Airport peak hour

I collected Cz and Cw from the airport this morning on their return from Canada. Their flight landed ten minutes later than the predicted time on the Flight Radar 24 App principally because the flight was made to do a circuit south of the airport ahead of landing.

Once landed the plane was made to wait nearly twenty minutes on the tarmac before pulling into its gate. I thought the App had frozen when monitoring this but it turns out the plane was blocked from the gate by a late departing flight.

This delay cost me an additional $19 in car parking fees.

Never mind. I had a bit of fun. I displayed my friends' names on my iPad in the manner of Hire Car drivers waiting for their customers, much to my friends' amusement.

To the point

A gathering to farewell the retiring, long standing gardener and general handyman for my apartment block. About thirty in attendance, all sexagenarians and much older.

S is speaking to me about being a 'benefactor to the arts'; a gross inflation of my frequent attendance at the theatre. S draws the passing T into our conversation despite the latter's obvious intention to join another group nearby.

S: 'I do love the Wharf Revue. It is so topical and entertaining'.

T: 'The subject does not interest me'. And with that, T moves on.

That figures

I guess it is obvious that a chef/kitchen hand needed for a 'fast paste' kitchen should have good English skills too.

Talk to each other

The sign on the Courtyard Cafe at Sydney Hospital; 'Sorry no free WI-FI, talk to each other'.

Eye of the Beholder

('Eye of the beholder' Credit: Wrenne Evans)

Humour, like beauty, surely is in the eye (ear/mind?) of the beholder.

Speaking to Cs by phone he told me about a comedy television show he was watching. The Canadian show features a man who secretly films his own aunt being confronted by an actor who deliberately antagonises her by his actions and words. The aunt, having a caustic nature, reacts in ways that Cs finds hilarious.

It didn't sound hilarious to me. If the show had been fictional I might have thought the idea to be humorous.  A sort of 'Candid Camera' which generally was good natured in the situations it secretly placed people. However the idea of someone secretly filming their own relative to generate an antagonised reaction sounded cruel to me.

I don't want to play.....

Groucho Marx

Groucho Marx was a brilliant exponent of the one liner ad-lib. One of many of his ad-libs that has always appealed to me is 'I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member'. The exact wording of this ad-lib and its context remains uncertain but that he made a statement to this effect is not in dispute.

My mind turned to Groucho's comment after an exchange with my bridge partner tonight. Having picked up my bridge partner for the drive to the club I was asked about my day. I replied that I had woken with a cough but before I could add that the cough had cleared my bridge partner responded sharply 'well what are you doing here tonight'. An icy chill descended in the car and I could tell that my bridge partner was fuming at the thought that I was spreading germs around.

At the first set of traffic lights bridge partner turned to me and asked to be taken home. 'I don't want to be getting sick from your cough' explained bridge partner even though I hadn't coughed at all during the drive.

I wasn't going to argue. I don't want to play bridge with a partner who doesn't want to catch my cough, I thought.

Coming out

(The New Yorker)

Wedding bells....or are you just happy to see me?

Father of the bride

('Father of the Bride', MGM 1950)

I'm back from a lightning visit, in more ways than one, to the Gold Coast for the wedding celebrations of a daughter of one of my longest standing friends.

There was thunder and lightning and rain in Sydney shortly before my flight's departure time and there was more thunder and lightning and rain on the Gold Coast during the wedding reception. Fortunately those weather conditions did not prevail whilst I was in the air so apart from very strong winds on the flight up - which provided a few mildly anxious moments - I was not exposed to much in the way of adverse conditions whilst in transit throughout the weekend.

The flying time between the two cities is about 1 hour and 30 minutes each way but a good 15 minutes of that each way is spent simply on the plane taxi-ing between the Sydney terminals and Sydney's third runway which is the runway used for nearly all domestic services.

The main north/south runway is reserved it seems for international services and the east/west runway seems to only be used for certain wind directions or for those limited times when the Eastern suburbs of Sydney are required to take our (minor) share of aircraft noise to give the inner western suburbs relief from the majority of noise they have to bear. (Queue sardonic comment from Andrew at this point.)

It is odd that the so called 'third runway' is always referred to with that name yet the original north/south runway and the subsequent east/west runway are never called the first and second runways respectively.

Anyway, to get back to the wedding my friend Rt, the father of the bride, is a good natured soul. He is never short of a joke and has endless anecdotes to relate. In what must be a contender for the longest Father of the Bride speech ever delivered Rt tried to fit every possible joke and anecdote into his speech which he read, seemingly word for word, from one sheet of paper. His comments not only covered his daughter, the bride, but also his wife, his two other daughters - already married - his son -not yet married - his two grandchildren and a third on the way and his new son in law and family. I didn't time it precisely but I think it was a speech of about 40 minutes, give or take a few seconds.

I'm amazed that so much speech, word for word, could be drawn from one sheet of paper.

It's a bird, it's a plane....

...it's a patient........

George Reeves, television's Superman in the 1950s

....seen at the hospital, a patient in preparation for medical imaging, dressed only in his underwear with his paper gown billowing behind him like Superman's cape.

I immediately thought of the legendary man of steel.

Stockholm magic

This presentation in Stockholm is very clever.....



It would please James I imagine.

Your next train departs......

Its been six months since your last visit.....

This reminds me, I'm due for my next check up.

Husbands

Husbands is a web based mini 'mini-series'. The first series of eleven episodes (to date) lasts less than thirty five minutes in total. I think it is funny and clever and like all good comedy it contains within it's over the top surface a core of serious references.

The link takes you to all eleven episodes.

Information for seniors

An urban cautionary tale

This is an urban cautionary tale. It involves a friend of a mine and it is a true story.

My friend lives in a quiet suburban, slightly out of the way, residential street. Some of the residences in the street have off street parking but the majority do not and as many of those residences have multiple cars attached to them there is strong demand for parking in the street. A boy's high school is located at one end of the street. Many of the older boys drive and park in my friend's street during school hours placing further pressure on the limited supply of street parking spaces.

My friend owns one car and initially had no off street parking but about ten years ago she obtained council approval and converted her small front yard into off street parking. But she rarely used the off street space preferring to park across her own driveway ostensibly reasoning that her driveway otherwise had to remain clear and was not available to anyone else. My suspicion is that she found her off street car space too tight to use.

This arrangement continued for several years without problem apart from several neighbours regularly complaining that she did not use her own off street car space, a complaint she dismissed on the grounds above.

In the meantime more and more school boys started taking up street parking during school hours, many with large SUVs. Now this didn't affect my friend except for when she had visitors who could find no nearby parking spaces. So my friend complained to the school principal about the boys' parking. She complained regularly but the situation did not change.

My friend then started a campaign to the council for a two hour parking limit to be applied to the street during weekday business hours with local residents exempted by way of specially issued permits. This, my friend reasoned, would end the practice of the school students using the street for parking. Some neighbours supported the campaign but many did not. I assume that those who were against the campaign did not want to have to pay for permission to park in their own street, an understandable point of view. I suspect some were also concerned that they had more cars requiring street parking than the number of permits that would be allocated.

The arguments, pro and con, continued for a couple of years until a few months ago the council agreed to my friend's application and a two hour time limit was placed on this quiet, out of the way, street. Residents, without any off street parking, could apply for one exemption permit.

So what happened? The street signs were installed, the residents' permits issued and the school boys had to find somewhere else to park. My friend continued to park across her own driveway.

My friend was happy. For a while. But then something she hadn't anticipated happened. Council rangers started to patrol the street. They fined my friend for parking across her driveway. This had never occurred previously in all the years she had parked this way. My friend complained to council but they quoted the relevant sub-regulation back to her. Council would fine her if she continued to park across her own driveway. My friend decided to apply for a permit and here comes the rub. Under council rules my friend is not entitled to a permit because she has off street parking available.

My friend, who still will not use her off street car space, now parks several streets away from her own home during weekdays.

As that apocryphal Chinese adage goes, be careful what you wish for because it may come true.

The Tug Toner

What I miss by not watching television at 2am. Get tugging boys!

Hold on to your hats...

Did you find those lip readers' prognostications on what he said to she and she said to he at the recent Royal wedding fascinating? No? Neither did I.

But for those who did, here is the latest addition to the collection.

Return folding trays and seat backs to the upright position

The New Yorker 2 May 2011

Hopefully this won't be the case when I travel next month.

Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!

Have you ever wondered whether you are in the line of succession to the throne of any country? No? Neither have I.

I stumbled across a Wikipedia entry for the line of succession to the British throne. As we know Wikipedia knows everything about everything. The site lists the first two thousand five hundred and sixteen people in the line of succession. Yes that's 2516! Actually there are even more names than that listed but some are crossed off or otherwise listed in a tangent outside the line. For example Princess Margaret Rose is crossed off because she rather thoughtlessly went and died. So did HRH Prince Wilhelm of Prussia who otherwise would be 365th in the line. Also off the list is HRH Prince Michael of Kent who did something worse than dying, he married a Roman Catholic. But for that heinous occurrence he would be 37th in the line.

So who is 100th in the line? None other than HRH Peter, the Hereditary Prince of Yugoslavia. Wow, he is the Prince of a country that no longer exists for a throne long ago abolished but he is still 100th in line for the British throne and (I assume) Australia's too.

What about the 1,000th in the line? That is one Nicholas Nilert who turns 20 this year. No, I've never heard of him either but someone of that name has a Facebook account and lists his interests as Skiing and Ullr (look it up!). We better wrap him in cotton wool just in case we need him to be our monarch some time in the future.

And who needs 2515 living people to be bumped off without any of them producing any further issue in order to be the future monarch of Britain and Australia? That honour goes to Karin Vogel who turns 28 this year and therefore potentially has many years of monarchy left in her. Now if that Karin Vogel is the same person who is the subject of this Facebook account then I can only hope that the bearded gentleman in the photograph with her is a virgin.

God Save The Queen!