I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree.
Trees by Joyce Kilmer
I haven’t managed to join in any of Cee’s Challenges for a couple of weeks. I never seem to be ready with a post in time but this week I am determined even if it has to be photos from the archives like this one of my beloved apple tree.
One of the things I like most about living in Tasmania is that I can have a green lawn. I used to live in South Australia and as if the hot, dry, grass killing summers were not bad enough, our house was built on a block composed basically of limestone. After several tries, we gave up trying to grow a lawn and had bark chips, pavers and ground cover plants.
My lawn is not one of those beautiful smooth lawns like a bowling green or a golf course but it is grass. Personally, I like the daisies mixed in with the grass. They remind me of my childhood in England making daisy chains with mum.
Daisies in the lawn.
What would sportsmen do without grass? As I write this I’m watching cricket on television from Lords Cricket Ground in London. The state of the grass is a big deal in cricket. Will the wicket be bouncy, flat or two-paced? Will the outfield be fast or wet and slippery? In the tennis world, everyone talks about the grass courts at Wimbledon, another iconic British sporting arena. All codes of football are played on grass that often turns to mud in winter. It’s a lot less painful to play football on grass but I know of a team who plays on a gravel surface in Queenstown, Tasmania
The Melbourne Cricket Ground.
I think it is important that every city has green space. Those quiet places you can go to enjoy a bit of nature amongst the concrete and steel. Especially if you are not fortunate enough to have a garden of your own.
St David’s Park, HobartBattery Park, HobartBotanical Gardens, Hobart
Of course, if all else fails you could always buy some astroturf and have fake grass.
When Naomi and I get together we laugh about all sorts of things, quite a few of them you just had to be there for and even then you’d have to be us to see the humour. Quite often her laughing will set me off as well. Pets are very funny too, the things they do often make me laugh. There are a lot of movies and TV shows that make me smile but once in a while, one comes along that really makes me laugh out loud. I always laughed at “The Muppet Show” for instance. I have favourite books that make me laugh out loud too. Gerald Durrell writing about his family in books like “My Family and Other Animals, The Picnic and “Fillets of Plaice” (even the name makes me laugh), Betty MacDonald writing about hers in “The Egg and I” and especially “Anybody Can Do Anything”. Really old books but still funny I think.
What’s the world coming to? (Credit to Mel of Crushed Caramel…)
I don’t know but something a lot less funny than being demolished by the Vogons to make way for a hyperspatial bypass.
photo from Flickr use Porcupiny
In one sentence sum up the Internet.
The internet may be both the best and the worst thing ever invented.
Photo: Elias Schwerdtfeger Flickr 2014
If over time you replace parts on a car, at what point does it stop being the same car you bought? How many parts do you need to replace to make it a new car?
This is “Grandfather’s Axe” for a new generation. My answer is that it will never be a new car because unless you replaced all the parts at once there will still be older parts. Is it the same car? Well, the folks at the DMV think so, don’t they?
Gratitude is an attitude. Yea or nay? Explain your viewpoint, please!
Yes, I think it is. You can choose to be grateful for what you have even if it’s not much or you can choose not to. When I say gratitude I guess I mean appreciation. I often say in these posts that I’m grateful for my home, my family and friends, pets, nature etc. I focus on those things because I think it better for me to focus on what’s good in my life than what is bad. Now in my case, there is more good than bad so it’s not so hard but I could focus on not having my husband anymore, a job or a decent income. I choose not to. I’d just be making myself unhappy. I imagine that if you are living in a slum or a detention centre it’s a lot harder to find anything to be grateful for but maybe even more necessary for your mental well-being.
Like most of us, I have fears that may seem irrational to others. I have a fear of falling that prevents me from doing things like changing lightbulbs, getting on to escalators without panicking and going up or down a steep flight of steps. As I have grown older it has become worse. I can’t even ride on the top deck of a bus now because I’m afraid of going down steep steps backwards.
These were once Sydney’s oldest moving stairs. They are wooden and were only replaced in the last year or so. I think this was at Town Hall Station but I can’t remember for sure now.
Things like going to the doctor or to visit a government department also make me feel fearful but in a different way. I feel like there is a big stone in my chest. I do what I have to do but really I just want to run away.
I am lucky though that I don’t have to experience the fears that many people have to face every day. The fear of being hungry, of having nowhere to sleep at night. I do think about this one a lot because I know that it can happen to anyone. A bit of bad luck, illness or debt and suddenly you are out on the street.
Imagine what that would feel like, losing your home. Suddenly all you have in the world is what you can carry with you. The night is coming and you don’t have enough money to rent even the cheapest room for the night. How do you sleep out in the open? How will you keep warm? How will you prevent your stuff from being stolen if you do manage to sleep? How do you protect your family when there is nowhere to go? How do you live with that fear every day maybe for years?
Tributes left for Wayne “Mouse” Perry, a homeless man who was murdered near this spot.
I thought that I wasn’t going to get to the Hobart Model Train Show this year. Naomi and I had planned to go on Saturday and then my real estate agent rang to see if he could show the house that day. When we have a viewing I need to be at home so that I can take Cindy for a walk while the potential buyers are there. As there are few buses on Saturdays and they were coming mid-morning my chances of going out were nil. I had arranged to have groceries delivered Sunday, a day I rarely go out, but luckily I was able to switch my delivery to Saturday afternoon and free up Sunday for the outing.
As I’ve been going to the Model Train Show every year for a long time now I have seen a lot of the displays before. However, as I only see them once a year that doesn’t really worry me. I tried to look for some new angles to photograph the trains from.
Naomi and I both like the British themed layouts because they remind us of our early childhood. We didn’t travel on trains too often but the town scenes always seem vaguely familiar to me.
Terrace houses in a British themed layout.
We both liked this layout with its rows of terrace houses and the painted backboard which gave the scene more depth.
The roundhouse at Richmond Bridge
We also enjoyed talking to some of the operators. As we love miniature things as well as trains we appreciated the detail in some of the scenes. I think that some of the people who build model railways are very creative and imaginative. They create little scenes which if you spot them may tell a story or make you laugh. One gentleman told us how he’d cut down a model figure to sit inside a car but the figure had folded arms so he didn’t look like he was driving it. People mentioned this so he made up a story about how one of the locals liked to walk his dog off-leash but the dog was badly behaved and would run on the road. The man in the car knew this so he was sitting with his arms folded patiently waiting for the dog to get off the road. It was true. I saw the dog myself.
Richmond Bridge
There were a few layouts based on places in Tasmania and South Australia. The Gawler layout that I wrote about last year was there again and we especially enjoyed seeing that because it was a place we knew quite well at one time and the Redhen railcars were part of our lives for a long time from our early teens through to our thirties when we were cleaning them at the old railcar depot. I do hope someone models that one day. I’d like to see our old workplace in miniature.
SAR/ANR 830 Class
SAR Diesels
SAR 500 Class & wagons
SAR Diesels
Redhens at Gawler
We stopped to say hello to Peter Fielding who as usual had brought a small but detailed display. This year he’d brought “The Poo Train” which showed trains that carried manure. Peter likes to educate and entertain the children but poo was a bit much for us so we just had a quick chat before moving on.
As usual, the Transport Museum volunteers had fired up a locomotive to give rides in the yard. We didn’t go for a ride this year because we’ve done it many times but we did stop to take some photos before we left.
I just went to tygpress.com to see if Carol Anne’s (Therapy Bits) posts we’re still showing up. In her post she asked, “If you can check on tygpress for therapy bits and let me know, I’d appreciate it!”
So I did. I typed “tygpress.com” in my browser and this is what came up: Wow! Tygpress.com is “temporarily out of service.” And the out-of-service message even included an apology: “We are extremely sorry to the content owners.” Well I’ll be damned.
We did it. We shut down Tygpress!
Well, at least temporarily! How great is that?
Congratulations to all of you who made your voices heard, who posted complaints to DigitalOcean and to WordPress, who completed the forms, and who used this badge:All of your efforts seem to have worked. Woo hoo!
Now we just need to mobilize like this and maybe Trump will be a one-term President!
Wow! Tygpress.com is “temporarily out of service.” And the out-of-service message even included an apology: “We are extremely sorry to the content owners.” Well I’ll be damned.
All of your efforts seem to have worked. Woo hoo!
