The Ellis family day 2008

Well what a pleasant surprise to see Cat’s head up over the fence. Hi Cat! Lovely to see you and here for you and anyone else who may need reminding, this blog is easily accessed and commented on if you can just remember Chris OK’s ludicrously long email address: christopher.okeefe6@bigpond.com and the very difficult password; okeefes though not necessarily in italics.

Now here to ramp up your home sickness are some snaps from yesterdays family day, splendidly organised by Alice and Jack at the pub.

Now, least that did not give a tough enough tug to the heart I’ll indulge you with some nostalgia. English have a habit of calling their homeland The Old Dart for what reason no one, or everyone, knows. Sub Editors, or Subs to the trade, are in the habit of taking things like this and giving a twist like The Old Fart or my favourite The Old Tart (maybe Portuguese). I have decided in this in this vein to take Sub’s licence and call our country The Young S-punk and following are some typical scenes from the same.

Pulls teeth too

Local Poet

Cant fail

Local Gallery

A few of my favorite things

Henson Park

Airliner over Henson Park

Sunrise over Henson Park

I include this only because this agent seems to share my weakness for alliteration, does anyone know what a breakfast basin is.

Last and certainly least; I have recently been reading works set in India and China in my lifetime and struck by social drama that living in a different place can have in the same time I’m set to musings such as the following:

FUN FUN FUN by The Beach Boys (the Chinese ones) aka; Wheels from the Dray

Well she’s got her daddy’s ox
and she’s sloshing through the muddy long march now
Seems she forgot all about the revolution
That she learned from old Mao now
And with the propaganda blastin
She goes sloshing just as fast as she can now
and she’ll have fun fun fun
till the red guard take the wheels from the dray

Well the proletariat can’t stand her
Cause she walks and drives like a capitalist now
(you walk like a capitalist now you walk like a capitalist)
She makes western hegemony look more like a market stall space now
(market stall space now, market stall space)
A lot of guards try to catch her
But she knows about the totalitarian state now
And she’ll have fun fun fun
till the red guards take the wheels from the dray

Well you knew all along
That old Mao was getting wise to you now
(Your gonna get purged now your gonna get purged)
And since he took your set of wheels
You’ve been thinking that your fun was all through now
(Your gonna get purged now your gonna get purged)

But you can come along with me
Cause we gotta flee to the west now
(Your gonna get purged now your gonna get purged)

And we’ll have fun fun fun now now the red guard took the wheels from the dray
(fun fun fun now now the red guard took the wheels from the dray)
And we’ll have fun fun fun now now the red guard took the wheels from the dray
(fun fun fun now now the red guard took the wheels from the dray)


That’s all folks

Aunty R

Finally, I get a job…

I know that some of you may have seen Kelly’s email home yesterday and before I get another lecture from Robert, I was actually waiting till next week to blog (once the contract had been signed) that I finally have found employment in London.

I’ve been temping for the last few weeks at Southeastern Railway as a PA to the Engineering Director but on Thursday, so it hasn’t totally been a life of eating one can of baked beans a day and watching Oprah but it feels pretty good. And what makes it even better is this could be described as my dream job.

I’m going to be working in the International PR department for Fremantle Media. It's a new role, it is junior but I'll be working with some of the big names in PR and they will be mentoring me. Fremantle is an international company and we'll be handling international PR so there's going to be travel involved and it's somewhere I can really grow and start to develop my career (God! I've just realised how naff that last sentence sounds. Well, it's true).

I really like the company (they have two yoga classes a day at the office and free canteen!), I really, really like the Director of PR (who will be my direct boss) and I"m really, really excited. I actually had to sit down at Southwark when they rang me to re-capture my breath.

It's based at Tottenham Court Rd (near Oxford St), which is a 40 minute walk from my house so I will probably still walk to work and it's across the road from the British Film Institute where some of my friends work. I will start in about 10 days...

So I think that brings you all up to speed. I'm looking forward to the 6am phone call tomorrow from you all at Alice and Jack's family day.

Oh - and Aunty Robert, you may think this is a private communication channel between you and Kelly but there are other's of us who read it (and just forget the login and can't comment). If you'd send me your email address - you too can be on my international PR mailing list :P

Biking on the Beach

Here is Chris & Olly enjoying the beach.

Farewell Hughie

Dear Kell,

There’s something melancholy about this clear sunny yet blustery cold Monday. Tempting it is to attribute this to the end of Catholic Youth Day week (week day?) but I prefer to see it in light of the passing of Uncle Hughie whose funeral and wake I attended in company with Hugh and Alice this Saturday. A temporal event at the South Chapel, Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park (code for Crematorium) splendidly located at scenic Bunnerong with glimpses of Botany Bay in bright warm eleven AM sunshine. Eulogies by Hugh and Betty’s Niece, whose name this fool forgets, were touching as was the wrong version of “Memories”. The whole event was newish to this fortunate fool who at sixty two can still count the funerals attended on one hand. I found it novel that the funeral directors did just that, aided by the chapel/theatre proscenium curtains which after closing to conceal the coffin staged a little drama of their own sucking in toward the coffin before gradually returning to default. I would not have been at all surprised had they re-opened like the magicians cape to reveal all had vanished leaving just a wisp of vapour.

The wake was at the Randwick Golf Club, cleverly located owing to a lack of free space in Randwick proper, on the pacific coast at Malabar; across Little Bay from the rifle range. I say clever not just because this delightfully aspected site is prime for anyone’s club but also because had it been anywhere in Randwick on this once in a lifetime day of pilgrimage to the Racecourse it would have been almost impossible to get to; or from. The Popes ‘Red’ proved a much greater attraction than any ‘Golden’ Slipper though the bookies seem not to appreciate it. A good showing of Frasers, Betty’s family, who turned out to be good sorts as those who produced a Betty were bound to be, filled out our delightful room where the curtains had eventually to be drawn to entice guests away from the view and to engage in food drink and bonhomie. Many seemed to be the offspring of Betty’s, brother now deceased, and their spouses and offspring but don’t ask me for any better explanation. You know how I am with relations if not presented with a plan er family tree. It’s hard enough to keep up with those bearing the same blood. Enough to say I met no one I would not welcome as my own family.

Betty will miss him but I’m sure Hughie does not miss this mortality and the medical indignities of growing old. Dorothy who, faced with four plus hours of public transport within her own city, missed the funeral has arranged a luncheon with Betty, Hugh and I for tomorrow after which we may try to get her into “Tatler” or “Shh” in Darlinghurst (code for Kings Cross) for some $25 drinks to cheer her.

The Pope has indeed left these shores along with many of his pilgrims and the Herald today has attempted it seems to sum up readers responses after a torrid couple of weeks of the letters page. Now here, for those among you who don’t read them or this, I shall attempt a summary. They commence with the converts who hated the idea but were won over by the vibrancy of youth. Others lament the seeming lack of expressed concern for the poor and the sexually abused. Security was criticized not for it’s failings but rather its costly overblowness. The Stations of the Cross were criticised by theatrical reviewers for being poor, amateur, overwrought and overdone. A country reader from Georgica recons the Pope, sight unseen, is a ringer for John Cargher the late ABC singer host, and should he need a job…. A Randwick lad rejoiced at finding pilgrims in the pub scamming the event for a free accommodation holiday. But my favourite came from Graeme Finn of St Peters and I shall quote it verbatim: So, the Pope clicked the heels of his ruby slippers three times and said “there’s no place like home”, then left the wonderful land of Oz, allowing the Emerald City to return to normal.

Still at Mission Beach

Yes we are still enjoying the winter at Mission Beach, with a mixture of rainy and sunny days but always warm. We have had Stephen & Jeanette with us for the last 4 weeks as well as a visit from some retired OPSM work colleagues. We have also met some new fellow grey nomads who we enjoy "happy hours" with. The photos show some of our activities, seafood night around the camp fire, watching the gardener de nut the coconut trees, watching the look of terror on back packers parachuting, and visits to Tully Gorge and Murray Falls. I bought a second hand bike which is fun on the beach, handy for getting bread & milk and Olly loves the basket rides. I will shoot a video and post it soon. Bye for now till Phuket or Christmas. love Sue, Chris & Olly

WYD Ed

Dear Kell’

First of all, a big happy birthday to you. You’re certainly a jolly good fellow in my book (albeit that’s still in the conceptual stage).

Second, recent pictures posted by cat in face book of herself and yourself perched precariously on the facia wall of a multi storey building, high above the high street, in pursuit of so called London sunlight, leave me and presumably your parents in a supreme state of anxiety. Your descriptions of your practises with alcohol spring instantly to mind and had they not then the subsequent photo of MIguel Faria Rocha Pinto imbibing a suspiciously brown liquid directly from the lip of a jug would have. We prefer to imagine your drinking exploits conducted indoors, at ground level, high rise and proximity to rivers make us nervous.

Third, it’s a pleasure and a relief to see evidence that your cousin Cat is actually alive and well. That old adage that ‘no news is good news’ is sometimes just not enough. I did witness a bootleg copy of one of her emails expressing apologies for her lack of communication recently and was relieved that it was not just me she was avoiding. I know that Cat is keen to continue in her theatrical career and wish her the best in her endeavours. Please warn her however to avoid any theatrical groups whose producers or directors bear the name Mosley.

Now to the home front which as usual takes the piss out of anything London or any other of those piss-ant euro towns. We have god visiting, no that’s the pope actually but he has gods ear and infallibility too boot. Yes he’s here now and if I get a chance to question him it’ll be about who’s the greatest all time team, Canterbury or Manly, and I know what he’ll say and you know he’s infallible, there’s no higher source. Canterbury ya!

In case his infallibility wasn’t enough protection Morris Iemma has struck a law that forbids us under the pain of $5500 plus mortal sin from offending any of the pilgrims flooding into town with condoms or the suggestions that evolution rather than a seven day ego tripper created the universe we know before some yob called Adam under the influence of a seductress named Eve took a bite of the apple (the fruit not the iPhone mob, god knows what the consequences of that would have been) leaving us in the mess we find.

This new law, obviously passed during a toilet break or after bedtime, raised no objections from the opposition but it brought the news columnists and letter writers out in droves, or at least those from non Murdock owned newspapers. The Tele, majorly distracted by a recent spate of infanticide which filled most pages not already allocated to sport or celebrity bulges, did not notice this major story at all and missed all the fun. Then News Wish or one of those commie ABC fronts pulled a tripwire that snared George Pell (that’s the Cardinal you know) in a denial of pastoral duty similar to the one that sent the ex Governor General Hollingworth to the sin bin where he languishes still. This in his hour of glory surely tasted like sand in his mouth and re-ignited the columnists and letter writers.

Now the Pope has landed and the ‘event’ has begun tragically dividing your own family with its corridor stretching from North Sydney (Blues Point Rd. will be closed and it’s doubtful Alice will be able to cross it to work poor thing, let alone go to the shops) to Randwick Race Course. Hugh and I will be unable to lunch (our seniors cards are useless) but Dot will engage with public transport tomorrow disguised as a pilgrim with rosary beads and bright clothing to take his place at lunch. A true resistance fighter she is already harbouring two atheist dogs in her recently vacated underground and I too have offered up my under bed priest hole (I’m not sure priest is the right word here) to those in fear for their cash cards.

Bunnings, surprisingly enough, has not cashed in with stock of flashing crucifix coasters as I had predicted but yesterday there was an abundance of polished looking young folk buying three meter lengths of twenty five millimetre dowel which looked pretty dangerous to me. They remind me of modern day jousting lances and I don’t expect they would be let into any footy matches with them.

Never mind, this time next week it will be all over. Careers will be made and lost. Some new pestilence (probably the Olympics) will present to occupy collum space. I’ll still be here a week older but no wiser, to berate with words unread so be cool fool and again, HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

THE R CLIP

Well Kell,
Just back from Camperdown Park where the sky couldn’t have been bluer or the grass greener in any, nineteen degrees warm, Australian winter’s light. It was like lolling in a magnificent fruit cake with raisins of rolling children and pre-pubescent wrestling boy nuts in a floating mix of dog and ball dates. The skyline garnished (perhaps it’s a salad) with Angophras to east and west, glazed by a graffiti splashed (that grazing green Rhino is very clever) stone, Newtown cemetery wall to the south its lush green icing bakes in the sun of its uninterrupted north aspect. If that weren’t enough pleasure then add the R clip like profile of girls in Newtown black with flesh pink ends that dot the green like figures in a Seurat painting.

R clip you ask? Well I’m glad you did. An R clip is an engineering device that serves a function, similar to that of a split pin, of preventing a bolt or stud coming undone. Mmm I’ve lost you I see but suffice to say that an R clip has the shape of a girl, (minus head) lying face down and propping herself on her elbows to read. The reason I find this so exciting is that I have always found R my first and original initial, so graphically awkward, in both its upper and lower case natures. The discovery of the R clip and the realisation of its similarity to the reclining female form is for me up there with the discovery of penicillin and the atomic theory.

You with your exultant K standing firmly and waving (or saluting I suspect) have probably never considered how it might feel for an R which though it should stand proud like a P has this embarrassing dangly appendage that leaves one feeling as in dreams where you’re caught in public without pants. Even in the minor case r looks like unfinished business don’t you think? In running writing (if that’s what it’s now called) it’s no less awkward. Can you imagine Coca Cola working with an R.?

Anyway, enough of that, the point is that the park was splendid this afternoon and enjoyed by all, or at least by all who having had a couple of glasses of red with lunch at The Duke, had the forethought to go to the toilet before setting up camp with their rug, trannie and a best book. Ah well, another lesson learned.


THE R CLIP