Category: People

Family, friends and others

The Little Things

It was just a small gesture or as they say, it’s the little things.

We were just warming up with hot cups of coffee, tea and hot chocolate after braving the first chilly, windy, morning of Auskick* this season. Appropriately as it was Mothers Day our daughter was treating my wife, our granddaughter the Auskicker, and myself to some warm drinks at Moss Bros in Rouse Hill. We were just starting to thaw out a little when I noticed the young mother at the next table who was sitting alone while her partner was queuing to place their order. The mother was cradling in her left arm a baby, a newly arrived in this world baby judging by the size alone. Continue reading “The Little Things” →

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New Age Old Age

My dear old Granpop often said “Ahhh getting old’s a bugger” and I can hear him saying it still after all these years. Please pardon the vulgarity but that is exactly what he said and to replace “bugger” with something more acceptable would be to lose the strength of feeling in his voice at the time. Of course what he meant by the expression was that getting old wasn’t something he was enjoying at all. As this baby boomer, a so-called New Age man, heads into Old Age I am starting to appreciate the depth of feeling and the essential truth in his words. Continue reading “New Age Old Age” →

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The Sentence

The gift of life comes with its inevitable companion, the sentence of death. You can’t have one without the other, there is no choice. You live, you die. As soon as you start living the clock starts ticking. Every life, human, animal, plant, no exceptions. There is no control other than adding the full stop through suicide, self-destruction. The length of the sentence is arbitrary and therefore unknown, unlike the sentence pronounced by a human court sitting in judgement. The sentence though is full of commas and colons and semicolons and capitals and hyphens, all defining the events of our life. But where does the natural judgement on the length of the sentence come from? Continue reading “The Sentence” →

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Back to Natural

I was about fifteen when I first started to fool my body and brain into a new way of thinking. Thinking that it was actually enjoyable to put burning cigarettes in my mouth and suck the smoke from them deep down into my lungs. It wasn’t easy to do though, to overcome the natural response to this unnatural act. Continue reading “Back to Natural” →

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Coolabah Tree Cafe

Travel advisory 😜 We had intended to make our first stop on our trip to Maldon this morning at Pheasant Nest, just out of Sydney, for breakfast. Big disappointment folks 😡 No cooked meals just reheated toast sandwiches and make your own coffee out of a machine, bleh!! So be warned, keep going for about 15 mins to the next stop at the Exeter/Bundanoon exit and the Coolabah Tree Cafe. Shell petrol as well and if you are really desperate and have no qualms about eating crap there is also a Maccas 😤

Continue reading “Coolabah Tree Cafe” →

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Ho Hum

I have lost many people, pets, clothing, little treasures of all sorts over the period of my life to date and I dare say I will lose much more in what is still to be lived. The most recent significant one of these was about two months ago when my dear old aunt, the last of what I call “my grownups”, passed away peacefully. I cried a lot during the writing and reading of her eulogy but in amidst this grieving, there was a great sense of relief for her, a joy that there was now an end to her physical suffering. Knowing that makes it easier for me to move on without further pain as it has done with all of the people and pets in my life who have passed on. It was for whatever reason their time to go and they are now at peace, as should I in knowing that. The memories will live on in my mind for as long as I have access to that. Continue reading “Ho Hum” →

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Coral’s Eulogy

Sadly, we interred my dear old aunt, Coral O’Hara, today, Friday 20th February 2015.  Here is the eulogy I gave as part of the funeral service.

Good afternoon everyone. My name is Michael Stacey and I am proud to be Coral’s nephew. I would like to say a few words to farewell Coral and to honour her life.

For me, Coral was one of the five most important people in my childhood. They were my grandparents, Frank and Vi Stacey, who raised me from about the age of two, and their three children, Max, Coral and Reg, my father. I was Frank and Vi’s only grandchild and Coral looked out for me from the very start. Continue reading “Coral’s Eulogy” →

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Duggy’s lesson

Why? Why am I paying a barber to cut my hair with a clipper on #2 setting when there is hardly any hair left on top? Why am I bothering? What is the difference between #2 and #0 I thought? Not much I thought. Why not just start shaving it off and save myself the barbers fee? So I did, I shaved it all off that weekend, secure in the knowledge that I could always let it grow back if I didn’t like it. But little did I know that my biggest lesson in how attachment works were to be found in that seemingly simple rational decision. Continue reading “Duggy’s lesson” →

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