Stumbling on melons

Back in March I posted about Australia Talks, the ABC’s vox-pop exercise.

Now the results are out. You can answer selected questions yourself and see how your response compares to others’.

So now I can check one question which I had imperfectly remembered.

Aside from the ambiguity about what if somebody else changes your bed sheets, the choices offered strike me as odd. If you change your sheets once a year there is no response which answers that, and there seems a big range between several times a month and several times a year.

Nor is there a possible response which would correspond to twice a year, at least if you follow the dictionary definition that “several” means “more than two and less than many.”

I wonder if other responders share that understanding. I’m prepared to accept that my bedsheet laundry habits fall at the lower end of the national range, but this result, which follows because I don’t change my bedsheets three or more times a month, lumps me in with people who must change their sheets much less frequently than I do:

Who changes their sheets several times a week? The mind, or mine at least, boggles.

I also found myself an outlier on the question asking if you agree with the proposition “I like my boss.” As I’m self-employed, I don’t have one.

I suppose I could have gone for “Neutral.” I did that for this question, probably incorrectly:

I will be interested to see how the ABC interprets this one.

I received today a 2020 Christmas card from an overseas friend, Es.

It came by a roundabout route – addressed to Ashfield (which we quit 5 years ago), passed by our former landlords (who kicked us out to move in themselves) to our former neighbours, M & B, taken by B with other mail to Melbourne where M is currently staying whilst she helps look after her grandchildren, and ultimately forwarded to us after a text from M inquiring as to our new address. (Previously she would text me from time to time when a backlog of items built up and I would drop into Ashfield and catch up and pick up the items as well.)

In fact Es has our new address on cards I have sent her but obviously it hasn’t penetrated her mailing list.

Es has 3 daughters (say, K1, K2, K3). She divorced their father after it emerged just before the 3rd daughter was born that he had another daughter due from another woman. Since then, he has repartnered at least once more and had at least one more child. Fortunately, he is a good earner.

Es’s Christmas cards always feature a group shot of her daughters. For many years she dressed them in matching outfits. I assume that at some point they rebelled against this though the deteminant may have been when Es came up against a school rule against it. (Who would have guessed?)

By now K1-3 have all finished school and are at university.

The latest card brought news of them all, and was signed off:

“Merry Christmas and all the best to you!

Es with K1, K2, K3 and two boyfriends who are part of the family by now.”

I want to reply “K, how do you fit two boyfriends in? Do they have a roster?” but maybe I have misunderstood?

On Saturday to hear the SSO at the Town Hall, conducted by Johannes Fritzsch, substituting for a no-show Donald Runnicles.

The program was:

Julian Yu Fanfaretto (for brass ensemble)
Beethoven “Egmont” Overture
Nielsen, Flute Concerto (1926) and
Beethoven, Symphony No 6 (“Pastoral”).

Jushua Batty, the SSO’s principal flute since 2019, was the soloist.

The winds and brass sit about a mile back from the strings who, apart from the front desks, have individual music stands.  There is some loss of musical cohesion.  Had I been paying more attention I should have probably swapped my ticket for last week’s program which was of the Mahler 4 and some orchestrally-arranged Schubert songs.  Still, I enjoyed it.

I sit upstairs on the side – the north gallery, to be precise.  It is a better vantage point for the winds than the floor of the hall and the sound from the violins is particularly direct.  You have to imagine the celli and the basses from under the balcony and rely on lower sounds being less directional.

It was an oddly monastic experience, like a trip to compline or lauds.  From the train station I went straight to the side entrance on Druitt Street and then upstairs. You are discouraged from leaving your seat at interval other than to go to the toilet. Afterwards, I left by the same exit and made a swift descent to the platform for the first available train. I spoke to no-one I knew. 

In the gallery the front row is D and the back row is A.  The stairs are steep and there are no railings on the aisles.  An elderly couple returning after interval reached out nervously to hold onto seat backs as they made the precipitous descent to their row D spots.  I was headed for row C.  “We’re all thinking of Carla Zampatti” I commented to random strangers in Row A as we watched. Too soon?

We have had a cold snap in Sydney.  I reached for my winter-weight concert-going jacket.  Last year it went unworn.  I was pleasantly surprised to find, scrunched up in a pocket, a glove which I had previously given up as lost.  There wasn’t time to find its mate before I set out, but I’ve seen it recently and am cautiously optimistic.