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.