Happy Belated Birthday Charlie!

Last Thursday was Charles Darwin's 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his famous book "On the Origin of Species".

Through his curiosity and scientific mind, Darwin reasoned that people, animals and plants evolved by genetic variation and natural selection. Now if you are reading this you may just be getting to that point where you are about to head off to read your next blog of interest. But, STOP! If Prof/Dr/Mr Darwin was alive today I would ask him this question. Why, after the 150 years that his theory came into being, moreover, after the core of all biological study and research has come to view natural selection as being at its very core, why, oh why do we still have the following:

Men with hairy ears and over-grown eyebrows?
Women with hairy ears and over-grown eyebrows??
That crooked first toe on most women (and some men!)?
Crooked second toe?
GREY HAIR (personal matter?)
The ability for garlic odour to linger for days on end?
Shopping addiction?
Addiction to chocolate?
Addiction to coffee?
Did I mention shopping addiction?
The necessity to wear glasses?
The fact that you want to sleep in on a weekday but rise before the birds at the weekend?

I could go on, and on.

If you abide by Darwin's theories then you would also believe that we are in the process of a continuing evolution. Maybe these minor nuisances to some (afflications to others!) will be weeded out in generations to come!

P.S. Can you add to my list?? In a few days I will publish those suggestions with a link to your blog, if you don't mind, of course!

P.P.S. Don't you think that the bird looks less menacing than the ear?

Koala seeking refuge from the heat

I recently received this picture by email from a dear friend. Upon finding a Koala on her back verandah (probably as a result of the extreme heat), a woman put out a basin of water. This is what happened next...





All this considering Koalas don't normally need much water, only their yummy usually-moist-enough eucalyptus leaves.


Take care,
Mervat.

Her beauty and her terror.

Last Saturday, we woke up in our semi-rural house bracing ourselves for a hot day, a very hot day. The forecast was for 44 degrees celcius. Our plan was have the airconditioning on, the curtains closed and to stay inside.

However, our youngest (Mr 6 yo) became febrile, his body temperature a smidgeon cooler than outside. Being short on children's paracetamol I hotfooted it (literally!) to the nearest pharmacy. Cursing the heat and the sweat I ran into an aquaintance who runs a shop-at-home clothing business. She decided there and then to give me the 2009Autumn/Winter fashion catalogue. I gracefully took it but threw it in the garbage bin once she had left. Upon my return home my husband informed me of the bush fires that had swept across Victoria. A flick of the channel revealed the flooding that was engulfing Queensland. Oh the contradictions; and here we were in New South Wales, floods to our south and fires to our north.

Today, Monday, we wake up to 22 degrees celcius and a drizzly day. I even donned a cardigan this afternoon. Thought of that catalogue, that was so inappropriately handed to me at the pharmacy, come to mind, even regret at throwing it away. But then a sobering reminder of the state of our country comes from the radio announcer's thick, sombre voice stating that the death toll has reached 131 lives, there are 450 injured (at least 10 of whom are critical) and 750 homes have been lost.

Saturday 6th February, 2009. This date will be remembered for a long time. Even as a Sydney-sider the floods and the fires are a potent reminder of the harsh, unforgiving side of the beauty that is Australia. But, despite all of this, I love this country, my country, my home of thirty years. One of my favourite poems comes to mind:

In Dorothea MacKellar's words:
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror --
The wide brown land for me!

We can only hope that this does not happen again, not for a long, long time.

Take care,
Mervat.

Still following my teacher's advice

Recently, I was listening to the radio and a fellow listener called in to say that he had been attempting to read and re-read (and re-read!!) James Joyces's Ulysses for the last...wait for it...42 years! He starts and re-starts it in June every year. This led me to thinking about the books that I have attempted, stopped reading but returned to read. One particular book for me (which I have started three times over the past year) is Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. This book is regarded as one of the greatest English language novels of the twentieth century and I cannot get past page 20.

Which brings me to another point. My senior school English teacher (Mr Eton, who I credit with having introduced me to the world of literature and to whom I am ever grateful) once said to his class of 30-odd year 11 English students, that one way of knowing whether to continue with a book, is to subtract your age from the number 100. The resultant number you get is the page number you should reach before deciding to give up on a book. At the time he had a bit of a chuckle saying that the older you get the less time you have left and so the 'cop-out' page number gets smaller and smaller. Oh, Mr Eton, may you rest in peace!

Maybe if I wait long enough (i.e. when I turn eighty) I will be able to give up on the book, heeding my year 11 teacher's advice...and no guilt! Or, will I give it another go, glutton for punishment that I am?

What books have you attempted and re-attempted, etc, etc?

Take care,
Mervat

No excuses, just one reason.

I will not make excuses any longer. I have tried to come up with several excuses as to why I cannot bring myself to make the next instalment of our son's scoliosis journey, such as school holidays, family visiting, work commitments, even the weather. I only have one reason. I cannot go back there...just yet. I know I have come a long way (as witnessed by the posts I have uploaded so far), but I need a little more time before I continue. And, I still want/need to write and I have many other things to talk/write about and I will do just that until I am able to revisit the next phase of our boy's experience.

At present I have taken time off work for the next month or so to kick-start my writing. I am working on two novels (apart from throwing myself into the deep end, I guess I like to keep some variety). Even when I read I have, sometimes, up to three or four books going at the same time and I visit them as I please in a similar way, I guess, to following a couple of series on television. Are you like this?


Take care ,
Mervat.