And as we all know he keeps doing it! Well, my turn to boast:
Coincidentally, the nurse yesterday was also from The Shire — Cronulla in fact! She and I had a good laugh when I said, just as we started, “So are we doing the Trump Test again today? I can spell ‘world’ backwards with the best of them….” She was impressed that I recalled that item from last time, and confessed it was indeed the same test as last time.
Not an IQ test. As I said in my FB, a “gaga test”….
I have to confess that the counting backwards from 100 by sevens tangled me a tad, but Maths was never my strong point. And I did forget one word in the list when asked to recall. But all in all, it seems I am still ready to be President of the USA! Or at least to be able to order a barra at City Diggers, and recall details of the last conversation I had with Col Macdonald when we later met up at Diggers.
He scored a few chips, by the way. Those are his sunnies and that is his beer in the photo below.
Genius orders barramundi but opts for simplicity
The plate was in due course almost licked clean!
$20 the pair — that amounts to $2 a glass
From BWS in Burelli Street, the coming week’s supply.
Six hours ago I said on Facebook: I am off in an hour to the Wollongong Medical Centre for a way overdue blood test — 6 months overdue! You see, what happens is I just can’t resist my morning coffee and Weetbix, and as soon as I fall into that I can no longer have a blood test! Today I am steeling myself against the blandishments of coffee….
Several friends quite understood.
I stuck it out, and after a bit of a wait for the place to open and the pathologist to arrrive, all went smoothly. Except I have to confess it is more than a year since my last test! I hope the results, which I get next Friday, will be really boring….
They were really boring! Good news. But next week I have a health checkup — also free — which will no doubt include the dingbat screening test that Donald Trump keeps mistaking for an IQ Test. At my age we are supposed to do this annually.
Then to City Diggers.
The lamb and rosemary pie for lunch was a great choice
Clearly a very personal post as the dear friend concerned is just in the first week of the loss of a loved one. I cannot give details here for obvious reasons, but the person concerned has responded as follows:
Neil, I cannot adequately put into words how much your blog post means to me. The music, the poem the images completely brought me undone as I sat here alone with my thoughts around 8.00 this morning, the time of —’s cremation. I have had to be the strength for [the children] and have been managing ok till this morning. Your post has given me what I have so needed since Saturday night…..the chance to really grieve, weep and openly give way to the flood of tears that I’ve mostly managed to contain. This surrendering to my emotions has been a great catharsis to the pent up grief, guilt and anger, loss. I have saved your post and will revisit every year at this time, which is its meaning to me. For now you have helped give me a renewed resolve to, along with J—, arrange the final farewells in the spirit — would have wished. You are such a caring, thoughtful and supportive friend and especially at this sad and difficult time.
I am so glad it helped. The images were carefully chosen and were in fact very specific. Words are inadequate so often in these circumstances.
Yesterday’s Gong adventures
Began returning books to Wollongong Library and borrowing some randoms. Last time’s randoms included the wonderful Demon Copperhead! Ihave my eye of one of the latest crop.
Alan Fyfe is a Jewish writer originally from Mandurah, the unceded country of the Binjareb Nation, whose verse and prose can be found in Westerly, Overland, Australian Poetry Journal and Cottonmouth. He was an inaugural editor of UWA creative writing journal Trove and a prose editor for the American web journal, Unlikely Stories. His first novel, T, published by Transit Lounge in September 2022. Alan is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia, where he is writing a novel in chiastic structure.
Six months after author Alan Fyfe moved away from Mandurah, he was compelled to write about the city that “suffers terribly economically” and some of its inhabitants with methamphetamine addiction.
Mr Fyfe, who now lives in Perth, recently released his debut novel, called T, which follows the life of ‘T’ or Timothy who lives on the economic margins, both using and selling methamphetamine in Mandurah.
A central concern of Demon Copperhead (Dickens aside) was the opioid crisis in the USA, particularly in Appalachia.
Then the Illawarra Leagues Club
I went there because I had not been there for quite a while, partly because these days my excursions to The Gong are less frequent, so tend just to end up at City Diggers. But last Sunday I saw my Leagues Club card expired in June 2023 and renewed on line — just $6.60 for three years! But on Monday the club phoned me and said I need not have renewed as we all had had a bonus year added to compensate for the club’s closure during COVID. The fee I paid was then transferred to my card and I took advantage of that by getting free Shiraz yesterday.
The place was very quiet, though there was a bit of an influx at lunchtime, No-one I knew though! Col did not come to town yesterday either. But lunch was a bargain!
A bargain! As the Club says:
Join us every weekday lunch to enjoy our $9.90 lunch roast!
Roast pork, roasted potatoes, seasonal vegetables, apple sauce & gravy.
Available Monday – Friday | 12pm – 2pm
$9.90 Member | $12.90 Non-Member
Such a shame the Leagues Club no longer does doggy bags as I would have been able to take home tomorrow’s lunch as well. I could not eat it all! Roast pork with gravy and apple sauce + veg.
Bruce Part, a FB friend and former DJ at The Albury of happy memory, had a siggestion:
Shhhh….. When attending a venue that I know doesn’t do leftovers take-home, I always take my own plastic containers secreted in a shopping bag. Put something else on top of them and no one is the wiser.
There must have been a Wollongong potato famine yesterday, but I was not complaining!
And 23rd September 2024
I have not been to the Leagues Club for so long! Nor have any of my acquaintances… Maybe the now excellent cuisine at City Diggers keeps me going there. But I must get down and renew my membership at Leagues….
As for today:
Six hours ago I said on Facebook: I am off in an hour to the Wollongong Medical Centre for a way overdue blood test — 6 months overdue! You see, what happens is I just can’t resist my morning coffee and Weetbix, and as soon as I fall into that I can no longer have a blood test! Today I am steeling myself against the blandishments of coffee….
Several friends quite understood.
I stuck it out, and after a bit of a wait for the place to open and the pathologist to arrrive, all went smoothly. Except I have to confess it is more than a year since my last test! I hope the results, which I get next Friday, will be really boring….
#Strongwomen. "I write about the power of trying, because I want to be okay with failing. I write about generosity because I battle selfishness. I write about joy because I know sorrow. I write about faith because I almost lost mine, and I know what it is to be broken and in need of redemption. I write about gratitude because I am thankful - for all of it." Kristin Armstrong
All abandoned: Chernobyl / Pripyat, Nara Dreamland, Anti-Zombie Fortress, Japanese Sex Museum - and many, many more! Plus: North Korea Special - 2 trips, 16 days / 14 nights! As seen on CNN...
Neil's Commonplace Book 