“Poles were once trees too … ” by Robyn Bauer.

The full title of this work is ““Poles were once trees too — Enogerra Terrace, Paddington” and this is a taster. The full image and write-up in Art Stories.

‘Testament of Youth’ …

By Vera Brittain, first published in 1933, and with a long publishing history thereafter, has kept me reading for over a week.

This is not a book review in the formal sense as I’m sure thousands of those have been written over the ninety-one years of existence of this … what we nowadays might call a memoir. (If I understand correctly that such a thing is an autobiographical account of a period of time)

Vera Brittain was of the same generation as my grandparents, who all four were also born in the 1880s to 1890s. Brittain was born in the provincial middle class hinterland of what is now the UK, my grandparents were born and raised in the provincial middleclass hinterland in the Netherlands.

There the comparison ends, for neither of my grandmothers were rebels, and due to their nation’s neutrality, they did not experience the 1914-1918 years in the same way as most other people in Europe.

According to the histories I’ve read, it suited the powers surrounding the Netherlands to allow that nation’s neutrality to continue through the whole of the war, for their convenience.

While German troops crossed and recrossed Dutch territories at will, millions of Belgian refugees made their homes in the Netherlands through the war. Coal and other minerals from the Dutch colonies warmed British homes and kept factories going.

But there was no historical, personal detail from the four families, how they were affected by the fighting on their very doorsteps, they surely would’ve been close enough to hear the guns in Belgium?

And while I’ve read a few historical novels about the Great War, I’d never read an account written from a woman’s point of view. So ‘seized’ the opportunity.

The first most noticeable thing reading a book written in the 1920s is the brand of tortured English. Well, I’m calling it that.

There are always ten words where we, nowadays, can make ourselves understood with a mere five or six. All ten, or however many there are, of the English language’s verb tenses get a good work-out.

It’s noticeable in Brittain’s account when a noun is unadorned by one or two adjectives or a verb with at least one adverb. It feels bare then. Most sentences have more than thirty words. It’s exceedingly verbose and towards the end I skipped many half page paragraphs.

Why did I even keep going, you’ll be wondering? Brittain’s experiences during the war and her incredible, through thick and thin, correspondences with her lover, her brother and two friends of theirs until they died, either in action or after being wounded is the real story here.

How the Army kept the postal service going to all areas of the front would make an amazing read. The logistics to keep that going boggles my mind.

It’s astounding, the numbers of letters written by soldiers at war, sent, and received by relatives if Vera Brittain’s experiences are anything to go by. At one point she mentions that there were daily letters or postcards or even brief notes from men stuck in the trenches.

Brittain’s own experiences as a war nurse, working in hospitals right next to various battle fronts, where they triaged men with horrific wounds make you thankful to live now. I learned more about mustard gas than I knew. More about infection when there were no antibiotics. About gangrene. About … Medicine has come a long way in a hundred years.

I understand there have been a film and TV series made. If I’d seen the film first, I’d probably not bother to read the book. It is quite heavy going. But then I wouldn’t have read the rain of little diamonds sprinkled throughout the text. The words and images that I will treasure.

Such as when Vera visits first Roland’s grave and a few years later her brother’s grave. On the way there so many broken tree-trunks lay along the road bearing witness, that only the Omniscient Mmathmatician could count them.

There was a great deal to enjoy.

But have you noticed how unconsciously influenced I was by the wordy turgidity of Miss Brittain’s style? That passive voice will haunt me.

Typed one-fingered on my mobile, this will have to go out un checked and un-proofed. I’ll do that tomorrow.

Night Sky

Surprised myself, taking this shot, and look at the festive lights.

The dark had a few bands of dark grey and I wondered how they’d show up.

Who knew that all that cloud-life, invisible to human eyes, despite them being augmented with new lenses, could be shown by a hand-sized piece of technology?

Its eyes immediately changed the program it usually follows and went into slow motion. Gathering light to itself and noting wavelengths, it transcribed them into colors and festive textures. All before the end of the few seconds it took to record the scene. Magic!

The Other Walk

When I was out the other day, after I had sat down in the civilized new-ness of the one year old addition to the village and found it too structured for my mood, I walked into the old section.

This village started in the the 1980s with a field of little villas surrounding a community facility. About half the villas remain along with the old communal areas.

So I crossed the vacant block along the concrete path. Weed central but with more flowers than the sculptural resort style gardens in the newer sections …

There’s even a lone fungal fruiting body. Further on, as I come into the streets, the vacancies and their bewildered gardens become obvious. (A pun there)

Can barely see the villas for the overgrown gardens. A riot of flowers though. More varieties of hibiscus that I’ve seen in one small area.

There are some beautiful trees and shrubs, five to ten metres tall. I can’t imagine they’ll be kept when the building program continues.

Finally, in a derelict corner I see a clump of fungi. I had been wondering whether these gardens were maintained by the establishment or cultivated by the residents themselves. The fungi speak for the latter.

Three, possibly four species I make that. What do you think, mycophiles?

Lego: Bosley’s Builders, 11

11. The Stand Off

Jed was pretty happy with the floor they’d laid yesterday. At this rate they’d get the walls complete and happy faces when the hardware shop’s reps arrived later. And all it had needed was him jollying everyone else along.

Bosley is back today, he thought. Here’s hoping he thinks having a foreman—yours truly—a good addition to his crew. It’ll set me up. He made his way toward where Boz beckoned him for his site report.

“Hey, Boss,” Jed said. “We’ve made quite a bit of progress as you can see.” He waved at the hardware store’s floor and walls. “I was thinking we could start on the heavy vehicle garage next. Then by the end of the week, lift Jackie’s and my cabin on top of it.”

“I should be having this discussion with you and Ms Sander,” Bosley said.

Uh oh, Boz has quite the long face, Jed had time to think. “I’ve got nothing in common with her,” he said.

“Sez you,” Bosley said. “What do you see around yourself?”

Jed looked round. He didn’t see anything different, he said with a hand gesture and a shrug.

“What does he see beyond himself?” Tim said. He was repairing Wizard Nin’s shack right there where Bosley organized Jed for a chin-wag. Two against one, was that fair?

“What does he see other than himself,” Drew said, stepping into Jed’s face from the other direction.

Would’ve been funny except Jed started to feel like they were ganging up on him.

“Go at it, brother,” Bosley said cryptically.

“It’s a done deal in my mind,” Drew stated. “Jackie owns the crane and she’s given us the go-ahead. Jed owns the truck and he can leave when he wants.”

“You’ll take Jackie’s crane off my truck? No! No way!” Jed cried, suddenly seeing the plot. “What’s a truck by itself?”

“Jed! Cheer up,” Dan said. “You’ll have a ton of options.”

Jed groaned. “Not you too? You’re supposed to be my friend.”

“I am your friend,” Dan said. “You and me with a truck each? Salvaging. You and the hardware store? Power storage when we get you fitted with a power module and they have a windmill operating in the channel. You and the community? Say we need a performance stage? You and the herders? They need their cabin took to their pylons? No mid-size crane is going to manage that. It’ll need incremental lifting with … “

“No!” Jed said again. “I’m leaving! I knew it would come to this. We should never have come. You’re chasing me away!”

He stomped to his and Jackie’s cabin, and threw his things together. I don’t believe it! I’m back to camping?

The rest of them listened further and heard the truck door slam, and the truck engine tick over. Then Jed drove toward the track out.

“Okay. That’s the crane gone,” Bosley said. “Have we still got that shadoof thing?”

“I’m blank on what you’re talking about,” Tim said.

“That’ll be a ditto for me,” Dan agreed.

“I saw it yesterday,” Drew said. “We’ve got that and the conveyor belt still. We’ll manage.”

“You hear something?” Tim said to Dan.

“Yes. The hardware store’s runabout. Is it both of them?” Dan said.

“It is, but Ms Bee is tying up the boat.”

“I’m gone,” Dan said.

“Ditto,” Tim said. “I’m meeting Trish for a cuppa. You should come along. She said we should start planning the canteen, since this hillock,” he stamped his boot. “Will likely take two slabs. And the canteen will probably take at least two cabins.”

“Cowards,” Drew said. “Don’t plan too far ahead of the stair building. Or the materials for that matter.”

“I bet Trish will want more arches,” Dan said. “Do you recall where you got them?”

“What’s this about me and him?” Ms Sander said, pointing her chin at Jed ploughing across the mudflats. She looked thunderous.

Bosley didn’t wilt. “Both you and Jed have unrealistic expectations,” he said. “Had a look around recently?”

“Like lift your gaze to the world in general,” Drew said helpfully.

“My supply lines are intact,” flashed Ms Sander. “My customer base is growing. My second- floor hasn’t even been begun yet, but we all know the hold-up there!”

“I’ll say it again,” Drew said. “Had a look around recently?” He didn’t let her get a word in. He felt like something in him had snapped during the long lay-up. “Parts are what are missing! Our spreadsheet is like a mosaic of blanks!”

Bosley frowned Ms Sander into silence.

Drew continued. “Supply chains other than apparently yours are fragmented! These floods,” he indicated the swamp now surrounding them, “Are playing havoc with deliveries.”

“Making do with what we have is the name of the new game,” Bosley said at Ms Bee arriving belatedly. “In other words, when I come to do your stairs, you will gracefully accept whatever color scheme I can manage!”

Bee smiled winningly at him. “We will, Bosley,” she said. She arm-in-armed Ms Sander away with her. “Let’s think about our interiors, Sandy. We could book Julie & Juliette. I’m sure they’ll be able to come up with a scheme to complement Bosley’s.”

Drew laughed. “You were supposed to melt just then.”

Bosley flushed. “Yeah, right. Me and everybody else!”

Out for a Walk

On this good weathered Friday of sunny patches among increasing cloud, I open my door and see this:

…a friendly little display.

Walking to the beginning of the corridor past another unit and then the Refuse Room, turn right and then I see this …

… the elevators to the right, the fire escape at the end. (I’ve missed my favorite painting and the Easter Welcome basket on the left for a reason)

Down one floor and turning right to see a similar corridor to the one above (haha, in both senses) but at the end a door out onto the so-called podium.

I’m an old hand at podiums now, the first one I had anything to do with was in 2020 at the place where I went for respite after my hospitalisation. The only podiums I had anything to do with up to then, were back in the Netherlands in the 1950s, when the ordinary Australian English ‘stage’ was the ‘podium’.

Nowadays, the term seems to used for the first couple of floors of a large tall building. The podium surrounding Vista, the building I live in, is brand new. No moss grows in the between the stones.

Anyway, returning to my walk, once I’m outside the exit door, I see this …

… a painting I’ll be talking about in my Visual Art Project. Shifting my gaze to the right, I see this …

Walk out, turn left and we see the stairs. I’ve been up them twice. Down them once. When I have my walker with me it’s elevators all the way.

Round the corner to the left … in the sun as you can see … is a seat. I do my old lady thing and sit down for a breather … take my final pic for this little jaunt … the view.

LDN!

Yes!

This is the day I celebrate.

Finally I get a go at LDN, prescribed by my new super GP (general pratitioner).

I’m excited and hopeful this medicine will decrease some of the symptoms of the ME/CFS that I have been living with for 27 years.

We’re starting extremely small, with 0.1 mg in the evening for seven days.

The doctor warned me I might have dreams. I said I love dreams. Grist for the mill of my Dream Interpretation course.

Note that I said ‘decrease’. There is no cure and I accept that. I

f I have less pain that will already be an improvement. Less fatigue would be a wonderful win. I don’t know yet what other effects I can expect. There will be journalling