Guest Blogger: My Dad

G’day. I’m Meg’s dad, and I’m honoured and delighted she’s asked me to be guest blogger as part of Bike Week. So here goes:

I’m not sure if I must establish my credentials. But if so, they’re here [1].

My best bike ride ever was in 1998 when my wife Vivienne and I rode our Cannondale tandem from the bottom of England to the top of Scotland [2]. We rode 1,891 km in a leisurely 37 days.

I’m chuffed that Meg writes for Bicycle Victoria [3].

With atmospheric CO2 now above the nominal ‘safe’ level of 350 ppm, governments must implement policy incentives for more bicycle journeys. Many more. And disincentives for more journeys powered by the infernal combustion engine. Because bicycling will continue to be the most environmentally friendly form of transport. Apart perhaps from walking. [4]

And whilst pedalling you get fit and lose weight [5].

In Melbourne, Copenhagen-style bicycle lanes are a leap forward [6].

Research shows the best indicator of the bicycle friendliness of a city, is how many women are bicycling [7].

On 13 October, which was the latest National Ride to Work Day [8], I was working in Hobart and I walked to work. Bummer.

I used to love the Tour de France. I thought the riders were superb athletes, not least because they rode up mountains faster than I could ride down them. But doping and other scandals have dampened my enthusiasm [9]. Pity.

I own three bikes. Mainly I ride the pictured Peugeot mountain bike. At present it’s out of action because riding up big hills has stretched the chain [10] which needs replacing. I have a metaphoric withdrawal tremor. I must get a new chain soon.

On 11 November the Tasmanian Tourism Minister is launching a program to attract touring cyclists to this area. There’ll be four marked themed trails spanning 250km. You’ll be able to download maps, and also over seven hours of podcasts comprising interpretation of the Great Western Tiers region [11], and local stories told by residents. If you’re riding by, I’ll make you a cuppa. (After 11 November, I’ll put a comment on today’s post linking to the maps and podcasts.)

I hope you enjoy the rest of Bike Week. Also I wish you happy pedalling, and that the wind will always be at your back and the road ahead will always be down hill.

Guest Blogger: ETG 3

Image from here.

I am an enormous fan of opportunity shops (thrift stores). I love them. If I am on foot when I pass one, I can’t go past it. You just never know what might be in there. And that’s the beauty of them: you just never know. You may find a treasure, you may find nothing. There’s no certainty. Shopping elsewhere, you can be fairly assured of what you’ll find, and security is certainly an important and necessary thing. But an opportunity shop…well, it provides you with opportunities. Can I use that? Can I wear that? Would that go with those red shoes of mine? What would I do with that?

And today was no exception. In amongst the faded Mills-and-Boons and the old Womens Weeklys, I spied Present Moment Wonderful Moment by Thich Nhat Hanh. For $2! He is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and he is a great advocate of the principle of Mindfulness. For some time, I have been aware that there are some thought patterns and behaviours of mine which could do with, shall we say, a re-adjustment. As a result, I have been thinking a lot about different ways of seeing the world. The notion of Mindfulness has much that’s appealing to say on this topic but I have found it to be a difficult notion to define for myself, to understand in a way which provides me with a personal meaning for it and ways in which I can make it a part of my life. Even my GP said to me, “Mindfulness…yes. Very interesting. But I’ve often wondered—(his voice dropping to a bewildered whisper)—just what is it?”

Well, Thich Nhat Hanh sums it up beautifully. Certainly he talks about such important and complex topics as meditation practice, but he also brings Mindfulness to bear on washing the dishes, brushing your teeth, cleaning the bathroom, eating, throwing out the garbage and answering the phone. Be aware of each dish and the sensation of the warm water on your hands. Don’t make time spent doing housework unpleasant, being in a hurry to move on from it. Brush your teeth in preparation for a day of compassionate speech. Answer the phone with a smile and so sending that positivity to whoever is on the other end.

The profane is the sacred, Thich Nhat Hanh tells us. There is beauty and meaning in everything, not just in the extraordinary or the expensive. Treasure is everywhere, you just need to stop and look and take your opportunities as they present themselves.

Previously in the Land of Meg:

ETG guest blog 1

ETG guest blog 2

Guest Blogger: My Mum

Once when I was a child I was eating a teddy bear biscuit and drinking tea with a table of grown ups.

‘Do you mind if I dunk?’ I asked the man sitting next to me, a friend of my family’s.

‘No, not at all,’ he said, impressed by my good manners.

‘Oh that’s good,’ I said as I reached across and dunked my biscuit in his tea.

I grew up in a tea-drinking household. We only ever drank coffee when we had dinner party guests. I learned to appreciate coffee, but my first love is a steaming hot cup of properly brewed tea.

Every time I make myself a cup of tea – even if it’s just for me – I go through an elaborate routine of warming the teapot and mugs and covering the teapot with a cosy. I even set the kitchen timer for 3 minutes, because if it doesn’t steep long enough the tea will be weak, but left too long it’s bitter.

When the timer goes I pour cold milk into the warmed mugs and then pour in the tea. I know that seems an odd way of doing things, but to my taste it makes the best cup of tea.

My mother and I rarely went out to cafés together. When we met it was usually at her kitchen table over cups of tea. Now she’s gone that’s how I picture us – sitting at that table, drinking tea in floral mugs and talking, mostly about her favourite topic – her grandchildren. That includes you, Meg.

Guest Blogger: ETG 2

Four months ago I had an email exchange with one of this blog's readers that resulted in her becoming the first guest blogger in the Land of Meg. Since then we have stayed in touch intermittently, which is lucky for me as ETG has written a second post, which I have the pleasure of sharing with you today:

My grandmother’s rose is in bloom again. I was astounded to notice this on the weekend, given the weather we have had over the last few months. There are few trees and what we have tried to plant has not really taken. I have managed to coax the lavender and salvia to ankle height, but sometimes, on very hot days, I can almost hear the plants emit sighs of resignation. We can’t be expected to grow in this, they seem to say to me as I walk past them to collect the mail.

When my grandmother moved into this house in 1948, she planted a magnolia tree and a rose bush, side by side. She was an avid gardener and in the long-past days of unlimited watering, this garden was exquisite, a cornucopia, a testimony to her skill.

To my dismay, after Black Saturday, the magnolia started to brown. It didn’t die and now that we have had a little rain, it is starting to perk up. But the rose, that rose, it didn’t miss a beat. It never browns, it is never defeated—irrespective of what the conditions throw at it. The most it conceded over those very hot weeks was that it would not flower. Perhaps there is a horticultural reason for this, but I have begun to see that there is something of my grandmother in that rose.

She was a woman defined by the Great Depression, by the Second World War. She knew how to do things, and to make do. She worked as a milliner and she worked as an ‘invisible mender’ at a knitting mill. So when I took a childish fancy to Lady Diana in the 1980s, she made me a pillbox hat to wear in honour of the Royal Wedding. Both the childhoods of my father and myself were outfitted with handmade jumpers, trousers, shirts, smocks and overalls.

She spent the last years of her life in a nursing home. One afternoon, she had joined in an activity making flowers from material, to then be fashioned into a brooch. She remarked to me afterwards that she could do such things with one arm tied behind her back, that such things were not a big deal. But they are a big deal now. Things that people once simply knew how to do are now specialised knowledge.

Like that rose, my grandmother just continued on. Not always happy, not always in the most comfortable of circumstances, but making the best of it. Doing, creating, and more often than not—as she gave to those around her—blooming.

Guest Blogger: JS

Our lovely friend Jeff has just returned from visiting his partner Cath in China. Here is a snapshot from his time away:

This morning, walking in Lu Xun Park, I slowed, and then stopped, to watch a man writing traditional characters on the footpath using a large calligraphy brush dipped in water from a plastic drink container. By the time he had completed a line of text his first characters had already begun to evaporate.

Further along, sitting on the edge of the path practicing characters was an older man with a beard. At his feet was a puddle of unintelligible words. Buying breakfast from a stall in Tina ai Lú I silently held out a handful of coins for the young girl selling baozi. Having just arrived in Shanghai, and my only Chinese being nihao, I could only point and hope she understood.

A small child smiling on the back of a pushbike repeated phrases her mother sang as she peddled passed one of the street’s corner fruit and vegetable stalls. Language I realized was something I had taken for granted; now words were unfamiliar, and I felt more infantile than the child on the back of a pushbike repeating her mother’s song.

But I also experienced something other than a sense of alienation as I held out my handful of coins at the baozi stall. There was something more. The characters written in water evaporating on the warm concrete footpath, and being stepped over by passing pedestrians may have been unintelligible to me; however the gentleman’s practice, his gestures were not. The young girl, with a prod from her father, selected the correct coins from my palm and handed me my meal.

Guest Blogger: ETG

A fortnight ago I invited a reader of this blog, ETG, to be the inaugural Guest Blogger in the Land of Meg. Ladies and gentleman, without further ado I present to you her post:

We have been cleaning out my grandfather’s garage. He died five years ago and now we live in the house that he shared with my grandmother. The garage has to go, being a relic of the age when Asbestos was considered the wonder product.

There was so much stuff in there to sort through. Sure, some of it was ours and a lot of our stuff was pretty easy to quickly assess and discard (unused paper plates from our engagement party in 1998??) but grandfather’s stuff was another matter altogether. As well as holding the sentimental value of things belonging to the only grandfather I got to know, these were the props of his story, the backdrop to his territory.

Where would you find grandfather? He was either in his armchair reading the newspaper or in the garage. This multitude of jars, tins and boxes were his collection. He had plans for this stuff. Who knows how many jars full to bursting with different sized nails, different sized screws. A 1920s fire extinguisher. His RAAF duffle bag. A shoemaker’s last, a paper bag of rubber soles, a jar of shoemaker’s tacks. Then a smaller paper bag of smaller rubber soles—for Grandma’s shoes. Who knew he repaired shoes?

It is all now amassed in the driveway. Some of it will just have to go to the local recycling centre being either unrecognisable or unusable but a lot of it will be kept, refashioned or reused by my father and me. Or just placed somewhere in memory of a man with plans.