My dearest nieces Kell and Cat

To; Wiseberry Enmore

Dear sirs and madams,

I wept when I read your letter about the landlord’s plight with increased “holding costs”, my mouth went dry and I could barely swallow my baked beans. Now re-reading the missive is difficult as my tears have blurred the page but it appears to indicate a rent rise to $260 per ‘W1’ which I take to mean per week. I’m no expert on Real Estate jargon so correct me if I’m wrong but it looks like your texting skills have come to roost in your company mail where its egg has benefited your life’s work load by two key strokes.

Of course I shall be more than happy to pay an extra $20.00 per week ($1040.00) per year. I know how much holding can cost, especially with increased Arthritis in the joints. Why that’s probably not even enough to pay for the recently replaced hot water service which many lords would have left to burst, flooding both mine and the downstairs apartments and getting the whole lot replaced on insurance. I’ll just cut back on baked beans ( about five hundred and eighty cans of them) or take out a personal loan.

I won’t worry about a new Tenancy Agreement right now though at only $15.00 it’s very tempting. It would only cover six months as the last one did and its expirary would only alert you to another opportunity to plunder. No you just keep refining those text to cooperate letter skills and I bet in six months you can save mmm…maybe five strokes as you announce a mmm…maybe $35.00 rent raise towards increases in landlords mmm…maybe footing, seating, cellaring, the lord knows, goaling, golding, oops…gilding costs.

Kind Regards

This is the letter I wrote, not sent, to the real estate agent this week. As I say sometimes, well often I suppose, the writing is enough. For those among you about to ask the question, I have replaced Portuguese Tarts with baked beans in this argument to add pathos and in doing so am in good company with Wayne Swan and Malcolm Turnbull.

Trading as Maxwell J Ward, an established fixture on Enmore Road just down from The Sly Fox for eighty years, in the six months since I rented this agency has transformed into Wiseberry with new brand, colours and cooperate front. I guess they must do something to appear as more than just puff and as defenceless tenants are the best (only) game in town now the bubble has burst, well… Unless some of those Greens take notice it won’t be long till tenants are extinct and science is left holding nothing but a small strand of DNA to try cloning from.

The estate agents letter arrived at the end of a week of playing cat and mouse by email with my ISP provider TPG, who were offering three hundred dollars of mobile phone calls for twenty dollars a month. Sounded good and got better when it turned out it only cost ten dollars if broadband service, which I already had with them, was included. After a number of calls to Mumbai we decided it was best to do business by email, which though in black and white print and re readable, as opposed to colourful language lost in ether, still suffers from ‘lost in translation’ moments. It’s still a work in progress but seems to be coming along fine.

The other financial matter preying on my mind as well as yours and many others was the state of my superannuation. My new Attorney and Financial adviser Jack, passed to me via his lovely wife and assistant Alice, the suggestion that during these troubled times I should instruct my superannuation trust to put my funds into a year long fixed interest account. That wouldn’t be hard for one already dealing masterfully with ISP providers in Mumbai and the cooperate giants of Enmore, I thought and set off to view the details of my account with REST Superannuation. At their website with my own membership and pin number at hand I felt that sense of privilege that only members and masters of the universe feel. Yes that’s my name and address mmm…phone number and email address right, I’ll know where to come if I ever forget that stuff, now lets check the finances, what’s this, a single number, the bottom line only, no columns no graphs that cant be right. A search of paper files revealed that since the commencement of my account with Rest, over two years ago, and my subsequent transfer of funds from the previous account and my inheritance, I had received no report of the score let alone the state of play. Oh what have I done I cried. The previous trust sent countless indecipherable reports; here they are carefully filed if never read. After rending clothes and pulling hair for the rest of the week, on Friday, by some dare I say divine intervention, I received by mail one of those comfortably fat envelopes with the Rest logo emblazoned. Hallelujah!



It’s hard to put into words my feelings; disappointment, disgust, upon opening this letter to find not a report on Superannuation but a bogus explanation of increased fees for an un-solicited insurance regime they had placed me into without asking. Talk about betrayal of trust. I’d noticed mention of these policies in brochures from when the account was set up and thought that’s nice, but never any documentation to indicate I was paying for it or how much. Yes I know that only a fool would think an insurance policy would be free but I am a fool and their supposed to be a trust. I’ve never bought insurance in my life. Yes that’s an exaggeration but I like to talk in absolutes. I’ve had car and health but never death, total and permanent disability or income protection for which they’ve been charging me $3.50 a week and now would like $7.15. I don’t believe in the marketing of fear. I like a more positive return on an investment.

Now I notice that unlike my previous trust Rest don’t even have a record of who should inherit my super or indeed the insurance. Are they the beneficiaries? Is the insurance designed to protect the contributions to their managed funds? Am I getting paranoid?

I guess I shall just have to get on the ‘long phone call’ as I call it. I won’t be surprised to find myself on the line to Mumbai. I’ll try to remain even but am bound to loose my temper at least once. I’ll certainly send emails but I’m pretty sure they are read by machines these days that have not been programmed for irony.

In summation I stand to save: $10.19 per week on mobile phones $3.50 per week on insurance and loose: $ 20.00 per week on rent leaving me only$6.31 out of pocket. If I can just locate a dealer I have an ‘inexhaustible’ amount of this stuff (see photo below) that I’d never realised there was a market for. All told I’d have to say things are looking up.

Love from old cranky aunty

O'Keefe family day - London style

Hi guys

Sorry it's been forever since I blogged - life is super busy! Chris was in London this week and he brought the sunshine with him! Cat, Chris and I celebrated our reunion at the Anchor (my favourite pub), sitting in the sunshine for a boozy afternoon. It was lovely and we wish you all could've been there.

Love lots xx Kel

Paparazzi; Will they ever leave me in peace

Dear Kell and Cat,

Hope this missive finds you both well…. er sober

We really are the lucky country. While our northern cousins wake every morning to deteriorating financial and weather conditions, here the awesome arrival of summer distracts us from the plunging graphs on balance sheets with thoughts of beach, boats and barbeque. At least for most that is, pity my poor neighbour who, so traumatised, forgot he owned his mansion and did a moonlight flit mid week, but he’s the exception not the rule.

My stocks are OK especially when I compare them to some of my peers. I attended the burial of my old mate John Cann on Friday. Cancer got him at only 56 so he’s no longer competing, but of those other old friends, inevitable at funerals, most sported healthy “looking” expanded waistlines not unlike my own. Andy was the exception, crippled with arthritis/whatever he can barley walk and is much too slim. Phil Jack recently redundant from his sub editorship at The Herald’s ‘Financial Review’ who complained of having been reduced from millionaire to half millionaire in the last six months, was still sporting an enviable three piece pin stripe silk suit over his six foot plus gaunt frame and elicited no sympathy from me.

John who as it turned out had two lives, or at least two half lives, mmm quarter lives maybe, managed to rouse an extraordinary send-off from the glitterati of Australia’s acting talent. I had known him well in the first half when he, much like me, was a dissolute rebellious indulgent youth making a living from tat and drugs, as best as he could. In the latter quadrant he took over the family company “June Cann Management” theatrical agency, where it seems, if eulogies are to be believed, he found his feet.

Yes there were a large crowd of ‘mourners’ at Mona Vale Cemetery and they did include many recognisable faces such as Michael Caton, Jack Thompson, Bryan Brown, and other old duffers who’s faces I remember and names I never knew. Along with them were many bright looking younger folk who to me could have been anybody but to the phalanx of paparazzi in attendance were obviously somebody. The wake, represented in the full colour programme as a celebration of the life… revealed to me a John, whose essential loving nature I recognised, in an entirely new movie. If the eulogies of actors can be believed he was a saint and indeed has already the miracle of Claudia Carvan’s flight from Melbourne documented as his first on the path to beatification.

Bryan Brown MC’d as Bryan Brown while Jack Thompson in character for his latest role as a drunk, under bridge dweller in thirties period piece and afraid to leave it for fear of not finding his way back, grunted in anguished terms and full length khaki overcoat. More sense was injected by Noah Taylor, Naomi Watts and the afore mentioned Claudia all three of whom made good use of this Academy Award rehearsal opportunity. Claudia’s was my favourite but when I expressed this opinion to my peers they were quick to counter endorse Noah’s and Naomi’s and I had to concede that Naomi’s several descents into and out of seemingly uncontrollable tears and Noah’s searches for scrunched pieces of blue paper were impressive. There was a lot of blue paper notes Cat, is that something you can explain?


Its not my intention to belittle the motives of the performers in this drama, the John they spoke of was the same one I had known and loved. To me it seems he found that symbiosis that occurs, all too rarely, where life’s work presents to the individual the perfect outlet for their talents. Actors should not be mocked for bringing their talents to bear in such circumstances any more than folk of a critical nature should be banned from evaluating their merit.

Oh I forgot to mention Jeannie Lewis’ well presented version of ‘Non,Je Ne Regrette Rien’ graveside, unaccompanied other than by earthmovers. Seems to be a new land release right next door and as the Estate Agent’s promo says; “dead folk don’t renovate” Also forgot the invitation enshrined in the programme to deposit a flower or a Gauloise, last remnant of Johns drug habit, into the grave


So it was that I had compassionate leave from my endeavours at Bunnings on Friday. Like their ilk in modern cooperates when Bunnings is faced with a pain in the toe they cut off the foot. The mere hint of a union move to apply penalty rates to Saturdays with the support of a Labour Government, though it may be yet two years off, has them creating new policy that no one should work more than an eight hour Saturday shift. I must make up the balance of my once nine and a half hour Saturday across the other three days and commenced this new regime with ten hours of compassionate leave. That’s fair isn’t it?

Had a call from SOK on Saturday night. He’s travelling well and having completed the Darwin pub crawl may soon move to Broome. He’ll keep his job though changing only his statehood. He was pissed off that the wet had come so early and when I mentioned the thirty one degree day we’d had he wished he could have some similar cool weather. I forgot to inquire if he would be back for Christmas.

Lots of love

Your best Aunty



I’d hoped to put you and Mart up at my place over Christmas

But unfortunately were undergoing renovations

In her new position of power as sub editor to Women’s Health and spouse of The Legal Officer of a really really big union Alice suggested to her Uni that some playing fields would be nice and here, the result; in time for her graduation on Monday

Thames Festival

Hello Lovelies,

I don't want to be accused of not blogging again (and particularly as Auntie has forgotten how to spell my name) so I thought I would.

Kelly and I had a lovely time on Sunday night at the Thames Festival - which I could easily see many of the O'Keefe Clan with a few bottles at. My housemate Martin and I went down to the Brazil Bar at about 5pm and drank Caprahinhas in the sun, chilling out to some awesome music.

At about 6.30pm, my friend Nick joined us and wondered up through the festival towards the Tate where we found a stall selling Churros and we lined up for an hour to get some. A long time I know, but they were so totally worth it (fresh cooked, with caramel in the centre and rolled in cinnamon).

After that, we took our places on Blackfriars Bridge to watch the parade. It was so awesome and felt a lot like a cross between Mardi Gras and Carnavale. Kelly, Mart and some of their friends joined us and Kelly and I had an awesome time trying to make our butts move like the Jamaican girls (not as easy task).

Anyway, there were many a drink to be had and a definite great time.

See the love above. Can't wait for Christmas and to see you all!

xoxo London Girl

Tully Golden Gumboot Festival 2008

Trying to keep up with brother Robert thought I would show you some of the star attractions of the recent Golden Gumboot Festival, that believe it or not Sue and I attended for the second time (last one in 2006. Amazingly it didn't rain and we only attended the evening events which were highlighted by a lantern parade,which did not photograph that well. Something about lanterns and flash not working so well. But the solo line dancer and the can can girls were great. I think we have been in FNQ too long ??? love Chris, Sue & Olly.

Found a picture of many of the "okeefe" family so hope you like the profile pic.

Family Daze

Dear Kat and Kell

Oops! With the arrival of this instant summer I thought it appropriate to relieve myself of winter’s crop of hair. I went to town with clippers and number seven comb attachment leaving all this worthless wool on the bathroom floor bar those pesky long hairs at the crown that always refuse to be cut til post wash when they stand stiff obediently awaiting execution. Without my glasses or memory I snatched up the clippers and not noticing that I had replaced the number seven with the number one proceeded to carve a four centimetre square, close to bald, patch behind my left ear. Now I’m pondering my options which as I see it include: Shaving all to this length, Shaving parts into a fashionable pattern of wheat and bean fields (probably too difficult for self administration and not very interesting in white on pink), Adding colour / colours (I’m not keen at all on this option), or bearing up with looking like the product of intrusive surgery. It’s bad enough to take this look to work but worse I have to attend the funeral on Friday, of a recently departed friend, among peers who will all be scrutinising one another for signs of wear. Dam.

Yes instant summer, eleven degrees above average on Saturday, just open the packet and add water, plenty of that at family day celebrations sent us scattering for shelter and today well who knows, it’s cooking and I’m thinking of turning on the air cond. Instant summer’s easy, we scientists are working on instant water but we’re still puzzled about the secret ingredient. When we get it we’ll make a motza so have your investment capital ready.

Family day was pretty much an old farts event with the exception of Alice and Jack who will be old farts someday I hope. Betty was a welcome addition to the usual crew. She walked from Central owing to some techno bug in her non mobile phone and was a bit out of sorts till a couple of Pimms sorted her out. I’ll see if I can get a few more of the young’ns along to mine on October 19. Maybe I could turn it into an interactive game, have Kyle Sandilands or some other celebrity guest, Keno at the very least. Anyway if I fail I feel Dot and Strobe may have a trump card by the time of theirs on November 23.

Following you will find some snaps from the day and a special photo essay to help Mart understand Australia which I’m sure he thinks of as a land of savages with pet Kangaroos. Please be careful who you show this to though because if it gets out it is bound to ruin the careers of Paul (the croc) Hogan, Lara Bingle, Baz Lurman and everyone else down there at Tourism Australia.

Love and Kisses

Aunty


Rapt in Hugh’s risqué tale


Why dose there always seem to be many more bottles and glasses than people


Betty in good hands


Much later that night we were all a littlr blurry.


I'd love to put you and Kell up Mart but I'm a little pressed for space


This clever contraption when attached to the back of a ute aparently catches or repels bugs


Cultured


Says it all with such eloquence


Talk about the clever country. Scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and even metaphysicsts have struggled for eons and here the beauty of the problem solved. Square peg in round hole, no worries!


This is probably not the worlds bigest birthday card but it may be Glebes


Blackwattle Bay here in this cozy corner of Sydney Harbour surrounded by Annandale and Glebe is one of the oldest still operative whaling stations in the Southern Hemisphere


There certianly clever. People were leery of this freeway pedestrian overpass but with the addition of a little steel their fears were allayed.


Our government places education in a a very high priority. The homless are well catered for in this street library.


We Aussies feel secure because in times of danger like Papal visits our government enlist the support of our ever ready fire fighting forces


This is still a country of opportunity. Karl Williams (pictured) has in only a few years transformed himself from a well known Melbourne underworld figure (ie. murderer) to a top rating actor and now a candidate for alderman in Marrickville Council


I dont know if you have these in the UK but here the "pedophile child trap"* is openly marketed. Note the tennis ball bait. The webbing is sticky like a spiders and once the child gets in it cannot escape.
*Reg.TM

Nigelness next to godliness

Specialist day care centre for children of graffiti artists



Dearest Kel and Cat

Well here’s a theory for you. Having spent most of the weekend with a blindingly ugly headache, I woke and went to work on Wednesday remarkably clear and could not believe how good it felt to be at work. I’m sure some of you appreciate just how well you feel when an illness of any duration has gone, all of you will eventually. Now I’m thinking that if I can just perfect the formula for this kind of weekend pain I shall be able to embrace work with gusto well into the next decade.

It’s interesting to extend this theory. If Para Olympians prove that having a car spring for a calf muscle makes them run even faster than the able bodied will the able bodied be allowed amputations to enable super prosthetic additions. Will this fall into the allowable, Thorpie speed suit, Runners starting blocks category, or will it be regarded like drug enhancement as a big no no? Now that’s got you thinking hasn’t it?

Thank you Nigel for not making me disabled. I might have become the second part of the blind I suspect (the sounds turned down) tandem bicycle team who must keep his or her face pressed tightly into the bum of the leader, during racing exertions, no matter what he or she had for breakfast / lunch.

I should explain that Nigel is a Bunnings employee well on his way to full blown dementia. With an executive background in the Advertising industry he is tall and distinguished with an old world gentleman’s charm. He doesn’t remember where anything much in the shop is though he is gracious as he directs customers to me or others, sometimes physically leading them with a hand to elbow. He often asks me what day it is and one day he will not find us at all I suppose. He reminds me of the character Chance, the gardener, played by Peter Sellers who became president in the movie Being There. I always thought him a God like character. So thank you Nigel for there but for the grace of you go I.

Meanwhile Fathers day went well, for me at least at a lovely Thai luncheon in the city. This weekend is of course Hugh’s family day at The Rose in Chippendale when if you’ve been good you may receive traditional inconveniently timed phone calls.

That’s all for now, not much I grant but probably more than anyone will read.

Lots of love to you both from your favourite Aunty

R.

Privelege

Dear Cat and kell

Gahh! I wake from dreams of divorce and abandonment to find I’ve slept dry mouthed through the football after a lush long lunch with Hugh. Don’t you find dreams so irrational? In a wakeful state you’ll fantasise your chances with that girl, in dreams you’ve melded with her mother’s mirror eyes to create a mythological Moravian monster. Thank (Its too easy to thank god or the lord here, but makes little sense to you pagans so I’ll just thank Nigel and explain later) for waking me from these illusions. I’d think that dreams were sent only to torment if it weren’t for those rare times when Nigel allows me to fly. The sensation of launch whether from cliff top, steep downgrade or skate board is worth any number of swampy fruitless searches in pant-less embarrassment. Gliding Google Earth like over Google Maps comes close but can’t yet compare to the free flight sensation experienced by birds and dreamers.

Anyway now as I’m awake it’s a pleasure to see you all through your recent blogs and emails. Gosh it’s jolly to hear from Cat who, if she’s not telling whoppers, is having some bonzer ballyhoo time in Old Blighty. Evening song at York Minster sounds super, check it out Kell I bet they have a lovely bar and I’ll wager Betty’s do scones with lashings of cream and jam. I know you two don’t mind my snide digs for if you did you would lash out at me, oh wouldn’t it be wonderful (thank you JB Shaw), but instead you ignore, clever girls that you are, starving me of oxygen. I should warn you though that age only enhances cynicism and sarcasm so any relief you might hope for can only come with dementia and then you’ll be sorry.

As is its nature on this side, OK the bottom, of the world the weather changed straight from winter to summer this weekend with a transitional night of rain on Saturday. My after lunch sun bathe in Camperdown park reached the unbearable hot stage today forcing me to abandon the troubadour practising Bob Dylan folk songs for his next unwired gig at some festival.

Took my walk down through Camperdown this morning and wound up at Sydney Uni where entering through Sancta Sophia college I found myself on an impromptu tour of privilege. Sophia itself in century old sandstone looks out across a delightfully informal oval with a small rather neglected formal hedged garden to the side. A drive around the building provides privileged parking for twenty odd cars all of modern make all small design all sporting P plates. Next to Sophia another sandstone three story monolith with dormer windows in the roof provides those on its eastern face with share of this oval view but I missed its title which is presumably on the western Missenden road side. Safe to say it shall include the word Saint I wager.

Wesley College requires no Saints and whilst grand in setting it leans away from the Edwardian stone to a combination of brick and stone. Equally impressive it puts me in mind of New York banking about Rockefeller, Morgan vintage. Nearby is St Pauls where the paths and lawns look much smoother than the Road to Damascus and a C of E college whose name I missed the main feature of which was a very strange modern chapel without an entrance. All these residences set me wondering was there any space left for education. Eventually I did stumble onto a lab in a very late twentieth century cheap industrial type building wherein was evidence that here they taught the all important skills of brewing.

All these magnificent edifices dedicated to education, many well over a century old, got me wondering why no one ever pointed out to me as a young man that such grandeur was possible and that maybe girls and image weren’t the most important pursuits of youth. I’m a bit disappointed that the inhabitants of these colleges don’t live up to my expectations and fop around in caps and gowns as their ancestors surely did. Bicycle pants and trackies don’t do it I’m afraid. I don’t think it’s such a big ask to jog in gown and a tennis match in full regalia would be excellent spectator sport. But there I go with image again, will I never learn?

Love you both

Auntie

Aunt Addie

Heres a photo of aunt Addie with her brothers John thinks.

Nobody told me we were in earshot of the Gabba. I didn't hear any cricket but I did hear trains and traffic, it was the noisest place I'd ever been