drinkingwithflies

john mcadam
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john's musings and reflections and things that confuse him read all of john's blog posts at drinkingwithflies.wordpress.com

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    i was diagnosed with procrastination: part 2

    I’d been lying unmoving in an Emergency Department bed for over five hours with a tangle of electrodes and IV tubes snaking out from my hospital robe. I'd had numerous blood draws, CT scans and heaps of other tests. The number of people coming and going into my room was going to cause the door to fall off its hinges. My visitors introduced themselves, asked medical questions, and left, and it didn't take long for me to figure out they were the members of my Gastroenterology team. They had identified what was wrong with me, and I learned they were operating tomorrow morning. On returning from pointing Percy at the porcelain, I suffered a bout of dizziness that reminded me of my time in Darjeeling, where I became aware of the dangers of llama spit.  This episode is also available as a blog at drinkingwithflies.wordpress.com

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    i was diagnosed with procrastination: part 1

    Sometimes time will slip away from you, and a series of medical setbacks in the last few months distracted me from my drinkingwithflies blog. I thought my latest journey to the Emergency Department would give me some quiet time to contemplate a blog posting but all it did, was cause me to think about Instanbul in the seventies and travelling along the Hippie Trail from the Iran border to Herat. And that was before I made it into a room in the Emergency Department and became transformed into a Frankenstein monster. This episode is also available as a blog at drinkingwithflies.wordpress.com

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    never eat chocolates when you’re knitting

    Mum inspected my socks, undies, shirts and anything else I wore for the slightest indication of a hole. I gave her every opportunity to be able to perform a daily inspection of my clothes because I’d drop whatever I was wearing when I was changing into my pyjamas onto the bedroom floor. It became part of her Tuesday night darning collection pile. After the dishes were washed in the sink and dried, mum sat at the kitchen table with the darning pile and her darning-sewing box. Her darning-sewing box was a MacRobertson's Old Gold Chocolate Box. Mum was a darning and knitting wizard. She knitted all my jumpers, cardigans, gloves, and anything I wore that was wool. Then came the fateful time when she knitted my school uniform jumper. I was a youthful adolescent entering the third form at an all-boys technical school. The jumper was a different stitch than the school jumpers bought at the shops and I became the subject of ridicule and mockery. This episode is also available as a blog at drinkingwithflies.wordpress.com

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    you should never take up an uninteresting hobby

    I’m at sixes and sevens with what to do with myself in the mornings. At first, when my morning recurring hospital visits were over, I was excited about having the morning time to myself to do nothing. As the mornings without the predictable hospital visits wore on, I was tiring myself out so much by doing nothing that I started taking mid-morning naps. Being at home with nothing to do has caused me to think that overdoing nothing might become boring and that maybe I should take up a hobby. But what hobby should I take up? I’m out of practice with hobbies. I put together plastic models and collected stamps as a youngster. Making plastic models showcased my ineptitude at painting bits and pieces of tiny plastic and staying inside the lines when painting sizeable bits of plastic. And stamp collecting only caused waves of youthful frustration. I’m having as much trouble choosing a new hobby as I do when choosing between a chiko roll and steamed dim sims. This episode is also available as a blog at drinkingwithflies.wordpress.com

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    what’s the good of being an island if you’re not good at it.

    I sometimes wonder why tourists, when they prepare their must-do list, include a city's and a country's most popular attractions when those sights are struggling with over-tourism. When I’ve stopped over in Sydney, I’ve found it's easier to take care of the must-do iconic attractions from the plane window rather than tootling around the city for a few days. On my last visit to Sydney, I spent a few days wandering around Barangaroo, enjoying fish and chips at Watsons Bay, gazing in awe at the wood escalator sculpture at Wynard Railway Station, and eating roast vegetables at the David Jones Food Hall. Inspired by the spirit of adventure, I decided to go on a 2-hour Saturday night dusk Haunted History Tour of Cockatoo Island. Cockatoo Island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Sydney Harbour and is a short ferry ride from the CBD. The island is a source of intrigue and inspiration because of its convict history and heritage buildings. As the Sydney settlement grew from a colony into a city, its convict prison built became an industrial school and reformatory for girls, and later a prison barracks. Over the years, the islands sandstone foreshores were blasted with gunpowder to construct a dry dock for shipbuilding and repair and then a naval shipyard. A perfect setting for a Haunted History Tour. It seemed as if the noisy island glamping campers wandering about exploring their overnight island and the One Electric Day festival spooked the ghosts because our tour group didn't have any paranormal experiences. This episode is also available as a blog at drinkingwithflies.wordpress.com

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    it’s all about wearing trouser clips and gripping the handlebars

    The first car outside our house was a Vanguard, followed by an Austin, and then came a succession of the latest model Holdens. And thus, started our Saturday afternoon drives. We lived in a working-class Western suburb of Melbourne, so our Saturday drives were through affluent Toorak, South Yarra, Kew, and Camberwell, and sometimes to the Dandenongs and the cities of Frankston and Geelong. Dad never stopped the car on our afternoon drives, and I learnt to appreciate that a weekend drive is about the journey and its moment in time, not the destination. And just as we meandered through the city and suburbs on our Saturday drives, I did the same, years later, on a pushbike. I didn’t choose the bike over a car because I had a love affair with the pushbike. I was once again a penniless full-time university student. My Melbourne city and suburban bike ridings were before the age of the urban cyclist. There were no bike lanes or painted bikeways defined by plastic delineators to separate you from traffic and parked cars; you only became a skilful city cyclist through trial and error. As a young boy, I learned the perils of falling off a bike; and I learnt early in my city cycling to never ride on the tram tracks. This episode is also available as a blog at drinkingwithflies.wordpress.com

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    all I ever wanted was to own a fruitcake

    Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve loved fruitcake. Mum made a fruitcake every Sunday baking day, and I’d take a slice wrapped in greaseproof paper every day for my school lunch. I sometimes swapped my fruitcake with other boys for a coffee scroll or cream bun, but I never swapped with the migrant boys. Nanna’s traditional Christmas plum pudding was a big round moist fruit cake and was always the dessert at our family Christmas dinners. Nanna always cooked her pudding with threepences and sixpences, and we enjoyed eating the pudding as much as finding the hidden coins. And then I found out nanna would stuff coins into my brother's slice of plum pudding. I’m glad I learnt about the coins in my brother's pudding later in life. I could push it to the back of my mind and continue to remember parts of Christmas when I was growing up. This episode is also available as a blog at drinkingwithflies.wordpress.com

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    dogs bark and the teardrop camper goes by

    It wasn't that I doubted if dad and granddad would be able to throw together a camping trailer; it was that I didn't think they understood the existential aesthetics of a Masonite teardrop camper. Some would have doubted their carpentry skills. Granddad was a tinsmith by trade, but he had a collection of woodworking tools in his backyard shed, and dad was a smooth-talking suave salesman who was everybody's best friend and would give anything a try. They built the camper on a small trailer dad bought. I think they made the design up as they went, and it ended up as a small camper with a tiny door able to accommodate two people in sleeping bags. And so our camping holidays became camping and caravanning escapades and kindled my need to discover the inspiration and idealism of the Masonite teardrop camper that I sometimes slept in on family holidays towed by a FB Holden station wagon. This episode is also available as a blog at drinkingwithflies.wordpress.com

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john's musings and reflections and things that confuse him read all of john's blog posts at drinkingwithflies.wordpress.com

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