Tomorrow is the 21st of February, the birthday of Les. One year ago, my age was 89 and five months, and Les turned 86. Les and I had last year nine months of wonderful togetherness. Then this most lovely heart of Les stopped beating, just like that. The last three months without Les have been very lonely for me.
Category: Old Age
Peter’s 80th Birthday
Peter Hannemann’s Blog called ‘Weekend’
Peter published this blog in August 2015!
I am now contemplating to self-publish a book with some of my blogs and some of Peter’s blogs in it. Maybe I can for instance include this Weekend Blog from 2015. Anyhow, the following is a copy of Peter’s blog and the responses to it. Maybe you’ll find it interesting that Gerard Oosterman made a few comments to that blog nearly ten years ago. Peter turned 80 in May of that year, and Gerard turned 75 in August of 2015.
Here is the copy of Peter’s blog:
Last evening this message from my daughter Caroline came up on my FB site:
“Work for the day and the week done. Social media for the day done. Time for some dinner and a glass of red to start a rejuvenating weekend. Have a good one everyone”
What did the message say? That she was happy with her achievements of the week? It almost sounded like the Bible and that the Lord was happy when he “saw it was good” and now it was time for the Sabbath. She hoped to rejuvenate when she would face the tasks in the next week.
That is how it should be, work and rest in the right proportions.
As an aged pensioner, I do a lot of rejuvenating already and I can tell you, it is not easy. I’m using a lot of energy just doing the rejuvenating. But actually, I’m not rejuvenating art all. I’m aging whatever I do.
When I was a youngster and just starting out with my working life I too looked forward to the weekends. It was time to meet up with friends and chasing girls. On Sundays, we dressed up in our finest.
A trench coat was compulsory on a rainy day. Three friends at a local festival (I’m the one on the right)
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Cinema was the big thing and they just invented CinemaScope. The big picture really hit us when the curtain opened. The first film of this type I saw was “The Robe” with Victor Mature. In those days, I loved historical films. Even if they were not entirely true depictions of the events, they nevertheless fired our imagination.
Now, Sundays are like any other day we try to rejuvenate. There is one exception, I refuse to go shopping on a Sunday! Still, we have to adjust some of our activities to the work life of others.
In two weeks’, time, we will take the (slow) train to Melbourne. There is no fast train as our governments don’t like working for the future and the joke is, that they call the train, “Interstate Express”.
Next Saturday we will go to the theatre in Sydney. We will see “The Bleeding Tree” by Angus Cirini. I will write a blog about it, but here is one sentence Angus Cirini says, “The primary role of government is not to manage the economy it is to allow for a healthy society to flourish.” Well, I think governments have forgotten this lesson or they just ignore it.
Here is what the Griffin Theatre writes about the play:
“In a dirt-dry town in rural Australia, a shot shatters the still night. A mother and her daughters have just welcomed home the man of the house – with a crack in the shins and a bullet in the neck. The only issue now is disposing of the body.
Triggered into thrilling motion by an act of revenge, The Bleeding Tree is rude, rhythmical and irreverently funny. Imagine a murder ballad blown up for the stage, set against a deceptively deadly Aussie backdrop, with three fierce females fighting back.”
We have our next two weekends covered and they are “footy-free”.
Related
Pauly the Car19/05/2015In “Diary”
Nine Days From Now30/08/2012In “Diary”
The Long Weekend26/09/2013In “Fiction”This entry was posted in Diary and tagged Cinema in the fifties, Melbourne, The Griffin, Theatre, Weekends by berlioz1935. Bookmark the permalink.
9 thoughts on “Weekend”
Robert M. Weiss on said:Life goes by too fast!Reply ↓
berlioz1935on said:Indeed, it does. Thank you for commenting, Robert.The perception now is, that we are on a roller coaster. The speed is increasing at an alarming rate.I can remember when the next weekend was miles away. A whole week was a vast timespan. Now, Sundays come seemingly at daily intervals.Reply ↓
gerard oosterman on said:The Robe was also one of my first cinemascope adventures, after that Quo Vadis, The King and I and lots more. I never had a trench coat but do remember wearing ties and casual coats. I have always liked week-days more than Sundays, although I did look forward to the Saturday.
I must also admit I have never been to a footy show either, but have been to an Easter show when it was still on at Randwick.
We saw Chekov’s Seagull many years ago, and also a one man play were the actor was laying on a bed for the entire show. I have forgotten the name of it. The actor was brilliant..Reply ↓berlioz1935 on said:You might be interested to know, that they started to film “The Seagull” this year in New York.Let’s see what the Americans make of it.The man on the bed, was it Kafka’s, ” The Metamorphosis”?Reply ↓
gerard oostermanon said:No, it wasn’t Kafka. At the time the play was very well received and it was just one male actor during the entire show. It might have been during the eighties.Reply ↓
He might better be remembered by “the Mavis Bramston show”.Reply ↓
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Living on my own at my own Home
The organization HOME INSTEAD makes this possible for my mobility is drastically shrinking and without some care giving I would not be able to look totally after myself. There are just too many things that I cannot do anymore. The Australian government is subsidizing HOME INSTED to a large extant. It is said to stay at home with some help is cheaper than be looked after in a care home.
Would I ever want to go to a care home? I do not think so. What if I really cannot look after myself anymore? I want to talk to my doctor about all this as soon as possible.
Memories about our Dutch Friends
I want to write about our friends Nick Tap and Nell Tap. They were both of Dutch origin. Nell died in January 2013. I have no idea what happened to Nick. He had major health problems. There were widespread family members, including three sons.
Nick and Nell were both born ln 1933. They suffered a lot under the German occupation in World War Two. The food that the Dutch people did grow ended up on German tables. For the Dutch population there was hardly anything to eat. The children suffered severe starvation.
As I said in the previous post Peter and I liked to visit the Taps. I remember how they told us about the scarcity of food. Once a German soldier very secretly had given Nick a piece of bread. This soldier could have been severely punished for this!
Screaming
In the middle of the night, I woke up screaming.I had felt the pain. It had been very real. I was sure I had been falling out of bed and was lying in agony on the floor.
It turned out I was lying in my bed. It had been only a dream that had made me scream like this.
Soon I went back to sleep. But not for long. Waking up again I felt very unhappy for my friends had been so very silent. Why would they not talk to me? But then I realized that they had not been with me at all. It had been just a dream. In my dream, which seemed so very real, I saw the whole family: The parents Doris and Karl-Heinz, and the children Gudrun and Michael. Karl-Heinz had died years ago in an accident. Gudrun was dead too. She had died from cancer.
After all this I finally went to sleep quite well without another bad dream.
First Tuesday in December 2024
Yesterday afternoon I wrote the above. In Megan I have a helper who is not only interested in helping me with my housework and shopping, but she is also very interested in what I am writing, Really, she is such a pearl for she does not shy away from trying to help me with my writing. We had a trial writing session yesterday, that is, I asked her could she take over my typing. So I was telling her bits and pieces, whatever came to my mind, what I would like to be writing about. Sometimes I was talking rather fast. Still, Megan was able to catch up with most of it, just keeping on with the typing, here and there making a few changes. I can say that basically it remained a first draft, so I can now decide whether I can use it for something.
Where am I?
I am ninety. So I know that my time is very limited. But that does not matter for as long as I feel happy about being alive and maybe can also still do a little bit of writing. I very nuch care about relationships. To devote a great amount of my time to respond to what people say is important to me. Without significant relationships I am nothing. I have to say that relationships that I did have in the past do count a lot too, and I want to be able to tell about them and write about them. However I feel I should not forget to write about present relationships too!
So, where am I at this stage? Can I prioritize and devote myself to the things that are the most important to me? How can I still make the most with the time that is left to me? Even though I cannot know exactly how much time I may still be given, I can still try to make the most of every day that I still feel alive enough to be doing something at all. To be able to do something is such a blessing!
What about loneliness? It is said the feeling of loneliness can be a killer as much as any sickness. For most people it seems to be important that they have someone to hug and to kiss. How can hugging and kissing be so important? But it is. Instead of generalising I want to tell here something about myself. I think for most of my life I was more an introvert than an extrovert. Has aging changed me in some ways? Maybe yes. In my old age I find it usually not very difficult to be somewhat outgoing in communicating with people who in the past perhaps would have been very much out of reach for me. Also I find now often some increased desire to hug and kiss people.
Looking back at my longtime marriage, I think it lasted fot that long because we always had some kind of love and respect for each other. Now that I have a ‘boyfriend’ who is nearly as old as I am, we too love and respect each other. He too comes from a very long lasting marriage. It seems to me he has sometimes difficulty treating me just as a girlfriend. I like him very much, but I like him as a girlfriend, not as a wife . . . .
So, where am I? I am happy that Les and I have found each other. We have lots of fun together. Les has a wonderful sense of humour. He often makes me laugh. And he likes me to laugh a lot! 😂
We could not go on that Cruise
Our landline phone was out of order
Peter took this picture on the morning of Sunday, the 7th of September 2014. This was Fathers Day in Australia. There were blue irises as well as a bottle of Peter’s favourite port-wine. The cake made with ground almonds was for the afternoon. Monika arrived in the afternoon with sons and daughters as well as two year old grandson Lucas. Monika brought gifts along for her Papa: A lovely bottle of wine, chocolates, scratchies and a card.
Son Martin rang from Melbourne at night-time. This call was diverted to our interim mobile phone that Telstra had sent us to use while our landline phone was out of order. This mobile phone had no ringing sound. Instead a computerised female voice always announced to us when we had a phone call.
Caroline and Matthew had been going away for a few days to attend the wedding of their friends. They are back now and we are going to see them on Sunday. They probably made a lot of pictures and are going to tell us a lot about their trip.
Peter thought he had a lovely Fathers Day last Sunday. We are looking forward to seeing Caroline and Matthew very soon.
AuntyUta 