orphan florets of jasmine
spin in a high shout of wind
my son, elsewhere

Tom and I watched The Three Stooges last night. Not the original shorts from many years ago, but the Farrelly Brothers remake from 2012. As a child I loved The Three Stooges, whose black and white high-jinx, knuckleheadery and slapstick was a frequent guest in our lounge room. My father hated them. I don't really know why, though put-downs of anything were not uncommon for him.

Still, I approached the Hollywood homage with trepidation, having seen the disaster that was Thunderbirds, for example. I needn't have worried. Rather than a remake, it was more like a new episode. Well acted and containing all the key elements of the comedic form that made the Stooges popular, I am still laughing at some of the scenes. Most critics panned the movie as pointless, poorly plotted (as if this was ever a consideration in the originals!) and just plain silly. 'Why would anyone want to laugh at this dated nonsense?' is the subtext of most of these self-important screeds.

And I think that the answer is obvious. Low comedy, for want of a better term, has always been popular with ordinary people. It's lineage can be traced from the Greeks through Shakespeare, the Commedia dell'arte, puppetry like Punch and Judy, the music hall tradition and modern cartoon animation, to name but a few. It's popular with the masses, you might say, but not necessarily so with the political class (who can be easily pilloried) or high art comsumers, whose pretentions make if difficult for them to be anything other than sniffy.

If you find your self wanting to laugh our loud, but thinking that, for reasons of taste or cultivation you shouldn't, then maybe you have a problem.

Lately there has been a lot of chatter in the media about ageing. Serious chatter, that is, about the way Western societies prolong life, even after its intrinsic value has apparently ebbed away. Last night over dinner at a friend's house, the subject arose again. Is there a right time to go?

Such a debate is to be expected, given the emerging facts around ageing and the loss of quality of life that can occur. We have become remarkably adept at improving the length of the average life-span, largely through interventions that stave off death. My grandmother died from stroke at 60, fifty years ago, but medication today may have extended her life significantly. Ditto for many other illnesses that now can be ameliorated through medical science.

Longer life doesn't necessarily equate with better life. Sure, no one wants to die and the thought of total extinguishment is fraught. Nor do many folks, on the the hand, want to eek out their days in pain, confusion or debilitating decline. There may be a point at which returns diminish so rapidly that saying 'no more please' to medicines and procedures is a reasonable option.

The Baby Boomers are ageing and I guess that this is the reason for the debate. The immortals are coming to terms with mortality.

This being the school holidays, Tom and I went to an indoor mini-golf centre today. Ten theme-based rooms and 18 holes later, my son emerged with the better scorecard. I especially liked the last chamber, it's three holes weaving their way through scenes of alien invasion. A life-size Tardis sat confidently amidst the battle, my attempts to open its door without management noticing, in vain. So, no escape from the present was possible today.

This morning I lashed out $12 on ebay and bought Quotations of Chairman Mao, aka, The Little Red Book. Much as I would like to launch an antipodean Cultural Revolution (modern popular culture being predominantly a wasteland of sleaze and mediocrity), I'll settle for using it as a companion in my ongoing study of The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

The latter, of course, was no joking matter, much as I might make light of it. Good people were mercilessly cast aside, brutalised, murdered or forced to take their own lives on the whim of Mao and the collection of squabbling sycophants in the CCRG. No doubt there were some 'revisionist elements' in China in the years following the establishment of the PRC, but the chaotic and nihilistic swamp that the CR became was no means of establishing that as a fact.

If I could only be less serious in private, and more so in public.

Ouyang Xiu was a scholar, poet, writer, intellectual and statesman during the early part of the Song Dynasty. Coming to my attention as a result of a recent China History Podcast (thanks Laszlo), I decided to look for works of his that might be extant in English. I came across the following poem.

Scraps of cloud in rosy dusk- West Lake is good.
Flowers on the bank, duckweed on sand,
A hundred acres of peaceful ripples,
On the overgrown bank, no man- just the stroke of a boat.

South-west, across the moon, scattered clouds are drifting.
Cool rises at the terrace rail,
Lotus flowers' scent is clear,
Wind from the water's face makes the wine face sober.

In the West we tend to think that progress is somehow a constant, and linear, and that all received wisdom has passed down from the Greeks through the Romans through the Renaissance and so forth. A simple comparison of Song Dynasty China with any equivalent state in Europe at that time proves what nonsense this is.

Wind from the water's face makes the wine face sober is such a great piece of writing, a reminder of the human amidst the natural world. The pastoral scene, perfectly balanced, placid and idyllic, brings the poet to his senses.

Scotland votes for independence this week. In what might have seemed quite unlikely 12 months ago, there is a real possibility of a Yes vote in a few days time. Opinion polls appear to have everything tied up.

There has been a lot of talk about leaving the matter to the Scot-minus the expats-to decide. It's their business if they want to go it alone. That is certainly true. But it isn't the whole story or the only one. Here's why.

The United Kingdom, by any reckoning, has been one of the most successful unions of nations in history. It is rare for one nation to have had such an influence on people and events. The UK, despite its relatively small size, punches well above its weight. It is a presence at all the top forums around the globe and generally speaking, a force for good. I could recount a sizeable list of failings too, but few nations would escape such an examination. Perhaps none.

It strikes me that the truncated United Kingdom would lose some of the respect and influence that it currently wields and that is not a good thing for the planet. With armed psychopaths forming armies and ersatz states in the Middle East, a volatile and recalcitrant Russia and forces generally aligned with intolerance on the march, strong liberal democracies need to step up and take on the challenge.

I love Scotland and enjoyed my time there in 2005. I understand the impulse that 'independence' stirs in the blood. The sense of freedom and the call to a fresh start, unleashed from the apparent shackles of Westminster. I suspect that feeling might last a few years, only to be overtaken, eventually, by the realisation that something greater has been lost. I hope not. Truly.

After a number of false starts, Spring appears to have arrived. At least, the birds think so. Their song is lilting from all corners of my garden and beyond. Just now a Kookaburra has started up, it's insistent vibrato jarring in the mild sunshine.

Just now I submitted a lesson plan for the final phase of my online TESOL course with iTTT. I am not a huge fan of English grammar but there is a purpose in my getting better at it. I would like to re-invent myself as an English Doctor and offer my services in Sydney. I don't know how that will go, given the vagaries of any marketplace, but I am flexible about pretty everything. It is not about money, though I would like to at least break even. I just want to be useful in a way that I am quite good at. Communicating and motivating.

Just finished another instalment in my ongoing China project, this one, a short book on Bo Xilai. Garnaut's The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo charts the fortunes of the Bo dynasty in China. This is a family with venerable origins in the rise of the PRC, Bo Yibo being a Long March veteran and influential player in Chinese politics. His son, the charismatic and talented Bo Xilai, rose swiftly in the post-Mao world of reform, eventually becoming a senior politbureau member in Chongqing. Now Bo Xilai languishes in prison, following a sensational trial earlier this year. But this being the PRC, nothing is set in concrete. His father survived disgrace in the Cultural Revolution to mount a comeback in the 1980's. The younger Bo might yet rise again.

strangely on cue
tight-shirted September struts
an unloosed swagger