Sometime during the Covid pandemic people began shifting from cash sales to digital transfers. It's understandable that such a change would occur in the circumstances, but the trend has only hastened since. There are even banks now that do not dispense cash through their tellers!

There are unintended consequences for changes in behaviour like this, not obvious at first. In the past many of the  gold coins ($1 and $2) I had on me found their way into the buckets of buskers or the cups of the homeless. Now when I approach someone, I realise that I don't have the change I used to, resorting instead to an unwieldy pile of 10 cent pieces from a collection at home.

One day that will run out too. I am wondering what all the 'spare change' folks are going to do in the medium term, not to mention the many boxes and donation stands that call for a small contribution in actual money? Card readers are likely expensive and impractical. I am troubled just thinking about it.

 After my shift at 2RPH yesterday, I took Ann and JJ to a Thai café they had stumbled upon in Temperance Lane, a a narrow alley that comes off the Wynyard end of George St. They had been to Tom Yum from Hell once before and had highly recommended the extra spicy bowl of noodles served there. Naturally I opted for the coolest available, a heat that was still considerably hotter than that available at your average suburban Thai. Yes, it was delicious.

But it was Temperance Lane that I was thinking about during the meal, for I must have passed the narrow entrance dozens of times and not once acknowledged its existence. Melbourne has lots of these alleys, all set up with cafes and cute shops, something that Sydney has failed at miserably. So many of those lanes are gone, replaced by the most monstrous edifices jammed together without regard for those on the street, a planning failure on every level.

But back to Temperance Lane. Someone sometime ago had given it this stern moral reproof as a moniker and it had stuck all these years. Apart from the Thai shop at one end, a Mexican cocktail bar sat at the other, displaying a wide range of alcoholic drinks. I wonder if anyone else had pondered this deep paradox.

Two days from now is Australia Day, nominally the 26th January. The date commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet on that day in 1788, essentially the day that Australia was settled by white colonists (and convicts) from the UK.

As such, it has always been contentious for the First Nation peoples, who justifiably label it 'invasion day.' From their perspective, there is no other way of looking at it, since it was the day that dispossession began.

Australia Day has been celebrated on other days in the past and was only settled on permanently by all the states in 1935. Yes, more than three decades after Federation!

Prior to that there had been a gaggle of state-based days that variously commemorated local foundation days, such as Proclamation Day in South Australia (December 28), Foundation Day in Western Australia (1st June), the original Australia Day (1915) which fell on July 30th and yet another Australia Day date in 1916, which fell on the 28th July. Hardly consistent, don't you think?

So changing the date to a nationally agreed upon alternative already has a number of precedents in our recent past and should not be an occasion for bitterness or hand-wringing. If it means that the First Nations people's can be included in, or at least not repelled by, a brand new Australia Day, then who loses out? 

I don't have a particular date in mind (though best to avoid Cook's arrival in Botany Bay on April 29), but sometime in the spring or the autumn. Mild weather, mild attitudes.

Coming back from a ride the other day I encountered a Telstra technician digging around the telegraph pole in front of my house. He was examining the hidden section of the pole, or part of it, in search of rot or deterioration. So it was just a routine maintenance job, though I had never seen the procedure before.

He said that the pole dated from 1967 and was in very good order given its age and the location on a hillside, where it would be prone to lots of moving water. I guess that area must drain very well indeed.

Though my memory is not what it used to be (see previous posts), 1967 is not so bad in that respect. I was in third grade at Rose Bay Public, my final year there before moving to the other side of the harbour. There were at least 40 students in 3A and my recollection is that I finished in the bottom half when the reports came out. 

A privilege of being in the primary school, as opposed to the infants (K-2) was that we could go to the local shops on a Friday to buy lunch, with a parental note, of course. I remember buying fish and chips at an establishment in Old South Head Road, one doubtless closed years ago. It's not something I could imagine happening today, with schools being fenced and often locked during the day, to guard against real or imagined persons of ill-intent. As for getting out the gate without a parent - well, forget it!

I also have fond memories of a cake shop in the same street called, Marie's Cakes and Pies, likely closed long ago. A meat pie or sultana cake from there was a much sought after pleasure. In those days such treats were only occasional (even the word 'treat' has a quaint, out-moded quality) and take-away food was at best once a week or fortnight.

Well, times do change, as they always have. I'm not one for nostalgia or beating up the present in favour of a Panglossian past. There was plenty to not like about 1967 I'm sure, though I was a little young at the time to truly understand it.

 'The woods decay, the woods decay and fall / Me only cruel immortality consumes' writes Tennyson in Tithonus. The poem's namesake learns, not unlike Dorian Gray, that living forever is not all that it is made out to be. 

We live in a time when the desire to remain young, to hold onto whatever vestige of youth that we can, is centre stage. There is talk in popular science that ageing will increasingly be halted, with a view to extending life indefinitely. I don't doubt that science has the capacity to greatly diminish fatal illness and greatly extend lifespans.

But what can work for the body may not work for the mind. Already, depressed or desperate people, some only in their teens, are taking their own lives. They will certainly not leap at the offer of another two hundred years of that which they dread.

I have said many times that modern Western economic systems are making people sick in body and mind - not intentionally, mind you, - but as a by-product of their all-consuming drive for profit. It is a marvel to me that conservatives so love a system that undermines their very values, monetising anything it can, no matter how sacred.

'It's about freedom', one opined when asked. Is it really, all about freedom, or is that just another lazy slogan that sounds good whenever it's trotted out?

On Friday my wife and step-daughter get back from their month-long sojourn in Thailand. I have kept in touch daily though most of our posts via Line have been of the perfunctory 'good morning' and 'good night' variety.

I am surprised at how much I have missed Ann. I knew that I would but I didn't know it would be so achingly difficult. It's not that she cooks and cleans for me - I have long pulled my weight domestically - but that the absence of loved ones can be sorely felt. 

I will meet them at Kingsford-Smith with great gladness, though I know that they will be tired.

Here is one last shot she took before boarding a bus to Bangkok for the flight back home.

The traditional Christian world view is not that difficult to grasp. The Earth is a broken place - a cataclysmic break between God the Creator and man the created occurred at some time in the distant past - and Jesus came into the world, literally as the God Man, to set things right. It doesn't matter whether you see Old Testament stories as literal or figurative - they contain fundamental truths in any event. What does count is that you take the matter of you and God seriously.

Sin is an unfashionable word and concept, but it too is seminal to any discussion of how to bridge the chasm. The Bible is fairly clear on what is sinful behaviour and thinking - Jesus made a point of talking about it - and there is no getting around it. Of course, this will seem like utter nonsense to the sophisticated Modern, for whom faith and sin and God are all outmoded ideas that spring from ancient human thinking, 'crutches' for the weak. And yet, large numbers of people continue to believe.

I find sin the single most challenging aspect of life. Our society is saturated by sensuality - anything that pleases the senses is pretty much okay - and kids are bombarded from an early age by images and ideas that encourage selfishness and hedonism. I speak generally of course, but the evidence of decline is daily in the newspapers and on social media. If you think I am being too hard, just ask any school teacher who has taught across two or three decades to the present day.    

Let me say that I am first amongst sinners. Like Augustan and so many others since, pleasures of the flesh are powerful attractors and hard to deal with. They can be addictive. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul says 'No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind'. It is reassuring to know that we are all in the same boat when it comes to sin and temptation. Our minds tend to make us believe we are unique in this respect. And very fortunately too, God 'will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.' That is even more reassuring, though we have to pay attention come the time of temptation. There is often a 'still, small voice' that can be drowned out. Ours is a time of noise and distraction.

The sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita) is one of the many birds that populate the Blue Mountains. They live in large gangs, are very noisy, often funny and occasionally irritating, the latter especially when I am trying to record a radio program.

They do take their chances with cars though and now and then misjudge distance or speed and collide with one, with usually tragic circumstances for the bird. This morning one was splayed out on the road like a miniature feathered industrial site. Someone kindly placed it on the verge.

I know that birds do notice when one of their kind is in trouble or has passed away. A little while ago a fleet of Cacatua galerita was flying round and round their dead fellow, as if to awaken it. They dived, circled and shrieked with such gusto in the hope, perhaps, that a resurrection might be possible. Or maybe it was just a farewell salute.

I don't remember watching an awful lot of TV in the 1980's, possibly because I got a full-time teaching post in 1982, one which meant that many evenings were taken up with marking and preparation. I remember being so tired just from the daytime slog that if I dared to lie down for minute or two after getting home, I would invariably fall asleep and not wake until it was dark. Not a good idea at all!

And so, as a kind of consolation for what I might have missed (which probably wasn't much) I have been trawling through English crime dramas from that period and a little beyond, courtesy of a Britbox subscription. Cue Miss Marple, Morse, Lewis and half a dozen others which, despite their occasionally dated production values, have been most entertaining.

It coincides with the reading I have been doing for Writers from the Vault for 2RPH. If I find a good story on the TV, then I can go hunting for the book. An extract from that volume might find its way into a program and sometimes this is a catalyst for curating other material (on say, a similar theme) for the same program. It doesn't always dove tail but when it does, well, that is most satisfying.

 It's 20 years now since I parted company with the Department of Education. That separation came under very difficult and stressful circumstances, which had been ongoing for some years. In the end, rather than resign, I had almost miraculously been medically retired, something that I thought was reserved only for those in the most dire health conditions. Still, my assessment, which was a series of interviews and diagnosis's by health professionals such as psychologists and doctors, deemed me no longer fit to go back into an Australian classroom.

This meant that I could draw on my super pension earlier than my usual retirement age - not a large sum of money but sufficient to keep my head above water. It also meant I could return to Japan for another couple of years, pay off my mortgage and do volunteer work when I returned. Much of the latter drew on skills that came out of my teaching experience over almost two decades, experiences that ran the gamut of wonderful to awful. Despite the way things ended, I have some very happy memories of those days.

Gratitude is one of the most important attitudes that we should daily practice. I am very grateful for how things turned out in the end, despite everything. Whenever the tendency to bemoan what should have happened or not happened arises, counting blessings instead is a sure way of developing better mental health.

Back in September and October last year, the grass was dry and turning yellow. It crunched underfoot. Rain was infrequent and the talk was very much of the potential for a bad fire season. 

Living in a National Park has its benefits which are apparent to both visitors and residents alike. But the downside is that when bushfires strike they can do so with devastating speed and vast impact. Back in the 2013, the string of towns that comprise the Blue Mountains were besieged by huge fires on many fronts. Ten years later we feared a resumption of hostilities.

But then came the rains. Aside from the summer storms and accompanying drenching's, there has just been a lot of damp weather. We are no longer 'tinder dry', as they say, though  the fire season can extend into late February. So we are not out of the woods yet.

The new growth that will result from the rains will present its own untimely threat come the next fire season in about 10 months from now. One cannot escape it forever - it is only a matter of when the fires strike - but this breather is more than a blessing, which we gratefully accept.

Well it's the first day of the new year and all seems very much the same. I am still alone in my house, my wife and step-daughter being overseas and my son Tom, busy elsewhere. It's drizzly and cool outside as it was yesterday. The fireworks at 9pm on the TV from the harbour remind me of every other year and commentators continue talking about revellers. That's a word that only seems to come out once a year.

I was looking over some vintage Christmas and New Year's card covers online and found quite a lot that would be best be described as bizarre. The Victorians were especially good at the portraying the macabre, or hinting at it. I suppose it gave them a good laugh and likely only people with money could afford to buy and send cards anyway. 

The one below (which I think I may have published before as part of a series) sends a cautionary message to the receiver about imbibing too much in the festive season. It's a shame to see a poor robin belly up in a bowl of punch and yet another stonking drunk, even as a cat watches in glee.

But Happy New Year anyway!