Walkin' the walk

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I don't quite know why it is, but every time we go on our walk around the streets of Armidale, we meet someone we know.

  Well, I do have a fair idea really, given that Armidale has a population of about 25,000 or so and I've been here over 35 years. The mathematics of probability on that count combined with the fact that I've been heavily involved with more facets of life here than the Hope Diamond has cut into its surface will readily explain this.

  We'd barely left the house and were about to cross the street when we saw a car approaching, about 100 metres away. At my velocity that's probably equivalent to about 10 metres in your case.

  It was the only car within sight, so we crossed to the middle of the street as the car approached, waiting for it to go by so that we could complete the three metre trek to the other side of the roadway.

  The car slowed to a crawl as it approached us.

  'What the hell?' I said to Tracey, 'why doesn't he just go on? Is he wanting us to cross in front of him?'

  He didn't. Instead, the car drew level with us and stopped as the window rolled down. He must want directions, I thought, remembering vividly our experience giving directions about a fortnight before.

  There was a face at the window I dimly recognised as one from a distant past; twenty years or so at least.

  'Hello,' he said, as if we meet like this every day. 'I thought it was you. I live in the flats about four doors down from your house. I've been there since 1984.'

  'Really? I thought you were working in Queensland.'

  'On and off.'

  Amazingly, and I want this recorded for posterity, I remembered his name, and introduced him to Tracey. She was standing near enough to the rear of the vehicle to inhale the exhaust gases emitted by his car's idling motor, so wasn't too keen on an extended conversation. We were on our walk, after all. Sadly, no car was coming up behind to assist in this process of moving him on.

  Don't get me wrong now; it was nice to be able to say hello after all that time, and he's a good chap who wishes me nothing more than the best.

  'I hear you're in a bad way,' he grinned breezily.

  'I've been better.'

  'So what do you do?'

  I study advanced calculus. I ride racehorses and win buckjumping competitions in Gunnedah, cut down virgin forests with a very large chainsaw, teach street fighting and mountaineering, and practise tantric yoga when it's raining. I am guru to a flock of animists.

  No, that's what I would have said if I had my brain in gear for proto-witticism, not focused on putting one foot after the other.

  'I read and write a bit. And I walk. Matter of fact, we better keep moving on.'

  'OK. Good to see you. We might meet again!'

  He revved the engine and was gone.

  In a bad way. No-one had put it quite like that to me before, not that I minded. It's not inaccurate. He'd been in Queensland long enough to be blunt about such things.

  We set off.

  From the point of view of walking, the early part of the walk is comparatively easy.

  What people with motor-neurone disease, brain injury or stroke recovery will understand, as well as those whose brain motor centre doesn't work properly because of interference by a brain tumour, is that something as simple as walking - which we all take for granted till we can't do it - has to become a conscious process.

  That means you have to think about each part of the operation as you do it.

  As I walk up the hill, the right foot might drag once or twice. I adjust.

  More angle in the knee.

  Then, as the muscles tire, more thought has to go into other joints.

  The hip.

  Now, adjust the direction and height of ankle movement.

  Now the ball of the foot. Push harder with the toes and the foot muscles. And bend the knee in the middle of the step. Not quite that much.

  All these actions aren't simultaneous. They're microseconds apart, and need thinking about - in the right order!

  Each step. Always each and every step. Lose concentration and the limp is pronounced. Or the foot drags.

  Arm movement. You wouldn't imagine it would matter, but without thinking about it as well, it can lose synchronicity with the legs, with implications for balance. Without it, I may veer to the left or right.

  I watch for humps and bumps in the road. Half a centimetre vertically makes a difference. Don't allow for it, and we're back to dragging the foot or doing the drunk impression.

  We're at the top of the hill and the path is horizontal. All the angles for the foot now change, just enough to feel unsteady after the climb. Adjust. Focus.

  Now we're going downhill. In some ways, this is harder than going up, especially as the hill gets slightly steeper. All the muscular and tendon relationships change. I feel unsteady.

  At the kerb to cross the street, I take Tracey's arm.

  This is very steadying, but it also fosters dependence. It gives me a false sense of balance. As soon as we get to the other side, I let go of her arm.

  She walks just slightly ahead, always on the left. She knows that if she's on the other side, if I trip and start to fall, my right arm won't respond fast enough to catch hers, and doesn't have the strength to help save a fall.

  Don't think for a moment of walking on the grass. It has more traps than you can imagine.

  As the walk comes to the last half, there's a new element aimed at defeating me. The muscles down the right side of my torso start to tire.

  The effect of that is similar to aiming a large heater at the right side of a snowman. I begin to list badly to starboard. I have to think about forcing my body straight, as there's really nothing physically weaker about the side; mainly the problem gets to be the slowing of or interference to the signals from the brain.

  Now, in order to maintain balance unassisted, I have to think about staying upright continuously, as well as my arm movement, the hip, the knee angle and direction, ankle lift and strength, to push off the toes; and the spot where the foot will land.

  Little wonder that when we reach home, I can barely lift the leg to plough through the thick carpet of kikuyu lawn, and make it up the stairs. Just three of them. Standing still at the door is quite unsteadying. I'm glad to sit down. Tracey brings me a glass of water.

  That's today's walk. Tomorrow's may be easier or it may not. Each day is unpredictable that way.

  One thing's for sure. If I have a seizure before the next walk, it will be back to the drawing board for the mechanics of walking, and next time, the whole walking process will need re-adjusting.

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Where the wild things ought to be (1)

For many years, my mother was a Teacher-Librarian. That is to say, she was a teacher who, after classroom teaching for some time, was appointed Librarian of the South Gladstone Primary School, and her role was to teach children the joy of books, not just to organise the school library.

  At the time, I was also beginning my first years of classroom teaching, aged 18. While she taught at one school in the town, I taught at another, Gladstone Central.

  When we came home after school, she would regale me with stories of the children in her library classes. One of them was an unfortunate boy (or fortunate, if you're a devoted Presley fan) who was named Elvis. Elvis Stanley. And, out of thousands over the years whom she taught in the Library, she also taught another lad whose parents, we believed, couldn't make up their minds which way his name should be spelled. Spelt. Whatever. He was named Stepheven and that's what was on his birth certificate.

  Now it just occurred to me that there really may be a legitimate name 'Stepheven' and our reasoning all these years could have been wrong. So I check with the oracle, Google. Sure enough, it is a name, and obviously not quite as uncommon as I still think it ought to be. There is e.g., a Stepheven Lord on FaceBook, but you don't need the poor chap's details. Check it out if you must. Google is your friend.

  Oddly enough, at Gladstone Central I taught a Stephen Lord, whose parents had the good sense to spell his name as I have. I remember him because he'd transferred from New South Wales into the Grade 4 class I was teaching, and started cursive writing in their style a year or two earlier. It was unattractive spiky style, and he had to learn cursive all over again to suit our Queensland copybooks. He resented this deeply.

  And then it occurred to me after my checking on the existence of Stepheven as a real name that there are probably scores of Elvis Stanleys in a world of seven billion people, given that both Elvis and Stanley are fairly common names, and sure enough, Google tells me there are plenty of them. 

  One, I see, is an unfortunate who was murdered just a couple of weeks ago. The poor chap owned the Love Shack Bar & Grill on St Kitts, and Clayton “Massive” Thomas denies plotting to kill him. If he didn't, someone sure did.

  I sincerely hope it wasn't our Elvis who was shot dead in the Love Shack Bar & Grill in the Caribbean; but then, if it's not, there's still one Elvis Stanley who saw in the New Year 2012 and failed to get any further than the end of the first month.

  But I digress horribly from my tale within a tale within yet another tale. Fortunately the parents of Stepheven had determined that his name should be pronounced 'Stephen,' and I say "fortunate" for obvious reasons. So let that be....

  My mother often narrated the story of Stepheven (or "Steve-even" as she called him at home), and his joy at reading the recent books she was ordering for the library.

Source

  Amongst them was the then-newly-released Where The Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak.

  It's a wonderful book and I'm sure many of you who have or have had or happen to be kids of the right age will remember it well, as it was a favourite with my girls - and let's be honest, a tale I never minded reading to them.

  I can't say I was as keen on other more girly books. I won't say which, but I read them just as enthusiastically, I believe. Fake sincerity and you've got it made; if I may I paraphrase from George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman.

  My mother believed that kids knew better than adults which books they wanted to read and that almost the only thing you had to do for a child was give them a love of books and reading. If they were read to, and if they wanted to read for themselves and could, they were set for life - providing they knew their basic maths tables. She didn't dissuade us from reading comics - whatever we wanted to read, even jam-tin labels - she'd never stop us. It's interesting what you could learn from old jam-tin labels, anyway.

  She was not a fan of the terrible formula-style books of the 1950s being churned out by some publishers, and as an artist herself, wanted truly creative books for children, both in text and artwork. This was why she was so affronted at what happened when I exchanged my book with that of Alan Long (a very short tale you might to read.)

  My mother shared the joy of kids like Elvis Stanley when they grappled with the words accompanying the brilliant Sendak illustrations. Elvis was far from a brilliant reader, at the time at least. If you're reading this, Elvis, then you've just proved my point; you've made it into the high art form of blogging, so don't be offended. My mother was on the right track.

  So now I emerge from one of my tales within a tale to mention a fascinating letter by Ursula Nordstom that I came across today, which tied in so perfectly with my mother's philosophy on kids and books. The piece is better told in its own context, but I'll extract just one paragraph, which says enough to complement this story of mine:

A Witty and Wise 1953 Letter from Legendary Children's Book Editor Ursula Nordstrom

  by Maria Popova

"Did I ever tell you that several years ago, after the Harper management saw that I could publish children's books successfully, I was taken out to luncheon and offered, with great ceremony, the opportunity to be an editor in the adult department? The implication, of course, was that since I had learned to publish books for children with considerable success perhaps I was now ready to move along (or up) to the adult field. I almost pushed the luncheon table into the lap of the pompous gentleman opposite me and then explained kindly that publishing children's books was what I did, that I couldn't possibly be interested in books for dead dull finished adults, and thank you very much but I had to get back to my desk to publish some more good books for bad children."

  My mother was on just that wavelength, as indeed she was when she taught painting to the very young and the very old and many in between. Again, a similar story of inspiration and triumph on the micro-scale of human achievement. Another time perhaps.

  Now where was I? There were a couple of other asides, like the adult book I decided to read at the age of twelve that pained my mother when she saw it, because she knew I wasn't ready for it... but I can come back to that another time, if I get the chance.

  The truth is, what I really wanted to talk about was a slut in a book of nursery rhymes, but you'll have to wait now. This time around I've used up all my current brainpower on these Tristram Shandy-ish expeditions.

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Slipping into autumn

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Some of our friends were surprised when I told them the the autumn colours were beginning to show.

  'Already? Isn't it early?'

  It may seem so, yet I've noticed in many seasons we can see the first signs as early as January that the European trees are going to colour. The sap stops rising and, amazingly, each tree commits a form of suicide by denying itself the essentials for growth, or even preservation.

  Come with us on our walk a week or so ago, pictures taken over just two days. We'll show you the sights, and maybe a few oddities. Tracey did the camerawork - beautifully - seeing things that I often don't, especially as I need my eyes on the path a few metres ahead.

  Maybe we can surprise you with a slideshow.

  You can never be quite sure of what's on the pathway ahead till you get there.

  I'm not sure why trees of the same species change at different times, but I guess it has to do with location and water and nutrient availability.

These pistaceas are in full summer regalia.

The native trees don't change for the winter.

Here's the mix: various gums. I know for sure the one on the left is a stringybark.

Honeysuckle or Crepe Myrtle?

The first signs of autumn start to show....

More yellows against the green.

Sometimes it's nicer that the grass in the laneway isn't cut.

The little golden ashes in the centre start to colour.

Some pistaceas go a bright yellow.

And the mix is on. Some are turning red beside the giant gums....

Some seem keen to put on a salmon-red display.

Showoffs.

A brilliant burnt-salmon display against the green ivy.

These are the paths that make it easy for me to walk; very level, with no lurking dangers.

...whereas, this is the opposite. The council paints a warning where the pistacea roots have pushed the concrete up. But I have to be ever watchful.

And now, a few snaps in passing. A letterbox, with its warning for all those who read French about the fearsome guardian animeaux!

A closer look.

Cannas - brilliant colours.

But what's in the dying petals at the top? I see images. A closer look is below.

Is there a pregnant lady, arms drawn back, facing right - towards a dragon? Or is another lady, arms forward, face skyward to the left, with a Tinkerbell dress? Or is that a knight, on the right, on his rearing charger? (I have a vivid imagination, obviously.)

Now something a little different below, but colourful. As Tracey says, not many people have a red letterbox in their garden!

Low maintenance pets!

Just roses, against the wall and the green ivy. Roses are blooming everywhere right now, and the ivy will turn scarlet before long.

The Armoured Personnel Carrier at the barracks just down the road from our place. We're safe!

Just a big beautiful gum. I'm not sure of the type. Blue gum?

The path ahead....

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Our family farm in the 1950s (4)

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I've written three little segments of this and haven't even got a cow into the bail. This time I will. And we'll get them milked.

  The business end of the dairy layout was the milking shed itself, where six cows could be accommodated at one time; three double bails. This meant that a person worked between two cows in each pair of bails, and three people could work at the same time.

  We'd start by putting a cow in three of the six bails. As there was usually only Dad and I in the dairy to start with, we'd take a bail on each end as our own, and either of us would work the middle bail when we had things under control in our own bail. That way, two could do the work of three and cut the milking time down a lot, but there wasn't much time to spare!

  Believe it or not, there were actually left-hooved and right-hooved cows, by which I mean they had a preference for which side bail, left or right, that they were milked in. The older cows were aware that they needed to have the back leg closest to us in a back position, in order to expose the udder. So a cow who went into a left-side bail would need to have her back right foot back, and vice versa for a cow in the right-side bail. (Got it?)

  We deliberately trained our cows to do this automatically they came into the bail. If they didn't, a gentle push on their hip bone would make them adjust their balance and put the correct leg back.

  On some farms, cows were leg-roped if they were prone to kicking the milker or otherwise playing-up. This meant tying the leg back that was nearest the milker.  We rarely needed to do this as our cows were generally well behaved.

  Why were the cows so cooperative? One sure-fire reason: they were always fed when they came into the bail. A four-gallon drum cut open and nailed to the front end of the bails for each of the six spots contained something to eat. As long as the food end of the cow was preoccupied with stuffing her face, she didn't care too much what was happening at the other end. 

  That was the secret, and it paid large dividends.

  Usually they each got a large prune-tin full of chaff with half a prune-tin of pollard on top. How much they got depended on how good or bad the season was. In drought time it might be the only feed they got in a day, so were give more than in good times when there was plenty of grass around. No food for the cattle meant no milk, so we fed them well. There was extra urgency by the cows in lean times to get into the bail.

  Hence each waited at the gate with some degree of impatience for her turn in the bail, and had no hesitation in coming in. The matriarchs expected to be first and were most indignant if some lesser beast were called before them.

  The cow's udder was washed with a mild detergent. In cold weather we added hot water to the washing bucket, both for our comfort and for the cows'. We'd put the cupset of the milking machine on to each of their four teats and the 'cups' would stay in place via suction - the same suction that would pump the milk up the flexible rubber pipes to the static steel pipes above all our heads.

  Milk would flow through these pipes to a large vat inside the processing area of the dairy.

Steel milk-bucket

  Well into the ten or so minutes it would take for the milking machines to do their job for the first three cows, we'd let others into the other three bails, and prepare them for milking in the same way. All six units would now be full. Then we'd switch the machines over to them, and start the process of 'stripping' by hand, milking the last litre or so from the cows who had just been milked by the machines.

  (I have to say "who" - a cow is a person, not an "it"!)

  This added a lot to the effort on our part, but if you added up all the stripped milk, it was significant. Machines just couldn't extract that last bit, and a cow left with milk in her udder might produce less next time.

  Usually, that was just enough time to complete the job on each before the cow had eaten her quota of chaff and pollard. She'd be let out, and the food replaced for the next cow.

  Sometimes in a hurry, we might forget to put the food into the drum before the next cow was let in to the bail. She would be very cranky about that and toss her head until the victuals arrived. With apologies.

  And so it went on. When Mum came up after doing things in the house, she'd bring tea in a thermos flask, and something to eat. Dad would have his first, after working solidly for three hours or so by then with nothing in his stomach. Mum took over his job milking while that happened, and then I would take my turn to get a cup of tea and a bite to eat too. You can't imagine how good that tasted.

  Towards the end of the milking, the shock-cooler would be turned on. Here's where the third job of the diesel engine came in. As I said before, the engine had been cranked up and running the moment Dad got to the dairy, not much after 4.30 am.

The reason for this was that it ran the compressor for the large farm fridge housing the milk from the previous afternoon's session. The engine needed to be on for much longer than the actual milking time just for this job alone, to keep the fridge temperature down far enough.

  So the diesel ran the fridge, the milking machines as well, and the shock-cooler, which had its own compressor. The milk that came from the cows was of course quite warm, even after the time it poured into the vat through a filter. The water in the pipes of the shock-cooler was just above freezing point.

  The warm milk flowed by gravity over the series of chilled pipes from the vat via a tap. By the time it got to the tray at the bottom it was thoroughly chilled. From there it was filtered again before filling milk cans one by one, and each can of ice-cold milk went into the fridge.

  The shock-cooler was worth its weight in gold. As kids, we would fill a cup with fresh, ice-cold milk, and to us, nothing tasted better in the world. Warm milk didn't appeal, but full-cream jersey milk, so fresh and sweet and chilled, tasted nothing like what's in a milk carton these days.

  Nothing, I swear. Scout's honour. Cross my heart and hope to die!

  (continued)

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Flying over the cuckoo's nest

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Pardon my French!

Original caption unreadable: 1841, France

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It's true. I'm a sucker for exotic drawings, paintings, or photographs. It runs in the family. My mother, sisters and nieces were or are all painters, sketchers, and illustrators. Me? Almost by accident, I'm a lover of Oriental art, or arts, which doesn't mean I don't appreciate western and Islamic art.

  I've said several times now how incredibly enriching a trip to Gutenberg.org can be for those who can cope with on-screen viewing of one sort or another. This was brought home to me in many ways, but one I didn't expect was in having a look at two volumes of a lately released French journal, L'Illustration; one edition from 1843, and one from 1913.

  The funny thing is, I discovered I could read the French in these journals with comparative ease, and I think I know why. The French here is of the formal style we learned at school, not French as it's spoken in the street today. It's no more that than our idiom is that of Jane Austin or Charles Dickens.

  But it means I can easily read the text to accompany the illustrations - and the articles as well. 

  That having been said, here are a couple of examples of what occupied the minds of the people of mid-nineteenth century France (you can safely read 'Europe' for 'France' if we learn anything from Dostoyevsky's novels), and from Europe that in 1913 was about to be plunged into a ghastly war, and had little idea of what was ahead of them. I won't comment on them much, if at all. Make of them what you will.

Above:Diorama invented by Daguerre, the father of modern photography. This 3D modelling was a wonder of its time. It depicts the street where the church Saint-Paul-Hors-les-Murs (on the left) had been, after a fire which all but destroyed it.

Above: I thought when I first looked at this that it was a Chinese painting; it could so easily be! But it's not. It's Saint-Baume, a place of Christian pilgrimage in France.

Below: A foretaste of things to come. The battles on the periphery and the personal miseries.

Below: Preparing for the looming battle; what would become the Air Force of France. The height of aerodynamic efficiency in 1913.

Below: to me, a brilliant but inexpressibly sad photograph: I thought at first it was a tiger, which didn't make sense in open country like that, but of course it's a lioness. This was bound to be fate of all creatures in competition with humans. The shooter and the photographer were either very brave or very foolhardy. Perhaps both.

Below: something slightly more amusing, but which many might regard as symbolic of the press these days as well. The caption reads: Comment, au lendemain de la prise de Scutari, s'est exprimée à Cettigne la malice populaire à l'égard de la presse autrichienne. --Phot. Voukotitch. 

  Loosely translated, this means: How, shortly after Scutari was taken, what the local population thought of the Austrian press who covered it. In other words, blind and stupid (with my apologies to the ass.)

Ah well, as we say in France, Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

These two issues:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38729
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38725 

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"I am your Dentist"

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Not quite as in the musical The Little Shop of Horrors, but in the spirit of your never knowing what I might embarrass myself by writing about, I'm on about teeth.

This foray into dentistry was precipitated by the fact that I'm now in possession of two vital pieces of equipment I came to, or came to me, only after I fell ill. I can't say how grateful I am to have both. It might have special value for people with problems similar to mine.

I'm aware I could be telling you stuff you know about better than I do. But here goes. 

The first is pictured here. It's a flosser. Well, that's what I call it - as good a name as any; better'n some. Disposable, of course. Use once, throw away.

I hasten to add that the principle of flossing is hardly new to me. I flossed my teeth regularly for many years, but with the standard dental floss that needs two hands to use. 

When I lost the effective use of my right arm and hand for such tricky operations, I was stymied in terms of how to do it. It's not something you want someone else to do for you. I wouldn't anyway.

That's when Tracey remembered about these. The beauty of them for me is that they are operated with one hand. I was very pleased that the gauge of floss thickness was perfect for my teeth, and very strong (much more so than most standard floss), and that after getting familiar with using one, I could reach every crevice between teeth on both sides.

And the other device? I'll come to that in a minute. Firstly, let me tell you a story. Once I remembered that it was an ABC story, I located it online, so that saves me a lot of trouble. Thanks, Auntie, for your brilliant archives.

So, I can cut to the chase and you can read the full story for yourself. The main thing here is that a team of forensic specialists was allowed to do some post-mortems on bodies in nineteenth century graves being relocated in Adelaide. 

It turns out that in colonial Australia, one of the common causes of death - and painful death at that - related to teeth problems. Adults and children. Here's a brief excerpt:

Dr Renata Henneberg, Odontologist, Adelaide University: Here we have a lot of cavities, and huge ones. The tooth is half way eaten up. Many of the teeth were still present in the jaws causing very bad breath.

Tim Anson, Project Leader, Flinders University: So this person would have been in a great deal of discomfort?

Dr Renata Henneberg: A great deal of pain, obviously, yes. And you can see here as well rotten teeth. The infection went down the root, the bone was rotting and producing a lot of puss. The puss opened the hole in the bone and was released through the hole. If the pieces of bone were infected to the stage [to cause poisoning to the blood], could even have caused the death of one of the individuals.

Narration: It's not just the adults that suffered with their teeth. Even more telling are the records left in the dentition of the young....

Holy molar. That would surely confirm anyone's faith in the necessity for flossing! Trying it for the first time often results in blood coming from the gum between each pair of teeth. That could signify the first stages of gum disease, but with regular flossing, that bleeding doesn't happen any more. Any smell is rotting food being dragged from between the teeth, most probably, and no amount of brushing gets it out. Flossing will.

The other thing I've taken to using? I confess it was arrogance and ignorance about toothbrushes that stopped me using one of these for so long.

Braun

Yes - an electric toothbrush.

I believed, based on no good evidence at all, that they were just gimmicks, and I could do the job just as well manually. I was wrong. Using a high quality one of these is like comparing using a power drill to a brace-and-bit; or maybe, a current model sewing machine to an old Singer treadle. All of them might get the job done, but which would you use if you had the choice?

Like most things, I found it took a little practice to use it properly. The powered toothbrush uses very high vibration as well as movement in different planes to strip off tartar in a way that you just can't with a plain old toothbrush. It's not as powerful as the gadget dentists use when they rip away all the crud caked on the tooth surface, but after using one regularly, you realise what it's getting rid of, bit by bit, and what a regular toothbrush just can't do.

The brush-head itself is masterly in design. If you think it's a gimmick, try playing it on the top surface of your tongue and you'll really feels what it's doing!

My advice, for what it's worth? Treat yourself to both, if you haven't already. Use floss and an electric toothbrush, and you could possibly save yourself heaps of money (and pain?) avoiding the dentist. You might even live longer.

Postscript Saturday, 25 February 2012 7:40 PM. 

I found this site:

http://www.abc.net.au/health/talkinghealth/factbuster/stories/2012/02/15/3430307.htm

It backs up what I say. I added this comment on their site (if they accept it!):

I think it is important when using an electric toothbrush to use only gentle pressure with it on the teeth and gums, and let the toothbrush do its work. Heavy pressure serves no useful purpose. Move it slowly and methodically along the teeth, top, back and front surfaces.

With a little practice - and opening WIDE to get right to the back teeth and gums - a high quality electric toothbrush is wonderfully effective.

I believe it's also important not to allow the highly vibrating plastic brush head itself to come into contact with the teeth any more than you can avoid; just the soft bristles. This avoids the 'jackhammer' or 'hammerdrill' effect, which could possibly be harmful to tooth surfaces.

By the way, I am NOT your dentist. Each person is different, and you pay dentists highly because they have the professional knowledge. I'm just a guy with flossing equipment and a good electric toothbrush. 

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It's all God: Christmas in Shekawati

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This story is not mine. I'd be very happy if it were....

It was written just days ago by Julie Marsh, a former student of mine who completed her studies all the way through Indian history to a brilliant Ph D which drew many elements of Indian culture together.

She and her husband Michael Maher have been travelling in and writing about Asia, India in particular, for more than 30 years. They both know Indian culture very well, and love it dearly. 

Unlike many, they do not look at India with rose-coloured glasses, unless roses are in front of them. Their knowledge of Indian philosophies and traditions are deep, and while some Indians might protest at my saying this, they understand some aspects of Indian culture more deeply than some Indians, who now live in a globalised world with globalised values.

And so this is Christmas, 2011, celebrated in a world far away from their cottage 15 kms west of Armidale. Enjoy this extract from her diary!

It's all God: Christmas in Shekawati

Christmas in Bikaner

By chance, Michael and I had arranged to leave Bikaner on the Sunday that was Christmas Day. Each day was nameless to us by this stage, dissolving into the dust of timelessness. The sights, walking, sleep, impressions, were left in picture or sense memories which seem selected quite inexplicably. Why remember one moment more than another? I've heard that emotion prints memories, so perhaps I was feeling touched by some extra awareness just at the instant of rounding the curve in the road, bringing into sight that long, dull red line of the fort wall; the girl child with the smile. It's all dust, gritty dust, ankle deep, ground up stone of ages, some of it yellow, some almost purple, trodden by millions over millennia. You feel the oldness of the earth here, the 'used-ness'.

On the road to Nawalgarh

Pooja knew it was Christmas (and of course, I did too, thinking of everyone at home). She came to the breakfast area with a large fold out paper Christmas bell and hung it from the bookcase, then brought a small Christmas tree, put it on a tall stool, with a Santa doll, and arranged a few toy objects around it - a tiny gold paper box, some nameless humanoid creatures, an anthropomorphised crocodile, two foreign Christmas cards. It was really for her children, the little boys, who were excited and absorbed, as only children can be, by this magic.

Back of a truck, on the road to Nawalgarh

I showed them an animated sparkly card my brother had emailed me, and soon after the eldest boy began surreptitiously jiggling the stool, in order to get the tree to move the way the animation did. No use. I sang 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' instead. (yes, odd choice, I know!) The grandparents emerged to wish us Happy Christmas, the mother giving me a large hug and a fairly horrible celebratory scarf of scarlet and yellow tie dye. In return I desperately scrambled through my bag and came up with an expensive Australian hand cream (with, I admit, some unChristmaslike feeling of regret). You can see we weren't really in the spirit , more concerned with our departure and that feeling of slight concern about what the day would bring.

Typical small town, on the road to Nawalgarh

I'd imagined that by Christmas we'd be in the South where Christianity is big, and we'd go along to enjoy that enthusiasm; although they are Hindus, Pooja and Jitu were taking the family to church later in the day, as Indians do like to join in all religious days - it's all God after all, and celebrations are such fun. But our journey to Shekawati began this morning; we were going by car to avoid the interminable bus, and the driver would take us past the Catholic Church on the way out. Namastes were made to the family and Raja the German Shepherd, and we set off.

Train passing crossing while vehicles and people wait, on road to Nawalgarh

The church was on the scrubby edge of the city, and as the car stopped we foreigners were quickly and enthusiastically spotted by the lines of 'Special Day' beggars. Mothers with babies, old women, lepers, all hurried to the car and began tapping on the windows - it was hopeless, we couldn't get out, or we'd be mobbed; and there are just times when you have the energy for beggars and times when you don't. If that sounds cruel, it may be, but it remains one of those unsolvable India dilemmas. You could spend all your time, and all your money, and all your health, helping beggars and as a visitor it would make barely a drop of difference. Yet each day, I see individuals that make my heart cry. We give them bits of money, or food - but so what? It won't change their lives, though it may alleviate the hunger for one day. But abjuring the poor on Christmas Day… Weeks later, when reading comedian Russell Brand's autobiography My Booky Wook in Alleppey, I found I agreed with his awkward childhood sense that 'special' days did not necessarily feel special. Instead, 'special' comes at unexpected moments, just as happiness does. Christmas is a day designated by humans; the love advocated by the idea of Jesus is always there, an inexhaustible well. But it's still good to be reminded. In a sense, we really did visit the church that day.

Women and kids on roadside, on way to Nawalgarh

For hours then we drove through the countryside and towns of Shekawati region, north-east Rajasthan, on our way to the town of Nawalgarh, where we'd stay a few days. It was desert country, but productive, much of it cultivated and irrigated, by ground water, I imagine. It was interesting that the scrubby trees that grow so well here are in fact also a crop: the leafy branches were being harvested for winter fodder, so that most had only one 'maintenance' branch remaining. Raptors circled overhead, as they do everywhere in this country, cleaning the bones of death, and no doubt controlling rodents, too. The towns, of old stone and new cement blocks, sun bleached, blended shabbily into the wastelands of garbage, of rural thatched huts becoming submerged by the push of suburbs, edged at times by the camps of semi nomadic herders of goats or sheep. Trucks, buses, camel carts, cars and motorbikes vied for the narrow tarred road, all halting together at level crossings. Everyone seems equally entranced by the trains; there's no sense of impatience, but a companionable focus, and a frisson as the long carriages go by.

Fatehpur with haveli in background, on road to Nawalgarh

At Mandewar, we waylaid for lunch at a hotel painted up to resemble the famous havelis of this district. Bright pictures of gods, birds, Raj gentlemen, Rajas, women bearing pots or babies, flowers, covered every surface of the white marble. It becomes saturating, and after the Jain temple in Bikaner all else pales into parody. More intriguing, and enjoyable for us, was sitting on the rooftop watching the neighbourhood kids flying kites from their rooftops. For it was a Sunday after all; extended families and friends came together in this age old game. It's great the way Indians use their flat roof space as a recreation area; it's breezy there, open, while below at street level there just is no room at all. We could do the same in Australia!

Detail on the walls of a haveli in Fatehpur

 After that, a young man who acted as a tourist guide inveigled us to take a brief, unwanted tour of several nearby havelis. He distressed us by his mannerisms, clearly imbibed from young backpackers - he was cooler than cool, slick, a small town guy who wished to be far away - and who could blame him, at his age. He proudly announced he'd been drinking beer with an English girl the previous night. But it felt as if he was losing his soul: Western tourism has a lot to answer for in India. Yet I suppose it opens possibilities, too, in places otherwise on the fringe of changes that seem so desirable when seen on the movie screen.

Bishnoi huts along the road to Nawalgarh

Back on the road, and soon to the dense, busy, crumbling town of Fatehpur, where the rutted roads are almost impassable and where the havelis are the oldest of all, but to me the most beautiful. Here, the paintings are faded visions in exquisite soft colours, depicting scenes from religious stories, on falling walls fading into mould, or glimpses on the tops of shopfronts, or beyond green trees in forgotten gardens. A French woman has restored one of these havelis, though we did not find it, as we wanted to press on. Besides, there is something in me that likes the unrestored. I wish they could just be kept lightly cleaned, and not allowed to decay entirely … and if the surroundings were cleaner too, how romantic, evocative Fatehpur could be. Must once have been, when it was on the main desert trade route. But such are not the people's concerns; I guess they have the pressing matter of earning their livings, raising their children, to attend to. The old world has such value, beauty and knowledge, a loss surely that it is so disregarded, except by the few.

Haveli in Mandewa, where we stopped for lunch along the way to Nawalgarh

In early evening, we came at last to Nawalgarh, and the Shekawati Guesthouse, an oasis of calm, in this otherwise typically shabby but lively Rajasthani town. Kalpana had great foresight when she decided to develop an 'organic' farm into a haven for the newly evolving trade in haveli tourism. She and her husband Gajendra designed and built six Bishnoi style huts (round in shape, mud walls, thatch roof) with modern bathrooms, naturally, for the visitors; also several rooms were made available in their own large traditional family home. Kalpana greeted us and said “It's Christmas! I'll be serving something special for dinner.”

Cottages at Shekawati Guest House

At 7 pm, we presented ourselves at the dining room where two other tables of guests, Europeans, were gathered. We helped ourselves from tureens of vegetable curries: one of baby eggplants (brinjal), one of cauliflower, one of a type of chic pea dumpling, along with rice and chapatis, tomato salad, and to Michael's delight, a strong, delectable garlic pickle. All were subtly flavoured and different to any other Indian food I'd eaten: this made me realise that home cooking is very different to commercial fare, at least, to the type that we can normally afford as daily sustenance. Next, Rahul, the boy who helped with serving, and was quite mischievous too, ladled out sweet, luscious gulab jamuns, round balls made with milk, flour, flavoured with cardamom and swimming in sugar syrup. Yum! But this was not the 'special treat' for Christmas that Kalpana had promised. She came in personally bearing a cake, a bought cake, iced with several shades of pastel cream and some sort of piped decoration, and with great fanfare set it in the midst of the guests. Next, she set candles all around it and, with some difficulty, lit them. By now I was puzzled. Was it someone's birthday?

Shekawati Guest House owners, Kalpana and Gajendra

“How many are there?” she counted: including her family indoors and us, 12 and, we pressed her, what about the dog? Her little white dog was ecstatic about the cake. He danced about below unable to take his eyes from the treat. It MUST be his or he could not bear it!! At the next table, a young French woman stood up and said she would cut the cake. So! I thought, perhaps it is her birthday. But it wasn't; it was the birthday of Jesus, dummy! Happy Christmas: our little group of strangers, made one by sharing this singular, but caring, moment, then wandering to our huts, under the hazy stars in distant Nawalgarh.

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