It’s Not the Size...

I have a little one. It’s a ‘Kodak’ electronic camera. It is perfectly functional and reliable. I like it. Point and shoot technology.

But I have been asked to take a photo of the monkeys.

I should explain that.

I live on the edge of the jungle. Opposite my window, as I type this, I see trees. Trees that straddle a river. The River Klang, in fact.

The River Klang has its source nearby my house at the dam just up the road. It is called the Klang Gate Dam.

As a passing note: The French built the dam about fifty-four years ago. The guarantee was for fifty years...

For fourteen kilometres there is a ridge, called a Quartz Dyke that looks like the spine of a dinosaur. It is very narrow, quite high and very straight; it undulates from Gombak to Kemensah. Adjacent to us there is a gap in that ridge that is called the Klang Gate.

A friend of mine often climbs the ridge near us at a place called Bukit (Hill) Tabur. He posts wonderful photographs of this exploit on ‘Facebook’.

Historically there was a village in the Klang Gate but, due to the building of the dam, the villagers were displaced into our village, Taman Melawati, to an area called Kampong Klang Gate Bharu (New Klang Gate Village); the villagers were recompensed with land from a disused rubber plantation that was returned to the (Selangor) State, they sold off their parcels to private buyers until it, eventually, became two large plots.

‘Hong Leong Bank’ had bought the most as a ‘land bank’ but then sold it off for development but the area nearest us remains in private hands and so the trees still exist.

So it is that I sit here watching Sugar Gliders (flying squirrels), sundry birds and the odd snake, wander around in the trees. We used to hear tigers and wild boar but not so much now. One rarity was a damn great Black Jaguar strolling down the pipe at the back of the house. The pipe carries water from the dam to the centre of Kuala Lumpur; it also, seemingly, operates as a highway for feral felines!

Every day, at almost specific times, a troupe of monkeys swing through the trees en route to somewhere special. Then, a few hours later, they return to the point whence they came in order to bed down, one would think, for the night.

This is not a small troupe. We are looking at, probably fifty or sixty plus individuals. Some are mothers with small babies clinging to them for dear life, then there are the teenagers who scrap each other even as they leap from one branch to another. Amazingly, they will leap from a very thin branch at the precise moment that another ‘lad’ lands on it—they must know that the branch will not accept the weight of both.

Then there are the bigger fellows and the Granddads. The heavily moustachioed gentlemen follow on at a more sedate pace, as is befitting their age and rank in the troupe.

On their return journey the Alpha Male will chitter loudly at the latecomers, chiding them and encouraging them to speed up. Sometimes he will sit on a branch opposite my window and peer at me suspiciously while he scratches his tummy and shouts at the tardy members of the clan.

Here’s the problem

A friend of mine is fascinated by my proximity to wild monkeys.

“Take,” they tell me, “A photograph of these chaps.”

I only have a little one...

Merciful Death?

husband [ˈhʌzbənd]

n         1. a woman's partner in marriage

       2. Archaic

              a.  a manager of an estate

              b.  a frugal person

vb         1. to manage or use (resources, finances, etc.) thriftily

       2. Archaic

              a.  (tr) to find a husband for

              b.  (of a woman) to marry (a man)

       3. (tr) Obsolete to till (the soil)

[Old English hūsbonda, from Old Norse hūsbōndi, from hūs house + bōndi one who has a household, from bōa to dwell]

SHIP'S HUSBAND, marine law. An agent appointed by the owner of a ship, and invested with authority to make the requisite repairs, and attend to the management, equipment, and other concerns of the ship he is usually authorized to act as the general agent of the owners, in relation to the ship in her home port.

animal husbandry

n. The branch of agriculture concerned with the care and breeding of domestic animals such as cattle, hogs, sheep, and horses.

There will be other references, no doubt, but these will suffice and are representative of the whole.

There is, you will quickly observe, a link between all these. The obvious one is that they all refer to ‘husband’ in some form or another.

The second connection is that they are all terms for ‘caring’. We care for our animals to make sure that they are fat and well fed; this increases the potential profit that we shall gain from them. Ship’s husbands have a legal responsibility to care for the ship in port on behalf of the owners.

If you are the ‘Man of the House’, I took this from the Old Norse derivation, then you will need to ‘care for’ and ‘protect’ the house and the household. Naturally it is then bounden (your ‘bond’) upon you, as a husband, to look after your wife who, in Old Norse terms was also a husband (husbonde) but that term has fortuitously fallen from favour.

The presumption then is that you will look after your children.

Children are important. They cannot make judgements for themselves, they are not strong enough to go into combat or hunt. They need care.

Female children need extra care. They will be targeted by lunatics who do not have the same sense of care, that same duty of responsibility that you have.

There is a certain leering section of the community that requires ‘special treatment’. This is not confined to males, of course but it is, predominantly, a male issue.

[Note the word ‘predominantly’ from the Latin ‘dominus’ meaning ‘master’.]

These males are usually sexually inadequate. The only way that they can establish dominance (again) over a female is to rape her.

They can then show complete mastery by the added cruelty of torture.

The bemusing factor, for many men, is that there are those who rape in packs.

In time of war there was a certain understanding that the term “to the victor the spoils” meant that the winners in any combat could help themselves to any booty that was lying around—including females.

In olden societies this was regarded as acceptable because women had little, or no, worth. We cannot judge, as I have remarked before in these pages, ancient societies by our own standards.

By that token, the victors would help themselves to women. They would do this in platoon strength, perhaps, leaving the woman in dire straights. Possibly dying.

This was normal. Then.

It is not normal now.

It is, and never was, normal in peacetime.

Real men, strong men, do not feel the need to force their will upon a woman.

Real men have sufficient control over their emotions to be able to say ‘no’.

Real men will often look admiringly at women; they will look, sometimes, with eyes full of lust.

It ends there. They will take this no further.

There is never, ever, a need for a man to take a woman by force. There is never, ever, an excuse for beating a woman. There is never, ever, an excuse or torturing a woman.

Never.

Ever.

A few nights ago a woman died in a hospital in Singapore. She was from India.

She had been raped by six men and then tortured by the insertion of a rod into her vagina; this caused tearing of the tissues and internal organ damage.

She died.

We do not blame Indians. No more than we can blame any other race. Rape is endemic to many cultures worldwide. In South Africa it is a pandemic.

We do blame the participants; those six men who, by their barbarous and inhuman achievement, have earned the right to ‘special treatment’.

I invite anyone who cares to do so to comment below on their views about that ‘special treatment’.

Blunt, rusty hacksaw blades are especially welcome as are roughened baseball bats...

Food for Thought

One of my friends spent Christmas in the Dominican Republic

A magnificent idea perfectly executed.

Why? Because going away relieves the tensions of being at home for the festive period. If you say that there are no tensions then you are in denial. There are always tensions. People visit, people will bring other people and, sometimes, pets—like dogs, for example. Not everyone likes dogs; specifically, not everyone likes dogs in their homes. There are those, perish the thought, that will tell you that dogs create an odour in the house.

Young children are delightful in the holiday period. Unless your home is not set up for a visitation from small children, then it can become fraught. One does not wish to upset the sensibilities of the proud parents but...

Visitors bring tension. They cannot help it, it happens. Yes, we like to see people especially those people to whom we are related or those who are close friends. It is, after all, a time for family and friends.

Then there’s the cooking. More people equal more cooking.

More cooking equals more clearing up afterwards.

Mum’s job. Is it not? Unless you’re having a Seasonal Barbecue but few people, relatively speaking (sorry about that), live in the antipodes.

Decorations? The Tree? Wrapping paper everywhere?

Clearly, the answer is to leave your shores, apologise to would be guests and go. Go away to a hotel for the appropriate time that your wallet will stand.

It was the plan, in our family, to say, “How much were you planning to spend on a gift for me? Why don’t you spend that on yourself and in that way you will get exactly what you want and you don’t have to worry about wrapping it or the postage, etc.”

If you instigate this sort of plan in your family you may, magically, now have sufficient funds to spend somewhere nice for a week, or so. Somewhere like a disused Gulag in Siberia will give that wintery feel that so many of us yearn for. You may even find it an extremely economical holiday, too.

However, back to the Dominican Republic.

Many of my friends have been there and had a successful, relaxing holiday. One or two have had less than satisfactory experiences but one would suppose that, statistically, there are bound to be the odd failures.

I know many of you care deeply for statistics. However, I am aware that 87% of statistics are made up on the spot.

One of the aspects of the family visit to an idyllic, sunny, place for the mid-winter break was that the food was superb. Different, no doubt, to that experienced at home on a daily basis but a wonderful treat nonetheless.

Among the photographs posted on their ‘Facebook’ page were examples of carvings made from melons that, in some cases, were transformed into serving bowls.

Clever idea, that. Saves washing up and the juice in the melon will keep the contents moist and fresh.

In browsing through the culinary delights on offer in the Dominican Republic it occurred to me that lots of people post photographs of their meals. Including me.

Why?

Why do we go to so much trouble photographing our repasts and posting them on the ubiquitous ‘Facebook’?

Because food is important.

Food is the single most important thing in life. Without it we die.

Abraham Maslow demonstrated this by means of a pyramidal structure of many layers that he called the ‘Heirarchy of Human Needs’. It has since been modified slightly by other psychologists but the main root is still there.

Food and water. Survival.

We are ancient beings. As a race. We have existed for millions of years. Our habits and lifestyles were formed a long time ago, our social interactions were formed many years ago.

Technology has advanced but our social civilisation is still barbarous; much as we should like to think that we have ‘improved’ we have really not advanced very much.

The legislation has moved on—I hear that women are allowed to vote in some States of the US, but, deep in our hearts, we remain the same as ever we were.

When we, as human beings, ceased wandering around in our nomadic lifestyle and adopted a more settled existence in fortified villages we were subject to raids by neighbours. Perhaps we made war on them. These battles may have been on the grounds that the ‘grass is greener’ on the other side or it may have been for hunting rights. Or women.

But we fought. At the drop of a hat or, at any rate, head-dress we went into conflict that may have simmered for generations. In the end nobody knew what it was all about only that we ‘hated them’.

We still have jealousies, rivalries and hatreds of other clans and villages.

We still have that primordial layer of needs.

Eating is right up there with drinking as the most important. Survival.

So we post photographs.

Pictures are posted of the wonderful meal that we have just had. Now others can see that we are successful in our struggle to survive.

Sometimes I look at these photographs and think, “Hmm, that’s a good idea.”

Sometimes it is nice to see where the food was obtained if it is in a café or restaurant. If the person posting it says it was good then we may try it ourselves.

So now I am off to Restaurant Yusuf Haslam for superb Malay cuisine.

Only for survival needs, you understand.

Seasoned Greetings: Part 2

At last. I heave a deep, heart felt, sigh of relief. It’s over.

At last I can go into a shopping mall without the risk of my eardrums being blasted with yet another round of “Frosty the Red Nosed Reindeer” or “Rudolf the Bloody Snowman”!

No more displays urging me to buy glittery gold deer that look more like weasels with antlers, pseudo-snow covered cottages and ersatz holly and mistletoe.

I am not, ever, dreaming of a white Christmas. If I wanted to live buttock deep in a substance that can only exist at temperatures below 0°C I should move to Canada or Tasmania.

Where I live it is warm and comfortable, something about which I am superbly grateful. The locals here soak up all the ‘White Christmas’ advertising nonsense with only the haziest idea, for most of them, what it actually means.

“Go,” I tell them, “and sit in the freezer for a couple of hours and then come out with a song on your lips.”

Let me just straighten this out a little bit and tuck the edges in.

I have nothing against the spreading of a little joy and happiness. All for it, in fact. I also recognise this is also the season of goodwill to all men wherein we all share the pleasure of giving.

Nothing against any of that. Even though I recognise that it is the ‘season of goodwill to all men’ rather than women. Women will have been firmly entrenched in the kitchen slaving over a hot stove to prepare the Christmas repasts having been up all night wrapping presents. Wrapping anything is not a male forte. Men are completely unable to wrap a perfectly splendid cuboid without it looking like a bunch of socks.

 No, no, I am happy with that.

It is the deluge. The overwhelming presence, if you will excuse the pun, of Christmas. The interminable marketing with which we are subjected day after day after day from everywhere.

It is not just the supermarkets or the malls; it is TV and radio; it is the hoardings and the decorations that spring up everywhere.

It is ubiquitous.

My senses are numb from overexposure to all that is Reindeers and Santa and snow and fir trees. We have small filmlets on ‘YouTube’ precessing around the internet telling us about a ‘Mistletoe Experiment’ and sundry other seasonal merriments.

When I was a lad it was all rather low key. We had a service in Church to remind us of what it was all about. We had a tree with lights and tinsel under which were placed the presents.

It was quiet.

It was peaceful.

It was family.

Now it is noise and fuss. Spend, spend, spend, we are relentlessly urged, or be left behind with those people of no account who, clearly, do not recognise the true spirit of the occasion because they did not open their wallets wide enough.

It is over. Now we get a few months respite until March or April when the advertising companies start their insidious creep towards the next bout of largesse with our money.

They will begin to suggest new things that could be out around November—just in time to buy for next Christmas.

It’s time to cancel it all.

Time to sit quietly around with the children and tell them that joy and happiness is not just for Christmas. The pleasure of giving, of charity, if you like, is just like a puppy—it is for the whole year and beyond and occurs on a daily basis.

People are homeless three hundred and sixty five days a year. Feeding them for one day doesn’t accomplish very much if it achieves anything at all.

Old people suffer from the cold all through the winter; they are, often, lonely, all year around but we don’t notice because we are too intent on what is happening in Afghanistan or Detroit or Zimbabwe or...

Christmas is over. Such a relief.

But the season of joy, happiness and giving goes on.

Doesn’t it?

Seasoned Greetings

It is now, as I sit here and gaze out of my window at the jungle, four o’clock on the afternoon of the 24^th December.

Roughly translated that means that, for two thirds of the World, it is now Christmas Eve.

For Christians it is a wonderful time of year celebrating, as they do, the birth of the object of their adoration. ‘Object’ here meaning the ‘point’ or ‘focus’ rather than some inanimate projection.

It is, essentially, a Christian festival. It has nothing to do with anyone else. Nothing.

Yet celebrants and non-celebrants alike will have a holiday. We will enjoy that. Thank you. Of course, in some parts Christians also enjoy the holidays bestowed upon other folk so it is, one supposes, ‘swings and roundabouts’.

Some non-Christians and those that I like to think of as ‘pseudo-Christians’ will use it as an excuse to party. To have a shindig, over-eat, get drunk and, even, indulge in some naughtiness.

The shame of it, for me, is this desire to overspend. Especially on toys, food and drink.

There are those who go into debt for the next twelve months just to give their children, and themselves, a great one day in the year.

We, in our little world, do not gamble. Because it is an unnecessary expenditure. A pastime from which you will, very rarely, end up financially rewarded. The bookies will win.

It is, or can be, an addiction. Who suffers? You do. The family does—the children do.

The funds that would have fed and clothed the children are now safely stored in the pockets of the bookies.

Drink is another one. We see, all too often, people speaking in praise of how they spend money to become ill and then go out and do it again night after night.

I have seen a woman leave a supermarket with a trolley full of booze. Full. Beside her was a small girl dressed in a thin cotton dress, a worn out woollen cardigan that was out at the elbows and sandals. The snow was horizontal.

The small girl stood there while Mummy loaded the boot of their new car with the festive cheer. No thought to letting the little one into the car first.

Some priorities are mind-boggling.

So much for Christmas cheer.

Are we so brainwashed by the corporations that brew or distil alcohol, that advertise all those lovely treats for the festive season that we cannot see how our children are suffering?

Maybe we are. Brainwashed.

This may be one of those rare times of year when the Churches will be less than empty.

The service of nine lessons and nine carols will slip by largely un-noticed. The lessons, especially, will pass by without any part of it impinging themselves on memory—or conscience.

In all the seasonal cheer there is a kind of amnesia, a quality of forgetfulness that precludes the celebrants from remembering, “The children are important. More important than you are.”

It is, for me, the season of waste, of gluttony of profligate expenditure on useless items.

Small children will get a wonderful toy and reject it in order to play with the box. Young eyes will look in wonder at the tree so full of light and beauty and wonder why their Mum and Dad are arguing.

They will wonder what it is all about, this time of goodwill and harmony.

Then it will be back to normal. Back to scraping pennies together for the rent and the electric bill.

Am I a killjoy?

No. I am hoping that, one day, there will be a semblance of order. Perhaps there will come a time of sanity.

A dream.

Bah. Humbug.

If You Don't Think Like Me - You are Dumb

Living not far from my house is a young man. He is a delightful character; he is well liked by both my wife and myself.

The thing about this lad is that he doesn’t think like other people.

Having a conversation with him is easy because it is a repeat of the previous conversation; a recycled chat with few modifications.

Many years ago he would ask how my Mum is but now he tells me that he has dreamt of my Mum. This change in the conversation happened the moment she died.

He is exceptionally gifted; he drives, he holds down a job and his memory is faultless. He still remembers the registration number of my car that I got rid of five years ago. Even now he will ask me how I like my ‘Estima’ each time we meet.

When I ask him how he is he will frown and assure me, “I am always good, Uncle David.”

He is. He is always good.

He is one of the nicest people I have ever met.

What concerns me about this is that I can’t tell what he thinks of other people. It is impossible to ask because it means varying the conversation and that, it appears, is a no-no.

I am fascinated to know his thoughts and opinions. What does he care about, what does he feel—about anything?

There is no way to know. His mind is a closed book to which I do not have the key.

Frustrating.

One of my cousins was a Downs Syndrome person. He was given to some odd antics not least of which was to drop his trousers at indeterminate times. These indiscretions were always overlooked while somebody rushed to, gently, redress, if I might coin a phrase, the situation.

What sequence of electrical signals, of sparks, through the synapses of his brain provoked the thought that now would be a good time to drop his trousers?

We shall never know.

He was, as people of such ilk are, harmless. He was a nice person. Sadly, he is no longer with us.

Many years ago I was incarcerated in a mental institution that was called the ‘Neuro-Psychiatric Centre’ or ‘NPC’. It was less than affectionately called the ‘Nutty Patients Centre’ by us inmates.

I felt quite at home there. We were all a little ‘askew’ in the way we thought.

We had two people called ‘John’ there. One was a ‘Johnny’, it must be said but the other was quite happy to be just ‘John’.

One of them had lost an eye in the fighting in Cyprus. Another rampant desire for undeserved power—this time by an Archbishop. They called themselves EOKA, which stands for ‘give us what we want or we will murder you and your children’.

He was sent to us because he had become slightly unhinged by this event. Originally he had gone to another unit to do physiotherapy.

I still do not fully understand how you do physiotherapy on an eyeball but, then, this is not my field of expertise. At this previous unit he had begun to develop a huge hunger—for food. He found that he could assuage this appetite by finding a meal table with brand new Women’s Royal Air Force personnel sitting at it. Once comfortable he would begin to blink his glass eye; then he would rub it with his knuckle and, ultimately, he would scratch it with the point of his knife making, as it does, a squeaking noise. This activity was inclined to remove the appetite of the girls so he would ‘volunteer’ to finish their meals for them.

Someone thought that this made him a good candidate for our company.

The other ‘J’ killed cats. Almost every military base is riddled with stray cats. Why? I have no idea what attracts them but there they are. Populations were often in their hundreds.

This fellow hated cats. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he hated living things. Not sure about plants but cats definitely.

He would hunt them down and nail them to a lamppost. Lampposts were made of wood in those days. Cats offer little resistance to a six-inch nail and a lump hammer.

They would squall for a considerable length of time until someone either found them and put them out of their misery or they would expire.

He was caught. In the act. They sent him to our little domain.

Several months later he was seen on the back steps of the facility feeding the crows. He was rolling bread into balls and tossing them to the birds.

The psychiatrists decided that he was now cured. They had, they believed, won. Our Nurse, Sergeant Sam, who was of daunting physical dimensions, counselled caution, “Let us,” he said, “Just wait and see for a wee while.”

He was right. A few days later when the crows had begun to trust him and wander closer to feed someone, possibly Big Sam, noticed that the birds were dying. In large numbers.

“They were falling out of the sky like rain,” he said. They would twitch around for a while and then pass gently into death.

Getting closer, Big Sam said he observed the culprit muttering racist words at the crows and wishing for their imminent, and immediate, demise.

They kept him in.

Chris used to switch off. We might be playing cards. All would be well until we realised that Chris was no longer with us. We found it necessary to stop playing, go and make tea and sit around waiting for him to ‘come back’.

After a while, twenty minutes, or so, he would continue to play as if nothing had happened leaving us to scrabble around for our cards and try to remember what the last ‘bid’ had been!

Then he would ask, “How come you lot have tea and I do not?”

They, the police, found him on the platform of the local railway station waiting for a train home. He was wearing pyjamas and nothing else. They guessed where he was from.

My pal was called ‘Pinapple’. We called him that because he liked to throw imaginary grenades and spray people with imaginary machine gun fire. If you didn’t ‘take it’ and pretend to be dead he could get quite nasty.

He and I were requested to go and get the meal trolley. We discovered that if you had the steerable wheels at the front and leaned to one side at the back you could get quite a turn of speed and negotiate tight corners with a satisfying squeal from the tyres.

The Commanding Officer of the hospital stopped us in the main corridor. He was not far short of apoplectic. We were, it must be said, not as contrite as he expected.

Then he asked which Ward we came from.

“NPC,” Pineapple, smiling broadly, informed him.

You could see his shoulders go down. He was a beaten man. I asked Pineapple later if he felt sorry for him.

“I should’a given the bugger both barrels,” he told me.

When we got back to NPC the custard and gravy was all mixed up and slopped all over the chicken, cabbage and apple pie. Scrumptious. We enjoyed it.

In one of the ‘private’ wards where people with more serious mental ailments were kept was a Flight Sergeant whose wife and two children had been gunned down in front of a store in Nicosia. Not one bullet had touched him and yet bullets from two EOKA terrorists riddled his family.

Of course, Pineapple was warned, on pain of death, to stay away from him; Big Sam would have no truck with antics from Pineapple, or me, on his watch.

While locked up I used to draw cartoons. The psychiatrists would steal them and analyse them. They would invariably decide that the cartoons were ‘childish’.

They did lots of tests. I probably failed them because they ended up giving me lots more. I had pills to take that stopped me thinking. Trying to do anything was like wading through thick mental mud.

All of us inmates dreaded the idea of getting the shock treatment. There was always the whisper that so-and-so was going for the Electric Shock Therapy; the clue was always said to be that you would be given a salt drink and then be taken away.

They didn’t do that to me. I was grateful for that. I was grateful to one of the nurses, too. A gentle soul; she was chubby but quite pretty. I only had to think about a cup of tea and she would appear with a freshly brewed pot.

“Here you are, lads. Something to cheer you up,” she would smile and pour us out a cup each.

In the end they decided that I was far too dangerous to be kept in that place so they sent me back to the general population, as they called anywhere outside of the Lunatic Asylum.

Every one of us thinks differently to everyone else.

We cannot discriminate. We cannot say that one person is stupid because they think differently or because they have different ideas. Maybe their imagination runs off at different angles to other people’s mindsets.

Unless they are dangerous to other people then they are just different—not ‘better’ or ‘worse’.

Judge not lest ye be judged.