Not to harp, but tomorrow is the last calendar day of summer. February is a short month and so robs us of a few final lingering days. March follows keenly on it's tail, ushering in the long, somewhat melancholic and inevitable slide towards winter.

We feel the seasons in the Blue Mountains, each has it's own distinctions. Autumn is probably the most pronounced, for the mixture of natives and exotics can make for a strangely disparate yet spectacular display. It doesn't seem right to feel sad at the fall of leaves and the clashes of colour as we approach the onset of the colder, darker season. Aching beauty and disconsolation don't well together, do they?

For now, we will have to wait for 'the fitful gusts that shakes / the casement all the day' that 'from the mossy elm tree / takes the faded leaf away'. Actually I don't have any casements nor elm trees handy, but John Clare would know.

 Yes, summer is fading, but on the whole, it hasn't been much of a summer. We have had a lot of rain (good for keeping the bushfires at bay), we had no Christmas (for we were in mourning) and the new year kicked off with much the same feel of the last (it is often thus). There have been summery days now and then and a lot of too-warm nights, but it has not been a time of blessed dog-days, food and rest.

Not to complain though. The blue skies are still deeply cheering, the clouds high-builded and even the frequent showers and misty drizzle have their own special charm. On any given day I might wander in the garden to a different experience, one informed by the weather surely, but in which trees and birds seem to have a secret understanding of this liminal time, one which has confounded the mere mortal, I.

The sun is rich
And gladly pays
In golden hours,
Silver days,

And long green weeks
That never end.
School’s out.
The time Is ours to spend.

There’s Little League,
Hopscotch, the creek,
And, after supper,
Hide-and-seek.

The live-long light
Is like a dream,
and freckles come
Like flies to cream.

John Updike

I had once thought that each decade of my life involved at least major upheaval, something which throws me completely, threatens my health or well-being, not just a unfortunate turn of events. A bad breakup in  a long-term relationship is a good example, or chronic anxiety, another. Yes, I know, that is not a proper sentence but this is my blog.

But last year took the cake (if baking is the right metaphor), because three or four decades was rolled into one year. I was sick, my wife was sick, my son was sick, my mother passed away and much more besides. When I say sick, I mean in a potentially life-threatening way, not just a bout of the flu or a broken leg.

When I look back on 2024, I can hardly fathom the relentless awfulness of it, though there was a brief respite in the winter months. By the grace of God I am still here, somewhat calmer and stronger in key ways, and it is nearly March, so that is promising. Ann is still having tests but so far they have all come out well.

I feel a little like I am walking on egg-shells, but time is passing. No, one cannot predict whether good or bad is just around the corner, so really, as Jesus said, it is prudent just to take each day at a time. Faith is a mighty blessing, and who can say if I would be here or not without it.

 Rumours have it that the Trump administration is about to flick the switch to Mars, bypassing the Moon as the next best settlement option. NASA has seen a critical change of personnel in recent days which suggest that something is afoot. But the science suggest that a move from the Moon to Mars will end in failure or disaster.

By every metric, the Moon is a simpler settlement option. I do not mean mass settlement, but rather the establishment of Moon bases for research, the latter of which will give us more information about pioneering further afield. The Moon is very close, we have been there before, has water ice and is in range if a rescue or resupply operation is needed.

Mars is a long way away, requires 8 or 9 months to reach at the best possible window and is simply too far for rescue or emergency resupply. Getting there requires exposure to radiation and isolation for months on end. The atmosphere is deadly, the soil poisonous and the weather subject to massive dust storms.

The only thing getting in the way of human settlement on the Moon is the massive egos of tech bros and their mates in politics. But it is profitable to explore Mars into the future robotically until such a time as the technology (rocket propulsion and so forth) makes it a plausible option for spending timeon.

Occasionally I read or hear something that I almost completely agree with. Sometimes the views are so well put that I have to take my hat off - I could never have written so well or succinctly. Yesterday I read a piece by an American psychologist, Erica Komisar, which surveys the rise in psychological disorders in young people.

She posits that a combination of factors have produced a dangerous narcissism - an obsession with self - that have as their inevitable outworking consequences beyond what we might have imagined. She sets this within an historical framework - the feminist movement, materialism and consumerism and the appearance of social media as a substitute for family and a successful launch into the world.

This kind of thinking likely upsets a lot of people. I don't need to say who they are. Any revolution will have unintended consequences. It is not clear to me that we can predict what they might be at, say, the beginning of whatever huge change is being ushered in, nor whether that would make any difference at all.

But freedom, you know, is everything, even if it isn't freedom at all.

 It's funny how memories flip out of nowhere. Well, not exactly nowhere, but often through links likely established long ago in the brain. My son wanted a Mountain Dew flavouring for  the Soda Stream and this set me off to thinking about a cold drink machine outside a small set of shops at the top end of Old South Head Rd in Vaucluse. This was a drop off point for the school bus when I was attending Rose Bay Public.

Said bus, a old double-decker, would wheeze up the hill from Rose Bay before depositing its cargo at this spot, actually the intersection of New and Old South Head Roads. Walking home meant passing these shops and the drink machine was a source of fascination. Apart from the usual brands were the relatively new Mountain Dew and a beer-substitute, ASA Horehound. It was rare that we ever were able to spend the few cents in our pockets on these delights, but we did have enough to buy some sweets at the shop directly behind.

An elderly man, wearing a white shop apron and supporting himself with a walking stick (for he walked with a limp), was the proprietor. His name might have been Joffe or something similar, for he had a strong accent (I guess German or Eastern European), one which I can still hear to this day. He had no patience for children and would sometimes chase us from his shop, his cane waggling defiantly like a giant exclamation mark. I don't know why - its possible that he was taunted - or he might just have been ill-tempered.

I wonder today, where he got the limp. He was old enough to be a WW1 veteran - he could also have served in WW2, but he might also have been a Holocaust survivor. I have no way of finding out, though I wish I could.

Today, the door of his shop remains exactly where it was, though it is now a part of a larger establishment. But ajar, as if to welcome him back.

I have been in the garden this morning 'deadheading' the agapanthus. The latter is the rabbit of the plant kingdom, multiplying as if by magic from season to season. They will take over if not attended to, for their rhizomic root system and prolific seed production give them advantages over the natives, except perhaps in a bushfire.

Today was more autumnal than can be imagined, this being only the middle of February, and a cool breeze, reminding me of April, is blowing from the south. Ann and I will shortly go out for a belated Valentines lunch somewhere down the mountain. In this case, it pays to be late.

We have had some hot days recently and we have had big storm days too, when the thunder claps like a bomb above the the peak of the house. But we are still heading into autumn, my favourite time, with an inevitability that cannot be gainsaid.

A poet writes that the 'late summer sun speaks softly.....whispering into the speed of summer's slipping'(Carolyn Riker) which is a lovely way of putting the transition. Yes, it does slip, especially here in the Mountains, and before you know it, autumn is here in full livery.

I think we are on the cusp of a few trees beginning to turn. Then the rush, the rush to the earth.

When I was in my teens we had many distractions from the main game of living. There were radios and stereo players, television and the land-line phone. Actually that is about it, and even those distractions weren't all that serious. Listening to a whole album through, for example, and having to flip sides at the midway point, could be a highly reflective activity.

But we lived in a kind of balance, for these diversions, such as they were, were more than supplemented and likely overtaken by physical activity - sport of all stripes - cricket, soccer, rugby, forcings back - together with the riding of bikes, walking to and from friend's houses, the list does go on. We even used to hike down through the bush to Middle Harbour for no particularly good reason at all.

It strikes me also, though this could partly be poor memory, that young people were far more alert and actually paid attention, even if somewhat laconically, to what was being said or even what was going on.

I don't think the same can be said today. So extreme are the distractions and so omnipresent and easily accessed, that many teens appear to look straight through you when in conversation. Conversation, as such, is not even the right word, because only one of the parties is actually engaged fully.

Now there are good and wonderful things about technology. There are bad and unhelpful things too. Once upon a time we used to guide kids through the minefield of early life challenges, the latter of which were identifiable and comprehensible. But that is changing and the adult world has abrogated its nurturing duty in the face of relentless change. Any fool knows that it can't end well.

 Yesterday I watched a couple of documentaries about South Korea. The first examined the disappearance of five kids, the 'Frog Boys', who went out to play one evening in 1991 and were never seen alive again. Their bodies turned up in a shallow grave on a nearby mountainside ten years later. The murderer is yet to be found and likely will not be, given the poor performance of the police to date.

The second was about the sinking of the ferry MV Sewol in 2014, which unaccountably capsized on calm seas with the loss of 300 souls, mostly high school students. The repercussions of this event are still being felt today.

One common factor in both of these cases was the incomprehensibly inept conduct of officials, police, politicians and people in authority, such as the ship's captain. It was hard to work out what was sheer cowardice, or laziness, corrupt conduct or plain hopelessness. No one needed to die but somehow hundreds did.

I won't go into the details because folks on YT have done that for me already and very competently too. I am sure South Korea is now the better for the scandals that ensued and the heads that rolled. But what a cost in human life and the suffering of loved-ones! That cannot be measured and is unlikely to be forgotten.