Tag: RDP

RDP: Sport

Confessions of a Lazy Person

My initial response to this post was a polite “no thank you”. I don’t do sport. I have never enjoyed it even as a child. I remember a school sports day when I was five or six. I was in a running race where I came last or maybe second last. I didn’t care about that. What I did care about was that some teachers laughed at the way I was pumping my arms, something I had probably seen athletes do on television. Perhaps mum should not have told me that but anyway I had no further interest in running. When our class was taken to the pool to learn to swim I disliked that they made us put our heads under water.  My school years were a blur of being afraid balls would hit me, being afraid of falling off balance beams and constantly trying to get on the back of the line to do anything physical if I could not avoid going altogether. The only school sports activity I truly enjoyed was once whacking a ball with a hockey stick. Unfortunately, that was the only part of the game that I did like.

I am not a well-coordinated person. I can’t hit tennis balls, I can’t bowl although I do actually enjoy tenpin bowling. I can’t play table tennis although I will give it a go. I still can’t swim. Mini golf is fine, I can hold my own in that although I am not sure if you can call it a sport.

The only sports I’ve ever watched are yacht racing, Motorsports, and cricket. I sat up all night to see Australia win the “America’s Cup” for the first time and I love to see the start of the Sydney Hobart race on TV although that is just as much about the spectacle really.

image yachts
Sydney Hobart Race yachts at Constitution Dock.

I started to watch Motorsports with David. He enjoyed watching it and I became interested myself. We went to a lot of Formula 1 Grand Prix in Adelaide and every other sort of event we could get to for several years. Naomi and I often went to the Speedway too where we enjoyed cheering for our favourite cars and drivers.

Formula one car chassis’ circa 1988-89
Peter Brock at an F1 support race in Adelaide.

I didn’t seriously take an interest in cricket until we moved to Tasmania although I’d sometimes watch it on TV with David. I first went to a cricket match in Hobart to see if I’d enjoy it. I did and went to many more over the next few years.

I especially enjoyed going to live sports events because it’s fun to cheer for your team, it adds to the excitement when you are barracking for a particular racing driver, or a particular team especially if it is someone from your home that you can identify with.

The crowd on the hill at Blundstone Arena

I also really enjoy the photography aspect. I’ve taken a lot of pictures at motor racing events and cricket matches.

One of the few occasions I’ve captured the ball leaving the bat.

 

 

 

 

 

RDP: Colour

Colour My Life

I adore colourful things. I love the colours in nature, colourful fabrics and yarns, and the colours of man-made objects.

The colours in my home reflect that. I don’t mean that I want every room painted a different bright colour or a red splashback in the kitchen. I have some taste! Naomi and I call these houses “clown houses” when we see them in real estate listings but even worse to me are the houses with no colour at all. Lately, there has been a trend to having rooms entirely in grey, walls, floors, curtains and furniture. It washes any personality out of a house and if I had to live in one I’d have to fill it with colours immediately or I would go into a depression. Please don’t make me live in a grey house!

My living room.

Here are some things of colour I love.

Massed pink daisies at Princes Park, Battery Point -Hobart
King Alfred daffodil
Green or Tasmanian Rosella
Vibrantly coloured pinwheels at a shop in Salamanca
This tree was showing wonderful autumn colours.
The famouse face of Old King Cole, Luna Park, Sydney
The famous face of Old King Cole, Luna Park, Sydney
Yarn Bombing
Yarn Bombing a bicycle. Makers on Church St.

 

RDP: Inspire

Finding Inspiration

What inspires me to write a blog? Well when I started my first blog it was partly for practical reasons. I’d been asked to maintain a blog as part of some volunteer work I was doing and as I didn’t know much about it I thought that I should practice on one of my own rather than risk messing up someone else’s. At around the same time I started using Facebook and my sister-in-law commented that I ought to start a blog.  So I did.

I’d read that it was best to write about a subject that you know and like. I started Dolls Dolls Dolls which I now share with my sister Naomi  because I wanted a way to share my enjoyment of my hobby with others.  I enjoy photography and I like taking photos of my dolls but I also wanted to share experiences and information with like-minded people. I suppose you could say I wanted to educate new collectors but in a fun way.

Our Other Blog was started because I found that after a couple of months doing the doll blog  I wanted to write off topic as well. I had photographs I wanted to share and places I wanted to describe.

Sometimes it is a little harder to find inspiration to do this regularly because I wouldn’t say I live a very exciting life. Some weeks I don’t leave home except to go to the Op Shop but the various writing and photo challenges are always there and I enjoy them. I don’t participate in every prompt. If the word gives me an idea it’s pretty easy for me to write 500 words on it. If it doesn’t inspire me I leave it alone. When I do travel I try to take notes although I’m not always regular about doing this.

Travel diary and note book, my sister knows me well.

Things that inspire me to write or take photos:

  • Travel
  • Architecture
  • Memories
  • Animals
  • Nature
  • Home
  • Politics (but not too often)
  • TV and Movies
  • Things that annoy me (but not too often I hope)
  • Dolls
  • Trains

  • image Huon River at Huonville
    The Huon River from the bridge at Huonville

My other main inspiration comes from reading the work of other bloggers. Often a post or even a comment from a fellow blogger will send me on a train of thought that I know I can’t do justice to in a comment so it becomes a post.

When I began blogging  I wondered if I would have the motivation to post regularly. Five years on inspiration has not deserted me yet.

RDP: Migration

Migration

Migration is such a contentious subject today. So many people fleeing war, starvation or oppressive governments and it seems that few countries want them. These people undertake journeys so hard and so scary and with so little chance of finding acceptance in a new country that I’m sure it is not undertaken on a whim. Leaving everything you have ever known is hard, especially if you are poor and faced with no other choice.

LE Eithne Operation Triton
Of course even the people who left their homes of their own free will did not always find migration easy. I’m thinking about the ones who emigrated to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and the USA in the decades after World War II.

When we first lived in Australia we heard of many cases of British migrants who came but went back to England because one or more family members were homesick, they didn’t like the place they were living  or missed their friends and family back at home. Some ended up going back and forth two or three times before finally deciding where they really belonged. Many members of mum’s family emigrated, mostly to Australia but one branch to South Africa. Mum brought Naomi and I here on her own. That could not have been easy even though we were going to be with family. I was eight, Naomi six.

In those days many migrants to Australia came on subsidised fares as after the war there was a big push to bring new settlers here . “Populate or Perish” was the cry. Not all the migrants were British although a large proportion were. I’ve written before about former workmates who came from Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, Poland and practically every other country in Europe.

Here we have Aussies, English, Polish, Italian and Greeks all working together.

Some of my former workmates at our Christmas Party circa 1990

A lot of those post war  migrants came as indentured workers, they worked on the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme or for the Commonwealth or State railways systems or roads in other out of the way parts of Australia.  I mentioned one in my previous post who worked at Maralinga when the British were testing bombs there.

The “Ten Pound Poms” and their fellow migrants often lived in hostels when they first arrived. Some of these were probably war surplus pre fabricated buildings like Nissen Huts. Imagine spending your first Australian summer in one of those! Later those same hostels housed waves of Vietnamese “Boat People” who came to Australia as refugees after that war  and later again Albanian refugees from Kosovo although I think by this time the Nissen Huts had been retired.

Former Main Roads Migrant Camp in Narrogin, Western Australia (exterior)
Eventually those migrants that stayed bought houses, raised families and became Aussies, Aussies with funny accents but Aussies just the same.

Two former Australian Prime Ministers were “Ten Pound Poms” or their parents were. Julia Gillard, our first and only female PM and ironically, Tony Abbott the man who vowed to “Stop the Boats” both came from the UK.

The Header of this blog shows the Sitmar ship Castel Felice. She carried many migrants, including us from the UK and Europe to Australia and New Zealand. Below are a couple of links to migrant stories.

http://passengersinhistory.sa.gov.au/node/922486

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/meet-the-ten-pound-poms#

RDP: Posh

 How To Talk Posh

I couldn’t think of the word posh without thinking of the story of Eliza Doolittle who wanted to learn how to talk like a lady.

I’ve seen the classic film “My Fair Lady” with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison more than once and I’ve seen a couple of amateur productions of it on the stage.

For those who don’t know it “My Fair Lady” is based on a play by George Bernard Shaw called “Pygmalion”. The play in turn was based on Greek  mythology, the story of a sculptor who created a beautiful statue of a woman and fell in love with it.

In the film Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl, asks Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics to give her lessons on how to speak properly so that she can get a job in a flower shop.  Professor Higgins was not really interested until his friend Colonel Pickering bet him that he couldn’t turn her into a lady who could mix in high society and not be found out.

I have to admit that although I like the film and the story I never cared for the Henry Higgins character. I thought he was snobbish and bad mannered. He may have been qualified to teach Eliza to speak nicely but he certainly did not act like a gentleman.  As I was only a teenager when I first saw the film I also wondered why on earth Eliza would fall in love with such a nasty man. Perhaps it was just Rex Harrison’s portrayal, the last time I saw it as a play the actor playing Professor Higgins, who was just an amateur in a small local repertory company, actually made me feel some sympathy for his character at the end when he realises he misses Eliza.

There are some great scenes though, not only the ones where Eliza is learning to talk posh. The scenes with her father Alfred P Doolittle are fun too. Mrs Higgins, the Professors mother, has a couple of good scenes as well.

Eliza succeeded in learning to speak like a lady and fooled everyone at a grand function . The way we speak can influence what people think of us as much as the way we look.

RDP: Copyright

Thou Shalt Not Steal

As bloggers, copyright is something we really need to be aware of. According to the Merriam Webster online dictionary Copyright is:

the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of something (such as a literary, musical, or artistic work)

It is a very big deal to steal someone’s intellectual property whether is rights to a book or film, original art work or even an idea.

Even if no money is involved I believe it is wrong to take another person’s work and pass it off as your own.I have read the stories of a number of bloggers who have seen their words or images posted elsewhere by strangers and believe me they are just as angry and upset as any professional who has had work copied.

It is sometimes hard to know whether it is OK to use an image or someone’s words or not. I try not to do it but I have probably been guilty on occasion. I know of at least one time that I used an image I’d seen on Pinterest to illustrate a doll post and the person who owned it contacted me and asked me to take it down which I did at once with an apology. Pinterest is a bit funny that way as everything on it came from somewhere else. What I generally do now is to post a link to the page where I saw the image so that readers can go and see it if they wish rather than use those pictures directly.

Occasionally I post photos that friends have taken on the blog but I credit them, as I do if I use one of Naomi’s photos instead of my own. Sometimes I  see an image I’d like to use, particularly doll related ones and I do make an effort to find out if it is free to share and even to contact the owner if it is on Flickr or some similar site and ask if I may use it. People usually say yes if you ask nicely, they just want credit and that’s only fair.

Personally I am happy to share my photos and I’m flattered if someone wants to use one. I don’t watermark them which I probably should as it is a good way of making sure they can’t be hijacked so easily. However,  I am annoyed too if I see something of mine elsewhere with no reference to where it came from or who created it. Like those blog sites that are just made up of other people’s posts and no original content. Apart from being very rude that’s just lazy.

In Australia we have the Copyright Act 1968. Here is a link  to an information sheet for bloggers.

https://www.artslaw.com.au/info-sheets/info-sheet/legal-issues-for-bloggers/

 

 

 

 

RDP: Crepuscule

Twilight

I have to admit that I had never come across the word crepuscule before. Now I know that it is another word for twilight. Here in the southern hemisphere our days are getting longer. In a couple more weeks Daylight Saving Time will begin and we will have lots of crepuscule to enjoy.

In South Australia where I used to live twilight was a short-lived event.  By  the sea, where we lived, the sunsets were spectacular but night fell quickly. Here in Tasmania though we have long twilights, during the longest days of summer there is still some light as late as nine at night.

Sailing out of Sydney Harbour as the moon rises.

I like it. I seem to recall that it was like that in England in summer time although of course I can’t be sure because when I lived there I was not allowed to stay up that late.

Twilight is a pleasant time. If the day has been hot it is starting to cool down.  If you have been busy during the day there is still some daylight left to enjoy at the end.

We sailed so close to the Sydney Harbour Bridge.