAGO, W. McKEOWN, PHIL THORNTON, Paddington, NSW.


Another letter to the Editor (same day)...

...LIKE SPITTING IN PUBLIC
Sir, Richard J. Mulcahy of the Tobacco Institute called for more tolerance towards the habit of smokers.  I agree that tolerance is certainly necessary.

However, smokers must also learn to respect the rights of others to be able to breathe clean air. I have no objection to smoking, providing it is "restricted to consenting adults in private!"  Like spitting, it should not be carried out in public - especially in restaurants.
BRIAN SNAPE, East Hawthorn, Vic.

Cockatoo Island dockyard auction - 23 years ago.

One of 6,000 lots sold at the Cockatoo Island Dockland auction in 1991

Twenty-three years ago, Cockatoo Island Dockland (a Sydney Harbour island and a decommissioned shipyard) went under the hammer.
 In October 1991, amid speculation that the island would be an ideal site for a casino, all ship building machinery and plant was sold to the highest bidders.  There were 6,000 lots for sale, and it took five days.
At that time, the island was not usually open to the public, so it was a chance for people to peek at the recent past before it was dismantled. 
Most of the machines dated from the 1930s and had been used for ship building and repairs, peaking in World War II, when 3,600 men had been employed on the island.  For about 50 years, Cockatoo Island had been one of Australia's biggest shipyards.
That era being over, the island was decommissioned (Navy-speak for 'time to go') by the Australian Defence department, and it was moving right along.
Those who came to the auction did not necessarily come to bid, but to admire and perhaps caress those magnificent machines of the past.   
Who could resist the muscular splendour of a 5-tonne overhead crane, or the well-oiled delight of an Australian iron-and-steel four-metre gap bed lathe (3,000 between centres, 500 swing, four jaw chuck and steady's), or the simple handiness of the Yale triple-gear 5-tonne chain blocks?  It was machine-lover's heaven. 
One lathe was said to be the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere. It was 12.2 metres long, weighed in at 150 tonnes and was the star of the auction. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that it sold for $15,000, but the estimated cost to dismantle, carry by barge off the island and reassemble in its new workshop was $300,000.

A little something for the men's shed

A man from Dubbo, having read about the auction in the newspaper, had dropped everything and hurried to Sydney for a chance to farewell this lathe. He was last seen climbing over it, tenderly stroking its oiled surfaces and saying: 'They don't make 'em like they used to.'
The auction was a mobile shopping spree. Most items were nailed down or were bigger than a grain silo, so the auction crowd had to trail from building to building.
The auctioneer was rarely seen, but always heard. For five days, he could be tracked by the microphoned rapid auctioneer-babble echoing across the island from various vantage points: the destroyer wharf, propeller shop or up a ladder on the roof of building 117.

Whether or not these machines were in working order was, as the Terms of Sale side-stepped, a ‘matter of opinion’. Who’s opinion?  Nevertheless the Terms of Sale bluntly stated: ‘No warranties are given whatsoever. Caveat Emptor.’
Buyers who were looking for a bargain may have been disappointed.  These machines were undoubtedly old, some rusted, but their elegant art deco designs transcended their real value.  Furthermore, they had provenance:  they built the ships that took our boys to war. Perhaps this was why, in the opinion of some bidders, they were selling for more than they were worth.

Money for old rope

Pickles Auctions estimated that the gross proceeds of sale possibly exceeded $1.5 million.
Sentiment did not enter into the cost of haulage. Enough to say that everyone loves an island, especially specialists in machinery removals, craneage, fork lifts and barge owners.
According to the ‘Information to buyers’ section of the catalogue: ‘Getting purchases off the island is a breeze. An approximate cost for a truck to go to and from the island is $150.’
Trouble was: many items were much bigger than trucks.

Barge for hire: truckin' it to the Cockatoo Island Dockland auction.

About 600 people a day attended the auction, most of whom denied they were buying for themselves. They had a friend who needed a Cincinnati No 2 U milling machine or a Churchill spindle grinder.
Reading the nostalgic mood of the crowd, scrap metal merchants kept a low profile.
People with cameras did not bother to bid. They took photos of the recent past imposed on the more distant past: a convict-built prison as background to 1930s machinery being fork-lifted down the road.
They took photos of the dry docks, one of which was built by the convicts. It was apricot sandstone descending in steps and stairs in a hull shaped excavation deep below sea level.
A dam wall may have stood between you and the sea, but it was still an act of bravado to climb into the depths of the dry dock.  This was where drainage trenches were filled with water and where fish were stranded after the sea had been pumped out.
As the story goes, when the dockyard was fully operational, and seawater had been pumped out of the dry dock, a worker grabbed one of these stranded fish by the tail. The foreman glared down from the rim of the dry dock and bellowed: ‘Fire that man!’
At that time, about 4,000 people worked on the island. The last ship was built in 1984. The last submarine was refitted in 1991.
In the amenities block, 900 Brownbilt steel clothes lockers went up for sale. They stood rusted and empty, some with their doors swinging open, waiting for their owners to return.


NOTE:  The casino was never built, possibly because parking was a problem.