It's getting close to that time of year again!

 

Christmas 1970 inside my donga in Camp 6 on Loloho Beach

 

It's getting close to that time of year again! Even the op-shops have started playing "Jingle Bells". This photo is from 1970 when photography was still black and white but not so our lives. It's Christmas in Camp 6 on the island of Bougainville in New Guinea where we were building the world's biggest copper mine. I'm sitting on the most important piece of furniture, a beer fridge, flanked by Bob Green and Neil "Jacko" Jackson on my right.

Neil Jackson was Bechtel's head-timekeeper, a titular job description at best as the only time he could be relied on to keep correctly was opening time at the local "boozer". For him it was always 5 o'clock somewhere. He's shown in the photograph when he's already well into his drink but still some time away from turning disagreeable and at times downright ugly.

Bob Green was also a timekeeper who got married just before he came up to the island. He liked his drink but also his wife back in Australia who wrote him long, passionate, and multi-paged letters every day which he received by the fistful on mail-day. He replied to them after the nightly drinking was over but the mental torture became too much and he returned to Melbourne after just a few months.

"Jacko" also moved back to Melbourne where he inherited his auntie's mansion in blue-ribbon Toorak. He finished his days fighting off the neighbours who tried to have him and his dozens of cats and mountains of empties evicted from their genteel neighbourhood. It's rumoured that he was knighted for his services to the Australian brewing industry and lived out his days as Sir Osis of the Liver.

Bob Green and "Jacko" were just two of several unlikely characters who back then I called by that shifty English monosyllable that covers such a vast array of meanings that you can never be quite sure what anyone means when they use the word "friend". We were friends not because we had sought out each other's company but because we were thrown into each other's company through work and circumstances.

I still wonder how in this company of alcoholics and misfits I didn't permanently impair my young body and tender soul. I'd just turned 25. My short life until then had been a series of lucky breaks, and the word 'regret' had not yet entered my vocabulary. An endless succession of more lucky breaks and golden tomorrows seemed to lie ahead of me. How wrong and how right I was!

Looking at that old photo brings back lots of memories which make me feel young again and help me forget that these days when I try to leap tall buildings in a single bounds, I always hit the wall halfway up.

More often, I feel like hitting out at all that annoying stuff that these days masquerades for news, such as the ongoing fallout from Lidia Thorpe's royal protest this week. Yesterday, Senator Thorpe told us she had sworn allegiance to the queen's "hairs" not "heirs" when she entered parliament.

 

 

The ABC reports that "She's rejecting calls to resign from the opposition." I don't want to split hairs like Senator Thorpe but shouldn't that have been "She's rejecting calls from the opposition to resign"?

 

Someone wrote Padma's biography ...

 

 

She's waiting for me to write my own version, and so I left the book on the shelves at Vinnies after our early-morning swim, and instead bought William Willis' "The Epic Voyage of the Seven Little Sisters" in which he describes sailing his raft farther and faster than the six-man crew of the Kon-Tiki did theirs - and he did it alone! A true bluewater classic which is worth every cent of the eight dollars!

 

 

It's a neck-and-neck race whose outcome will not be known for another two weeks. If what comes true what the rest of the world it fearing, I'd better acquaint myself with this devil-we-already-know, and so I lashed out another $2.50 for his boastful book of lies, lies, and more lies.

 

 

And I found a beautiful hardcover of "The Ascent of Money - A Financial History of the World" (of which I already have the DVDs) and Paul Theroux's "Fresh-Air Fiend - Travel Writings, 1985-2000". Happy and hungry, it was time for a lunch of barramundi at the Catalina Golf Club.

 

 

And that's it for another day in retirement. I'm back in a supine position on the sundrenched verandah by the river with my books and a can of Coke - are you reading this, Des? - and I wonder what the rich people are doing.

 

Do you know about "Energy Made Easy"?

 

 

Most of us, after having taken out an insurance policy or chosen a provider for our internet and telephone or electricity, seem to 'set and forget'. This loyalty - or laziness - can often result in a hefty 'loyalty tax'.

There are websites which allow you to compare prices but keep in mind that they are operated by businesses who make money through promoting links which may not necessarily be the best deals. So who do you trust?

When it comes to electricity prices, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) found 79 per cent of households were paying higher power bills than they needed to be, but there is one comparison website which does not peddle any particular electricity supplier, and that's the Australian Government site "Energy Made Easy".

It involves four easy steps (and you have to look up your National Meter Identifier number on your electricity bill). I've just used it and discovered that I could save myself $140 a year by switching to a better deal. Perhaps not worth the trouble and so I shall continue to pay my 'loyalty tax', but it is good to know that I'm not being too outrageously overcharged.