My relatives in the UK, Dorothy and Roy, have been working on a family history for my mother's side of things and doing a very good job of it too. I have been running a kind of errand service between them and my mum, for her computer skills are somewhat lacking. Emails get lost or become unopenable, photos download but can't be retrieved, and so forth. For her it is very frustrating but in essence, my role is purely technical.

A recent photo sent from the UK sent my own memories into a tailspin to the 1960's. The shot shows my grandfather standing beside his taxi outside our new house at Chris Bang Crescent, Vaucluse. It is October 1961, a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis; Australia still in the grip of the Menzian torpor. I am three years old and peering from the passenger window. My grandmother has passed away only a year earlier. It is such a different time to the present and the Australia of this photo is barely recognisable. In the background, the long, cool lines of the Pacific Ocean.

Since the Reagan/Thatcher ascendancy, it has been harder to make the case for a progressive agenda. Not only were the dominant governing parties of the right, but the language of progressism was marginalised by that of the economic juggernaut of market economics, which assumed for itself the mantle of the natural and the good. Other models were derided as failed or sickly. An experiment began in market driven reforms which remains with us to this day.

Progressives should take heart though from the often patchy achievements that have followed, for while GDP has grown in most Western countries, inequality and job-related anxiety have followed hard upon it. Perhaps there is an emerging consensus again that there is a place for a mild redistribution of wealth through the tax system and a place for government in the economy.

Moreover a progressive agenda includes the social changes that have occurred (and that many continue to aspire to) since 1945 and which are undoubtedly unsettling to conservatives. Like Clinton and Obama, I came on board for same-sex marriage a little later than perhaps I should have, for there was a conservative and religious case that gave me pause. But evolve I did.

You always have to give yourself permission to change your mind if you are so convinced of another point of view.

A fortnight ago Ann and I attended the wedding of two of my choir buddies, Ben and Linda. It was a very informal but really enjoyable time. The weather was unseasonably hot and the little park in which the formal ceremony took place, hemmed in on one side by the highway and on the other by the train line, was crowded with expectant well-wishers.

The wedding duo had asked me to play a set before the ceremony and so I did, trying hard to find love songs that did not have a bitter, angry or sad twist. Of the 80 odd songs in my repertoire, only 10 qualified as being possibilities and even those had borderline issues in some cases. So I cheated and threw in the a couple of happy but non-love specific songs, such as Wonderful World. Try looking for love songs that are happy through and through. It aint easy!

The reception was in the adjacent Warrimoo Progress Hall (a stout reminder of more certain times) and it was, to the acclaim of all present, a hoot. And Ann looked lovely!



And here are the very happy couple with family. My car inadvertently photo-bombed the pic!

At a Thai forum that I visited yesterday in the hope of gleaning some visa-related information (no luck), I chanced upon a few sub-threads that seemed full of commentary by disgruntled ex-pats and their ilk. I recognised the sentiment immediately, for having lived in Japan for three years, there are certain common elements to what one might call the disillusionment of the Westerner who chances to leave the homeland. Some are understandable, for the cultural and historical differences are deep and the sense of being the outsider never really fades completely. It is not unusual for the euphoria of being immersed in a new society to dim with the passing of time, only to be replaced, if one is not careful, with a nitpicking dissatisfaction. And so it was with the chorus of whingeing correspondents at this site.

One comment I found particularly astonishing came from an Australian pen (should I say keyboard?) that grandly announced that there was nothing special about Thailand and that Australian culture was as deep as Thai culture. By what metric this was measured I do not know, but I can say, it is profound bollocks. If I accept that the writer was including Aboriginal culture and the Western cultural tradition going back to the Ancient Greeks, then there is a case to be made. But this is not what he meant, for these traditions barely inform the lives of average Australians, whose cultural outlook hardly strays from tabloid TV and media, property prices, sport and, er, sadly that's about it. There is nothing wrong with having these interests per se, but there is surely something the matter if they constitute most of what there is.

Even a cursory look at Thai culture (or pretty much any Asian culture) shows a level of depth and sophistication, not to mention an intersection with long history, that makes the shallow Western roots of the Australian implantation look, well, even shallower.

Things with Ann are going well. We have been seeing each other for 7 months now and being a couple with cultural difference (did I really say that?), trust has taken time to develop. I can understand her point of view very clearly, for how potentially fraught is it to enter a relationship in a foreign land, with an inhabitant of said place, without prior recommendation or any real knowledge of that person's character. Australia is a Western liberal democracy which has taken all its cues, until recently, from the the UK and the USA. Only latterly has there been a pivot, so to speak, to Asia.

Thailand is another world by comparison - a society strongly informed by Buddhism, a powerful group ethic and extended family ties and obligations. Relaxed and liberated it might seem to tourists, but scratch the surface and you will find an abiding conservatism.

So Ann and I are negotiating this divide as best we can. I am very open-minded as a rule, though critical of the contemporary interpretation of liberty and freedom in the West. So it is much easier for our minds to meet on many issues.

Ann will move in with me in November, even though this will necessitate a long journey to the city most days. But it will test our relationship and that is a good thing.

Lately I have been watching a lot of programming from NHK, the Japanese broadcaster. Amongst my favourite shows are Document 72 Hours, in which a film crew spend three days in the same location, just watching and talking to people as they come and go. On one level it seems terribly mundane - for what could possibly be interesting about hanging out at a noodle vending machine, or a car yard or even a tobacco shop, to name just three of the locations?

But interesting it is, and on many levels. There is no way of knowing what lives people bring to these ordinary places, but somehow the film crew coax stories of joy, hope, sadness and longing from the most prosaic of daily transactions. One woman newly-divorced, a son re-living a childhood memory, a man getting a truck license just for the heck of it, the tales are unpredictable and insightful. Perhaps this speaks to the way we attach special significance to place - or the sense of place that somehow reorganises our thoughts and brings forth memory and meaning.

Here is a link to the NHK site: http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/tv/72hours/

and two photos, one of the soba noodle machine (one of my especial favourites) and the most recent one, about Hachi the cat and the tobacco shop.

Back in our Japan days Nadia and I used to cycle quite often down to the river. We would bike alongside the Muko River on pathways that were generally flat and arboured by cherry trees. In spring-time this was a popular spot with locals and blue plastic picnic sheets were common as people snacked on festival food and drank sake under the flower-pregnant boughs.

On one occasion in May we were passing by a farmhouse that sat on this narrow river plain and noticed that it was flying flags or kites. These were Boys Day kites in the shape of koi (carp) and many houses sported them from early May onwards.

I found a smaller version of the originals when I was shopping in Daiso recently. Using a long bamboo pole, I hoisted it into a pile of dirt and there it flutters in the Australian spring.