Back to Unreality

The News of the World hacking scandal exposes the worst of contemporary journalism.  But Britain still has first class newspapers to give some sort of balance.  It was, after all, the dogged journalism of the Guardian that finally brought to light the extent of the problems of the Murdoch tabloid.  Returning to Australia I have been once again reminded of how our lack of media diversity and a public appetite for national discussion of issues as if they were  football matches have combined to drag journalism down to less scandalous, but just as disappointing, depths.  And the fact that the owner of News of the World controls 70 per cent of the metropolitan newspaper market in Australia, while its only major competitor Fairfax is struggling to survive, is no source of comfort.  To put this British affair into an Australian context readers will find this site illuminating The Failed Estate


Update: There is a very interesting article in Crikey today by Margaret Simons

Same old London

For any Australian visiting London there is a familiarity about this vast metropolis that is both welcoming and challenging.  The splendours of London are still there to delight in---the British Library, the British Museum, the Tate, the National Gallery, the Portrait Gallery, the parks, the palaces, the traditions, the art, music, films, drama and the buzz.  But there is also the size, complexity and the density of population to challenge you every day.  The capacity of public transport to move a billion people across an underground system (begun in 1863 and still far from modern), or to bus masses of travellers through a maze of old, narrow streets and traffic-clogged roads or other sagging infra-structure is amazing, but not always reliable. So it is a brave antipodean grandparent, who sets off alone from one side of London to the other to visit family.


This undertaking  involves first a bus journey, then an underground train, a change to another underground train, a final bus trip and a walk, so you can be sure that there will  be something to challenge you in this endeavour.  It might be that you negotiate the first stages fairly easily and then arrive in the tourist-packed area of London to catch the bus that leaves from Westminster Bridge, only to find that the bus-stop has been

o

 temporarily moved and there doesn't appear to be a replacement stop in sight.  This will probably entail walking across Westminster Bridge (and further) to try to catch the bus at the next stop 

Memories of Europe

My trip to Europe seems like a dream now, but images still swirl up of the gilded spires and domes of the Altstadt in Dresden, its reconstructed harmony of landscape and buildings, churches and museums all nestling round the river and its terraced green hills.  Dresden is an appealing, beautiful city and the sculpted saint who looked down onto the destruction of the Frauen Kirche (and everything else) and wept during the war must be overjoyed today to watch over the city's restored wonders.

Dresden is unforgettable and Padua is too.  So many amazing old churches, museums, galleries and houses to wonder at, as they appear around every corner. Most spell-binding of all though was the overwhelming experience inside the Scrovengi chapel, where Giotto created in 1305 a landscape of frescoes covering all the walls and all the ceilings.  Such beautiful images from so long ago and inspiring as much awe today as they must have done then. An amazing set of images telling a story for the illiterate populace of the times still casting a spell on visitors from another age just beginning to be dominated by image and icon again.

Home again

I'm now back in Tasmania sympathising with those travellers isolated here because of air-line problems with volcanic ash.  All our flights went off without a hitch and all our connections worked, providing smooth journeying between Hobart and Dresden, Dresden and Venice (via Dusseldorf) Venice and London and London back to Sydney.

Now for the memories.

Quip of the month

Smile, breathe and go slowly.

  Thich Nhat Hanh

Once more in transit

The first step in any journey is often taken long before it formally begins.   For me it usually starts with memories of past journeys---the time in England when I got lost on the morning of my son's wedding, the panic I experienced in Paris, when I nearly missed meeting up with a school-friend, because of misunderstood French instructions, the day all planes in London were grounded by a terrorist threat and I was stranded in Crete with my English grand-children, those happy days in Pakistan, before it descended into its current fragile state and all those moments in far-off parts of the northern hemisphere that have given me a sense of home-away-from-home.   

Tomorrow I am off again on a journey to see my grandchildren in England.  Which means, of course, a long flight.

Suspended here in coma land

so far above all friends and home

that life itself seems left behind

time has me trapped, inert, confused

in dimmed half light in shadow land
                                 

and all around the strangers flit                                 

they come and go, unknown, unreal

they make me eat, they do their rounds

a kind of hour glass they become 

they mark the time like silent sand.

For here time’s dressed in strange new garb

which does not fit its normal frame
it is not day, it is not night
not what’s below, not what’s behind, 
not yet the time of when we land.

So far above each travelled land
time cannot be the way it was
before my zones of numbed existence
were crossed to meet my children’s children.

           The price I pay to hold their hand.

The end of Osama

When we're fighting a war in Afghanistan to destroy terrorist training camps that are actually inside the land of Pakistan (our ally), it is only to be expected that the iconic terrorist Osama bin Laden will be captured near Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan and within cooee of an elite military academy and an important military base.   It is doubly ironic that he was captured and eliminated on the order of that well-known softie, Barack Obama, who (we're supposed to believe) wasn't really born in the USA and is, in fact, a secret Muslim!