Skyring

Well it's been an interesting week.

My left little finger is more crooked than ever. Up in Rockhampton two weeks back - and didn't I wish I was back there a couple of nights ago with the wind and the rain and the cold here in Canberra - I managed to bump my finger awkwardly on the handbrake in my brother's 4WD. I was reaching for the seatbelt catch, I think, and my body didn't realise it wasn't in the familiar shape of the taxi.

Hurt like blazes and I said a word or two I shouldn't have with my nephew sitting beside me. Thought I'd broken it, but Kerri tells me the tendon is partially detached, and if I leave it alone it may heal up.

Think I'd be used to strange cars. I would have driven fifteen or twenty different cars in nine different countries over the past year, some of them very strange indeed, with the stalks on the wrong sides, not to mention the steering wheels, but, here I am, undone by a handbrake.

My laptop is still in being repaired. All the travel has gotten to the Mac Air, skinny thing it is, and the hinges collapsed and eventually the screen flickered and went dark. In the meantime, I'm using Kerri's, and when she's using her computer, I've lashed up another from bits around the house. It's an old Windows XP box, and I hooked it up to my son's old monitor. Then I found a keyboard for it. A wireless keyboard, so I had to find the dongle for it and stick it into one of the two USB slots in front.

Couldn't even log on without a mouse to move the cursor to the button, so I hunted around and found a wireless mouse from my old Vista laptop, nice little bit of junk that was, bluescreening and freezing.

Right. That's two different wireless dongles filling up the two USB slots.

Try to get onto the internet, but it can't access the home network, not having a wireless adaptor, and so I find the wireless dongle from the Air, which you will remember is off being repaired.

Needs a USB slot, and both of them are occupied.

Right. I hunt up an old expansion thingie, which plugs into one of the slots, but gives me four more for a net gain of three. Sweet. I sit that on top with all the other leads and dongles and plug my wireless network dongle in. Now I'm online and all is good.

Just want to charge up the iPhone now, so I get out the cable, plug it into one of the proud array of USB slots, and it tells me I need more power. So I have to hunt out the AC adaptor, in a house where AC adaptors of every size and voltage lurk in the corners, some of them going back well into last century, and find a spare power point to plug that into.

The spare power point is on an expansion powerboard plugged into another one, I need hardly mention.

About this time, with everything humming along nicely and the air so full of wireless and the room so full of cables there's not much af anything left over for an actual person, I notice that the rear of the computer box has four USB slots going to waste.

Powered USB slots, I make no doubt.

Ah well, at least it all works, and we won't mention that I was downloading a new virus protection program when I was juggling everything around and interrupted the download and had to start it again and I now have zero confidence that I'm protected from anything at all, so I'm not keen to turn it on and oh how I wish the computer repair place would ring and tell me that my dear sweet little Mac is fixed and can I come over and take it back off their hands?

There's the buying of the new house going on fine, with the forms to be lodged and the signatures to be witnessed and never a clerk to copy down a name correctly or get the numbers right. There are numbers so big I'm thinking I could never drink all that much beer, not if I enlisted my son and we passed on the job to grandchildren yet unborn.

Between the houses and the mortgages and the insurance and the curtains and the credit cards, we are going to be so filthy rich we'll have to save up for a cup of coffee to share between us, Kerri and I.

The children brag about their paypackets, and I moan about how if one more passenger pays for a $7.50 fare with a fifty dollar note, I'm going to have to pay them out in five cent pieces. I've got a mountain of five cent pieces. They are useless for parking meters and vending machines, the new meter in the cab doesn't even count in five cent increments and there's nothing to do with them but save them up and pad out the milk bill with them, the milk delivery business being conducted entirely by fifteen year old children running down driveways in the dark, thinking that if the little plastic bag is extra heavy this week it's probably got a lot of money in it.

It got to the stage last week where my coin dispenser was empty of everything but five cent pieces and a few tens. I had a ten dollar note that I tried to feed into the change machine at the airport for some two dollar coins to help me out but it wouldn't accept my poor scraggly note. Or - more likely - the machine was out of gold entirely, having been emptied by equally desperate but somewhat speedier cabbies.

Last night some darling old lady, paying a small fare coming home from the club, apologised for having to pay with a handful of coins. I almost leaned over and hugged her, and blessed her so many times as she was getting out of the cab she is going straight to heaven.

OK. I worked out how I can afford a coffee. Eighty five cent pieces will buy me a slender latte at the bakery.

I just tried to share a FO post, and it looks like the share buttons become inoperable when there is any level of privacy. Seems like a good move.

I'm not the eager cabbie I used to be.

When I first had my taxi licence, I was working six twelve-hour night shifts a week. I was raking in the money.

Now, it's different. There are about twice as many cabs on Canberra's roads and it's rare to have the sort of peak hour frenzy or Sunday morning cab queue that I cut my taxi teeth on.

I'm also paying a lot more attention to my family.

They warned us about it in cabbie school, and I've seen too many cabbies run into marital difficulties. The long shifts, the fatigue, the stress.

As the old lament of the shearer's wife goes:

Friday night too tired,
Saturday night too drunk,
Sunday too far away.

Over the years of cabbing I've cut back a lot. Most recently, I've given up the lucrative Friday and Saturday night shifts. Nor do I stay out until four in the morning to hand over to the day driver. Sure, I'm missing out on money, but I'm better off for it.

I have a family.

It wasn't fair for my family that they should spend their weekends tip-toeing around the house so that I could get some sleep. And that when I woke up, I'd get into my taxidriver uniform and head out onto the streets, coming home at dawn and falling into bed exhausted.

It wasn't fair on me either. Taxidriving is unhealthy enough without adding constant exhaustion to the long idle hours, the junk food, the supernormal amounts of caffeine.

So now I have a life, and I have fun.

And, to be honest, with about a bazillion cabs on the road, there isn't the financial rewards of staying out after midnight. I often spent a couple of hours sitting on the main cab rank, slowly moving up and then getting a fare that was only a few dollars.

I could do better than that. I could spend that time tucked up in bed.

I've given up my Friday and Saturday night shifts in favour of doing family type things. Shopping, browsing through galleries, having a family dinner with a bottle of wine and candles on the table. My two kids live at home and now that they are grown up, they are a pleasure to be around. Not that they weren't as children, just that nowadays we can have grown-up discussions. Set the world to rights over a good bottle of Shiraz.

There are things in life more important than money, and nowadays I'm happy, my family is happy too, and that's really what it's all about, isn't it?

Friday: a day of work.

About ten years ago, we bought a cottage in Rockhampton for Mum. She was living south of Brisbane away out in the sticks, a long way from any services, and we persuaded her to move up to Rocky where Brother and Big Sister were living. We found a sweet little house across from the Botanic Gardens in a nice area of town for her.

It had a bit of a garden under a big old poinsettia tree in the back yard, the dog could romp around and be taken for walks, there was a guest bedroom and a converted carport for storage.

The first rains exposed some problems. The carport/laundry/library flooded and the roof leaked.

Not good.

We had the roof replaced and drainage boosted. Later work on the rotting kitchen floor and an airconditioner to defray the fierce tropical summer. Screens to keep out the mozzies.

But with Mum's increasing frailty, it became clear that her days of living alone in a cottage where the task of opening the windows was a serious chore were numbered. Brother found her a place in his house, and my siblings set about moving Mum's furniture and belongings out.

They worked mightily, but there was still a reasonable amount for myself and Little Sister to complete.

First step was to go around and see what had to be done. Little Sister realised, just as we pulled up outside, that she had forgotten the key, but one window was slightly ajar, and lithe nephew squeezed through to open the door for us. He liked that!

Lots of books - old books, mostly - some whitegoods, a couple of cupboards full of sewing and knitting goods, papers, random household items. A bit of cleaning.

Next step was to borrow another vehicle from Brother. He runs a business supporting the mining industry, and has a warehouse crammed full of interesting equipment. Trucks and forklifts and palletlifters to ferry it about. And a line of utes and 4WDs on the empty lot across the road.

He handed me the keys to one - a workhorse with a keyring made from a chunk of crocodile in a very Central Queensland fashion - and we had just enough time for a stop at Dad's retirement home before starting work.

Quite an impressive facility, actually. Sparkling clean, roomy, airy, thoughtfully laid-out and equipped, pleasant gardens. Big Sister sounded like she was on the point of moving in herself.

Then back to Mum's house, to finish off the morning. We made up two carloads - one of things for the dump, and another of items to be saved. I'm king of the clutter merchants myself, and over the years I've dealt with the problem by upsizing each new house. I probably don't need my bank statements from the 1980s, and I know I've got clothing from the same period which long since ceased to fit me.

Mum's much the same. Luckily my sister is a hard-headed woman and could make the decisions I'd evade. Nephew and I were instruments of destruction, flinging old rubbish out onto the municipal tip. It reminded me of my childhood days, where Dad would take a few boxes of rubbish to the dump, and then we'd happily clamber over the mounds of garbage, retrieving anything that looked interesting. A box of old paperbacks, a bag of faded Lego, a rusty pogo-stick, a pristine Doobie Brothers LP. Those were the days before tipshops and their dayglo-vested workers claimed all the good junk for themselves.

Back to Mum's for lunch - pies from the local bakery and fish and chips from the takeaway, appropriately junk food washed down with Sarsaparilla and Passiona - and then back into the fray. We reached the stage where what was left was for a local charity to look over, and we could think of brooming the place out.

Final trip to the rubbish tip. Nephew was deep into his narrative of space battles and robots, I'd found a Country and Western radio station, the afternoon was pleasantly warm, and I had a glow of achievement about me. We returned the ute to Brother, found a pizza shop, ordered up a couple of hot ones, drove back home and fell into bed.

I love Rockhampton in winter. It's a bustling town nowadays, with the mining boom. Plain restaurants selling good food, plenty of beautiful old pubs, parks green and lush, a row of glorious stone buildings from the old colonial days lined up on the bank of the Fitzroy, a pedestrian mall in the middle of town.

I left Queensland for Canberra twenty-five years ago, but my heart remains north of the Tweed. At least in winter.

Canberra is cold in winter. I know, I've got friends who chuckle at the thought. The rivers don't freeze, the snow melts when it hits the ground, snowploughs aren't parked in squadrons at the council workshop etc.

But for Australia, it's cold.

And that makes the annual trip up to Rockhampton a pleasure in its own right. Sooooo good to wear light clothing and to feel the heat of the sun. Mind you, in summer it's a different matter, and the humidity, let alone the heat, lays waste to we southerners.

Still, I regard Queensland as paradise in winter. Kerri's parents on the Gold Coast, and mine in Rocky, just north of the Tropic of Capricorn, and the living is easy.

Kerri came up with me for my high school reunion last month, and we staid with her father in Southport, so she declined to take three or four days off work for the Rockhampton trip. And when the kids discovered that I wouldn't pay for their airfares, they decided the money was better spent on their joint mortgage. Besides, they are also saving for the April trip, and I'm going to have to count my careful pennies too. So it was just me this time.

Darling Daughter took me to the airport and she hit a wrong turn and we had to go round and round before finding the carpark. Canberra Airport is about 110% temporary roadworks full of potholes and bollards and crash barriers in red and white and confusing signs. I know my way around, because I'm out there several times a day, but every day is a new adventure, and if you haven't been for a year or so you could think it was a different place entirely. We often see old Canberra hands, out to collect Aunt Judy from Perth late at night, and they are driving the wrong way, heads out the window trying to make sense of the confusion, parking where they shouldn't and getting parped at by rude taxidrivers.

The new terminal building - or at least the first stage - will be open next month, so it was probably our last time in the Business Lounge. The view is lousy and the food not much chop, and mid-morning the bar wasn't open, so it was just robot coffee and a bikkie.

I did this trip with carry on only, and the flight in a Boeing 737 up to Brisbane was fine, but the second leg to Rocky was in a Dash-8, and the overhead racks are too mean and small for even my tiny rollaboard, so it had to go under the seat and squeeze my toes. I had enough time in Brisbane for a couple of flutes of sparkling. Pinapple Noir with hints of Pinot, I called the fruity wine, but it hit the spot.

We flew out over Moreton Bay, crossing the coast again somewhere north of Redcliffe. The suburbs dropt away and then it was mouldering mountains covered in trees, farms and forestry. I caught a sight of Skyring Creek south of Gympie, the hills rising away from the highway and a long orange curve of new fourlane construction. I couldn't make out any details, but it looks awfully close to Federal State School, that small and oddly named rural establishment.

Middle Sister and her two kids - who had flown in a half-hour before - waiting for me, and then out to Kabra for a seafood feast. We stopt at a grog shop, where I collected a slab, another bubbly to add to the duty-free in my bag, and I was delighted to see that Rocky had progressed to the stage where pear cider may be had on the shelves. I scooped up an assorted half dozen. Jersey, Sweden and Magner's from Ireland. A grand comfort for the aches and pains and broken toes, to be sure.

Mum and Dad were there, as well as Older Sister and Younger Sister and her ranga lad, and we had a fine time, cracking open the champagne and testing out the cider and crunching up kettle chips. Brother joined us, along with two of his sons, and we got stuck into the tucker - glorious big prawns and sweet chunks of fish in foil on the barbie.

A cake and a song for Dad.

There's not too many times nowadays when the parents and we five children are together. Dad's looking well and we chatted a bit. He's spent decades going to Hong Kong three times a year and I never even knew he had a passport! He would have flown into the old airport, circling in hard against the mountain and then gliding down through the apartment towers, the jet blast flapping the washing drying on the balconies. My own travels began after it closed, and the new place is not nearly as exciting, though it's a very dramatic setting to be sure.

And, O the warmth of the tropic air! Cold old Canberra was a million miles away.

James May's Toy Stories by James May

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Oh boy! Oh boy oh boy oh boy!

This book pretty well summarised my childhood. All those happy days spent building stuff and watching trains and cars go round and getting bits of Lego out from behind the couch are coming back.

James May has way too much fun. He gets to play with the coolest toys around, but here he is going back to his own childhood, looking at the history of slot cars and train sets and things and then doing something utterly mad. Like building a house out of Lego or getting a mention in the Guinness Book of Records for the longest slot car track or building a 1:1 plastic Airfix kit of a Spitfire - complete with authentic cover art.

This blocky book kept me glued to the pages as I raced through the chapters and tracked the history of my favorite kit.

This is a book for the nerd remembering the good old days of boyhood. I know it was wrong of me to send my Tri-Ang locomotive through a cardboard tunnel of fire - especially when it got stuck half way through and poor old Polly melted - but I wasn't alone. James May was shooting down Jap Zeros with a pellet gun and modifying his Scalextric Mini and building rocketships out of Lego.

And ramming bungers up the back ends of old Junkers.

Whatever happened to the squadron of Spitfires I used to have?

View all my reviews >>

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Following on from The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo, this book increases the pace. By about half way through the book, you might as well give up, cancel everything, find a nook and a jug of strong coffee and finish it. You won't be able to sleep or concentrate on anything else, and you will be of no use at work or to your family.

It helps if you have read the first book in the trilogy, for background and getting to know the characters, but this story stands alone. A few new characters are introduced - some explode onto the page, some are shadows and rumours - but they are all colourful.

It might help to take a piece of paper to keep everyone straight. By the end of the novel there are police officers, doctors, psychiatrists, journalists, lawyers and other villains coming out of the woodwork.

There are twists galore, and the reader is kept guessing for most of the book before it all comes together from several different directions. That's half the fun - reading on until you find out the answer.

The other half is the action, and there's plenty of it. Stieg Larsson is a master at describing what's going on, giving plenty of forensic detail, right down to the pizza boxes in the corner, maintaining the pace, and cunningly concealing his surprises. There's a scene in a warehouse that is beautifully set up and if you are not gasping for breath by the end of it, you need a checkup. Or more coffee.

A map of Sweden would help. Maybe someone has set up a Google Maps template for the action. I'm tempted to go visit Stockholm on my next trip to check out some of the locations. It sounds like a well-ordered, pleasant, comfortable place to live. Apart from the homicidal maniacs wandering around attacking people.

Echoes of Miss Smilla in the odd title character. A pintsize powerhouse, she has extraordinary abilities, and she needs every one of them and more to survive.

There's a scene with a fox towards the end of the book that will stick in your memory for a long time.

I put this book down, drew breath, and reached for the next in the series. It doesn't let up at all.

View all my reviews >>

They got in on the main city rank, now re-opened at a third the original size. "Can we stop at a bottle-o first?" one asked.

"Right-oh!" I replied. "But where are we going?"

"Formule 1"

"You beauty!" I thought to myself. The Formule 1 motel is one of those cheapo deals out on the highway. $59 a night for a basic room and the dining room is a vending machine.

But it's a nice long fare.

We went through Braddon, stopping at the Bottle-O there. That's the trade name, and it's a good one. Well-stocked grog shop, free parking outside, off-licence to print money, it is.

One of the two young men went inside and I hit the "Pause" button on the meter. It was going to be a good fare and people who stay at cheap motels are reaching into their own pockets to count the pennies. I look after them.

The guy in the back seat, a fairly chunky sort of fella, caught sight of the "Route 66" keyring I have bluetacked to the dashboard. It's one I bought at the Route 66 museum in Chandler, OK last year, and I keep it there for daydreaming purposes. That half day spent exploring the old road between Tulsa and Oklahoma City was a very happy one!

"I'm going to ride Route 66 next year with my father," he said. "We'll pick up the Harleys in Detroit, ride them to LA, and ship them home."

Wow! What a trip! This chap immediately had my attention.

His mate got back in, with a six pack of Jim Beams to help the night ahead go down, and we set off on Canberra's own Mother Road. Northbourne Avenue.

We talked Route 66 and the USA all the way. The food, the cars, the motels, the people. I mentioned that I'm planning my own father-son trip along Route 66 next year. From the other side of the generation gap. Myself, my son and my daughter.

I had lusted after a rental Mustang, but looking at the reviews it sounds like it wouldn't be as much fun for the third person, sitting in the cramped back seat, peering out through a couple of tiny side windows. I'd be doing a lot of the driving, but some of the time it would be me in the back seat, and I wanted to enjoy the experience.

So we'll likely hire something with a bit of size and a bit of style. A Chrysler 300C would be ideal. Lots of room for people and baggage, space for extras, a bunch of buttons to press and an image that is unmistakably All-American.

Not as much fun as a Harley, to be sure, but I'm not a Harley kind of guy. I wished my passengers the best for the trip, put my foot down and whipped off in a cloud of dust for the airport, where I watched the planes climb into the night sky and sent my thoughts with them.

Earlier that day, a package from Amazon had arrived, containing a DVD: Route 66: Producer's Picks.

Not a lot to do with Route 66 as such, but for the feeling of driving through Sixties America in a classy car, there's nothing to beat it. The black and white scenes, the corny live-to-camera adverts, the unforgettable theme music, the guest appearances of later stars, the thought-provoking plots, and above all the lifestyle, it's a pleasure to watch.

I've got a bunch of maps and guidebooks, any number of websites, and all my dreams to keep me going until next year.

Making Money by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Terry Pratchett likes jokes. He likes to set them up, he likes to - shazam! - reveal them, he likes to play with words. He writes entertainment, and he writes satire.

He's light entertainment, occupying a peculiar halfway point between satirising the present and the genre of fantasy.

He's also in that position where, after a successful career, he can write anything he wants and it will be bought by the millions. It must be hell being his editor. Hell that editors scramble for.

This book was suspiciously heavy for light entertainment. I'm not sure where it could be cut, though, just saying.

As with most of Pratchett's Discworld stories, this one is an episode in an ongoing saga. Many of the characters and settings are familiar, we meet a few new ones, we chuckle at a few old jokes, we enjoy old ones.

There, that's a quarter of the book done, just setting the stage for the rare new reader. There's not a lot of detailed description - it's all well-crafted - but we still get to learn about the King of the Golden River and the workings of the Patrician's office - the Oblong Office - all over again.

We meet - or rather re-meet - Moist von Lipwig, from "Going Postal". This time he's making some real money and sharing adventures with some of the characters from the previous tale.

Terry Pratchett must have been inspired by the Global Financial Cooling. This book is all about money and banks and trust. In a typical Ankh-Morporkian way. The Royal Mint coins the currency, usually spending more on minting the coins than the coins are worth. Some of the smaller ones are handcrafted at enormous expense. The impressive facade of the Royal Bank conceals a great many dark secrets, not least the source of the glooping sound from the basement.

Von Lipwig takes all in hand, and at the occasional peril of his life and the gold-ish standard, finds a solution. Along the way there are golems, small dogs, small gods, necromancy under a new name, a wizard with round eyeglasses, things stuck in drawers, romance and ripe fingers.

It's all good.

Nothing earthshaking. A few good jokes, a few good lines, a few good scenes.

View all my reviews >>

Or blame her.

I mean Bookczuk, of course. Way back in 2005 I was taking my first gleeful steps into the marvellous adventure of international travel, and of course documenting the steps in a series of travel journals.

The Fort Worth convention in 2005, and when i unplugged my laptop from the phone line long enough, Bookczuk was on the line. "Did you get the package?" she asked, before urging me to go off to vote for Charleston as the 2007 host of the convention.

And of course I had gotten the care package she'd sent, care of the hotel. The hotel had been the destination of any number of heavy boxes and urgent packages, it hardly needs saying, and I was the delighted recipient of one from Charleston.

Inside, amongst other cherished gifties, was a Levenger Circa journal. I promptly fell in love with Levenger and Circa. I'm an office supplies nut from way back, and whenever I get an excuse to wander around a stationer's shop, or one of those giant OfficeWorks warehouse outlets, I jump onto it with both hands.

Levenger is pretty much the cream of the cream of these things. Superb design, elegant, sturdy, desirable.

My life doesn't quite revolve around Circa, but it should. My travel journals are Circa, my household records, my jotting journals...

I've even gotten the odd bit of leatherwork to hold the notebooks. It's a complete system, and lugging around a leather case with all manner of specialised paper and plastic pages inside is no chore at all.

My wallet is a Levenger Shirt Pocket Briefcase. The International Bomber Jacket style. I love it on a daily basis.

My passport, loyalty cards, travel documents and boarding passes live in a bright red Levenger Road Scholar zip-up holder. Secure, visible, handy.

And I've always got Circa notebooks and personalised 3x5 cards around.

This morning I succumbed. Every few days Levenger sends another email with a special offer, and every few months I'm charmed enough to order more supplies. The hard part is stopping - the online catalogue is sooooo full of stuff that is soooooo good!

They should pay me a commission. As part of every order, I add in a couple of Levenger starter kits, and as a Pay-It-Forward homage to Bookczuk, I give them out to folk who might be as charmed as I.

Thank you, Dearestczuk, once again. I am way in debt for all the joys and delights you have sent my way.

Levenger is one such addiction, and I indulge myself shamelessly. But if I gave myself into the other addiction, one that involves yummy little sesame wafers, I would be both big and broke.